Up close and personal.

I love standing close enough to the hives to watch forager bees coming in for a landing, their back legs all loaded up with yellow and orange pollen. It's fascinating to watch as other bees rush to start cleaning the pollen off their sisters' legs as they enter the hive.

Yesterday I attempted to get some photos of the pollen-bearers, but failed. My camera just wasn't quite fast enough. I did, however, get a nice close-up of some of the Rocky bees.

And, drumroll, please... we have a winner in the "Please, For Goodness' Sake, Give Hive A a Name" contest. Hive A is now officially known as Apollo (submitted by Todd Gerlach). Thanks to everyone who submitted potential names! Should there be any more hives added to my bee yard, I reckon we'll continue on with the "Rocky" theme.

Yo, Adrian!

Flying high now...

At last, the swarm bees have a permanent home — the "Rocky" hive is up and running.

I stayed home all day yesterday, anticipating the delivery of the new hive. By late afternoon, the UPS truck still hadn't come and I was very upset — storm clouds had gathered and the skies opened to pour down rain on the poor makeshift hive again. When 7 p.m. had come and gone, I called UPS to make a complaint, but I was told it was possible that my delivery could still come that evening. At 8:45, we heard the rumble of the delivery truck on our street, and it was a beautiful sound. I was glad to get the boxes and unpack them, even though it was too late to move the bees that night.

This morning, I assembled all of my gear, got the smoker going, suited up and headed out to the back yard to move the swarm bees. The bottom box of the makeshift hive had almost completely collapsed from yesterday's rain and was actually crumbling. Here's a photo of the sodden mess of cardboard, newspaper and empty feeder.

The plywood and bricks I'd used for a bottom board were still intact, but the board had bowed up after getting wet in this week's storms.

I sprayed the bees down with a little sugar-water before trying to move them, but they were in a fairly calm state anyway. It was easy to move the three frames I'd put in the cardboard box to a regular super. I was excited to see that the bees had built out a lot of comb on these frames. I added in the remaining five frames to the box and then moved the second super on top. The bees had moved up into this second box on the temporary hive and were storing pollen in its frames. I placed the inner cover on top of the second super, closed it up with the cover and inserted a full feeder.


Here, you can see the Rocky bees at the entrance to their new home. I wish I'd had time to paint this hive, but it's all made of cypress and I'm told that it will endure all kinds of weather for years. The main worries now are whether or not the queen made it into the hive (again, I didn't see her) and robbing by the original hive bees. Speaking of the original hive, I'm looking for a name for it. Any suggestions?