Yesterday was a day of beauty. It was very warm, slightly overcast, the sun shining through intermittent cloudy skies. What a beauty!!! I was looking at my colonies, they were all having the time of their lives too. One colony in particular was having that hay day. It is the strongest colony, it was before the 3rd strongest colony, but now it is number one, not a question of a doubt. It is the Carniolan colony that I overwintered from the winter of last before last, that be 2007. It was the only colony that had survived the devastation (of 8 colonies) of mites. I had given this colony a terrarium heater to help keep it warm in that winter. It built up last year, swarmed and that story goes on.
This colony has built up way faster than the other Italian colonies. Carniolan, fast spring build up, propensity for swarming, yep, I can see that for surely. I will have to work hard with it to keep it from doing that swarmy thing.
Right, where was I with the story.
Hmmm....Yes.....I was looking at this colony, camera in hand, and I could see many, many bees coming in, laden heavily with pollen. I was watching and saw something rather odd. It looked like the bees were balling a queen or something, upon a closer look, I saw that what was happening was there was so many bees trying to get in the top entrance (that slot in the innner cover) that they had to festoon because they just couldn't all get into the colony. There were way too many to even begin to think about all going in.
I watched this event going on for a few minutes, took intermittent pictures and in about 10 minutes time, they had all sorted it out and had all entered the hive. As my Nephew was walking by, I told him to come over and have a look. These kids surprise me. The amount of bees flyin' around in the skies would have scared many a soul off. But nope, he came over with intense interest. Knowing that I would not have called him to come and have a look unless something really cool was going on. This is my 18-year-old, cool dude.
His comment to me made me laugh, only a kid would say something like this. What he said to me after looking for a few minutes at what they were doing was: "it would suck to be the guy on top". Oh, yes, even thinking about the look on his face and that funnnneeee comment, brings that secret smile to my soul. Have the most beautiful day, we all be lovin' our lives we live. We are all kin. Cindi
Topic: Festooning, too many pollen laden bees to all get in at once (Read 3358 times)