A question for you, Addy. I was just out checking the bird feeders, and noticed that the seed scattered on the ground was covered with what seems to be honeybees. It's just a hair above 50 F. out there. Is this common, or are these some other type of bee? They sure LOOK like the ones in your pictures.
John
We have seen our bees out flying in the 40's, seemed dependent more on if the sun was out full blast. Above 50 they are out looking for food.
If you are like we are there is no food out there. Our pollen just started a week or so ago, just now they are bringing in a lot of pollen, which they need to make bee bread which they feed the kids with.
A lot of time the bees will go after something like that, including saw dust, dust from hay, thinking it is pollen, they are almost desperate for a food source. They see the dust on the seeds from the birds eating them. They haul it back to the hive, the food bees toss it out.
'
We are around 3 weeks behind in the pollen/nectar season. Once we see the first dandelion bloom nectar season starts. For us it lasts 6 weeks, period. After that we need to feed and baby the bees. There is fall nectar but it is not a lot.
We went into our angry hive, two hours later we had the hive split, which means we took the frames with brood and made two hives with them. Just doing that calms the hive, since they are now confused.
As we were pulling frames I was looking for the queen, it took a double / triple look at the frames to finally find her. She is a pretty one, almost hate to kill her. But her scent drives the hive to be angry. She is an egg laying machine, we found a lot of brood.
Our new queens will be here on Wednesday, that starts a 1.5 week or so watch over the new queen. We check the hive temperament every few days. A nasty hive will try to kill her, she needs to stay in her queen cage until we know they accept her. You can tell because the bees will easily brush off the cage, if they are trying to sting her to death, they hang on tight.
