Bees Have Arrived!

They're here!  We are so excited.  We picked up two over-wintered queens (meaning, the queen was hatched in 2017) with their colony (or nuc) on Saturday, May 19th, 2018.

Watch the video here of us in the bee yard of Bill Kopar:

Then we successfully brought them home (yes, in the cab of the truck) to place them into our hives.  Elizabeth, our daughter was in charge of recording.  It does take nerves of steel to not react to a bee that is buzzing around your head!

Our girls and I thought it would be fun to name the hives and stencil the boxes rather than numbering the hives (to keep track of the activity).  So the one with the red band on the top is Asguard and the upper hive is Wakanda.  The paw print and hammer stenciling will be added soon!

On May 20, 2017, Elizabeth sat and monitored the bees in our Wakanda hive.  Here's some photos.  Can you find:

• Bees coming in with their "pockets" full?  Called corbicula (plural corbiculae), it is the part on her hind legs to bring pollen, water or nectar.
• Bees with their bums in the air?  One of the ladies hangs out at the entrance of the hive and exposes the Nasonov gland to release a pheromone to show returning forager bees back to the colony.

 

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