Bermuda Bees in the Rain

My Bermuda beehive loves to beard. Every evening they gather on the porch. This hive has plenty of ventilation. There's an open screened bottom board, a slatted rack, the top is propped open and the top two supers are full of empty frames from honey harvest that they are cleaning up. So there's lots of room. But still every night they are hanging out. I think it's the hive culture. This is my only hive that made it through the winter and they behaved like this last year, too.

Finally in Atlanta we are having our typical summer weather. It's extremely hot in the day time and then gets really muggy toward the end of the day, followed by a thunderstorm. The Smithsonian magazine ran a very funny article on visiting Atlanta in the summer just this month. So after months of drought, finally we are having our thunderstorm evenings and this was one. Above you can see the Bermuda bees on the left, just hanging out in the summer heat.

In the above picture, the rain has started and the bees are beating a retreat. You can see the raindrops on the camera lens.

They so want to be outdoors that they are barely inside the hive as rain puddles on their favorite hangout porch! I wonder if they'll go back out when the rain stops, since there's no sun at 9:30 PM to dry up the puddles.