Well, another day out at the hives. This time started with Okie refilling the water bucket just in case the bees got thirsty.
Next, Okie added sugar water to two of the newer hives.
This? Well, this is the flower from an invasive little weed that sours the wheat but produces wonderful nectar.
Anyway, with the watering done, we donned our suites and started going about the business of the day. First, Okie emptied out the full yellow-jacket trap. Nasty little carnivorous things. They swarm around the ground of the hive waiting for bees to drop or be thrown out (story about that later). Sometimes they try to enter the hive itself. When this happens, the bees group around the bees and flap their wings and overheat the yellow jacket.
And, with that done, the smoker was set alight.
The main task of the day was to transfer bees from two nuclear hive (five slots in width) to permanent hives of ten slots in width. Okie had picked-up the hives earlier, and they were still strapped for easy transit.
Oh, before we get too much into this, the pictures at this outing were shot with my D300/14 mm combo, instead of the iPhone 6 used previously. That is to say that I was kinda up close.
Okie began the transfer by lifting the lid on the nuclear hive, and blowing-in a bit of smoke.
Then, it was just a matter of transferring the trays from one hive to the other. One thing to note is that, although the bees were clearly concerned about what was happening, there wasn’t a swarm around us. Most bees just kept on with their assigned tasks during the process.
Here’s another look at one of the trays, with one of the bees taking a look at me.
And, this is getting toward the end of the process. The trays from the old hive are left-out so that the bees can clean them out.
Oh, in this shot, Okie is demonstrating how to get the remaining bees out of a nuclear hive… by wacking it on the top of their new home a couple of times.
One thing I forgot to mention was that Okie first replaced the nuclear hives with the new hives. Some of the bees started coming into the new hives even without any of the old trays having been installed. Seems like they used some sort of GPS.
such an interesting process. the relationship of insects with humans. okie tending the bees and the bees making honey. something mythical about the process since these bees have made honey far into the past. your writing about this makes me want to learn more about the actual process of how a bee has the ability to make this amazing substance. it also makes me aware of how important it is to take care of our honey bees and stop using pesticides. everywhere.