Whilst we're having some nice warm days night time temperatures are still dropping to as low as 3 or 4 degrees Celcius so it's still too cold to be opening the hives up. I took the opportunity to take a couple of pictures as over the winter there hasn't been a huge amount to photograph what with the bees all being tucked away in the dark.
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| Scout Bee investigating the patio |
First up was a scout bee investigating the patio. There wasn't much on it to interest her except possibly me doing a spot of carpentry. I suspect she went back to the hive to report that I need to get the power washer out. I quite liked the picture so I whipped out my sketch pad and trusty 3H automatic pencil to draw it. Why do I use a 3H? Because they don't break easy and I probably got it to mark wood rather than paper, it definitely doesn't make shading easy -it's a bit like trying to draw with a nail TBH. Anyway I was quite pleased with my scribble so I decided to scan it and replace the bee in the blog title with it.
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| It was meant to be a cat. |
The other is a forager with full pollen baskets. The pollen is the orangey yellow stuff on her back legs.The 'baskets' are actually a collection of hairs on the hind legs that the bee uses to carry pollen. The bee packs the pollen onto them then carries it back to the hive for storage.
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| Got protein. |
In other news I've put new foundation onto shallow frames for this years honey crop, having crushed up last years comb to get the honey out. Did that after sundown because the smell of foundation tends to draw bees to investigate and when you're holding tiny nails to hit with a hammer you don't really want a bee in your lughole.
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