HOW BEES DO FAMILY PLANNING

When a community loses tens of thousands population over winter then has to repopulate with tens of thousands of newborns in the spring, get them raised and slotted among six job descriptions, all without a top-down presiding leader, then "family planning" takes on a whole new meaning. So how do bees do it? I'm a newbee, but this is what I understand. Also watch the video. But caution. It includes violence and adult bee content.

Honey bee drones have about one function in life. Which, by the way, leads to immediate death.

Each hive of 75,000 females needs a few drones around, so that when the queen takes one mating flight in the spring...well...you know. Birds n bees and all that.

Anyway, while we humans do spring cleaning, bee home makers do their major house cleaning in the fall. They need to get ready for the cold, starving winter. And, since these ladies know there won't be any queen flights for a few months, what to do with those remaining drones who never got any action?

All winter, drones just lay around, eat precious food, eye the girls, and contribute nothing. (Sounds like football season?) So at one point in the fall the ladies boot most (but not all) the boys out. No one knows how the ladies arrive at a consensus decision on what day to do it. Or how they rate the guys to decide who's in line for lucky in the spring.

If you watch this video close you can see this ritual in action. The video is shot at the front door to a hive. One little guy (actually the drones are the largest) just won't give up and tries to sneak back in.

No big deal. If the girls run short of queen-ready drones in the spring, they know how to re-breed some new drones next spring (the female worker bees know how to set gender by size of honeycomb cell, feeding regimine and larvae uncapping/recapping schedule). But they must do it all in time to date the queen. Then from that one mating the queen will have over 100,000 babies over the next few months. Some of whom will be drones that they'll have to kick out in the fall.

FALL IS COMING

BEE BREAKFAST BAR

Caught some early morning bee-grazing. The Ladies are still at it.

Also, tonight we opened the hive again, while Amanda, Ryan, twin babies Lidya and Grant were with us. Only Ryan came close to observe. The Ladies are hard at it. Lots of comb on new super, but only 10% filled with honey, and only 2% of comb capped with honey inside. ... i.e., "room to grow."

Got to admit, though. The photo is just a bumble bee passing thru, near my Ladies. The bumbler is a real ham, right?

THE AERODYNAMICS OF CARGO BEES

Please click on these photo's. It's the best I could do with a cheap instamatic, but still it is fascinating what these ladies do all day, every day. Soon as the sun opens flowering blossoms the ladies take flight en mass to bring back the pollen and nectar. If you've ever seen a hang glider come in for a landing, it sure looks like the ladies here have it knocked solid. Also, see the leg-sacks of pollen. On this day they were bringing back material from bright orange flowers. A dew even showed up having found white blossoms, that made it appear they were wearing white bloomers. The girls are so focused on their tasks that they ignored my bare hands holding the camera just six inches away. And this morning I discovered they have resumed the consumption rate of 1/2 gallon of sugared water per day.

TOURISTS POSING AT LOOKOUT TO BEAR BUTTE

We live in such a scenic wonderland. It was Motorcycle Rally week, with 17 gazillion motorcycling tourists. The Pack Goats wanted to go sight-seeing, too. So we went up to (our privately named) Picnic Point. Appropriate to the setting the goats asked if I would snap some photo's of them posing like tourists, with Bear Butte and Piedmont Valley in the background. (Hey. It gets kinda "isolated" out here in the Black Hills now and then, so we entertain ourselves.)

HIVE AT SIX WEEKS: CAUGHT BY SURPRISE!

We opened the hive on July 22 (about 6-weeks) to check on things. One frame (#6) in the upper hive box was fully covered with comb that was 2/3 capped with tan wax (brood) and 1/3 capped with white wax (honey to eat later). The outer frames (#1, #10) were much more proportionately covered in white-capped honey stores. All seemed healthy. Too healthy! I was caught with my frames down. Needed to expand the hive asap to disuade "swarming" (colony abandonment of hive). Rush-ordered new hive eqpt from Georgia.

Portrait of Lee'z B'z

Well, I tried anyway. Ever tried to get 13,000 hard working little girls to sit still for a portrait? These little ladies are HARD workers !!!