The Fate of the Crystallized Sugar
You'll remember that yesterday when feeding the bees, I found a baggie feeder with crystallized sugar in it. Rather than take it back into the house, I spread it out on the railing of my deck.
I went out this morning (you can see on the thermometer that the temp is below 60 degrees) to find the sugar covered with bees.
If you click on the picture below so that you can see a larger image, you'll see the bees sticking their tongues into the sugar. It was raining this morning and probably some of the sugar liquified.
As I studied this picture, I realized that in addition to honey bees, there were yellow jackets and a bald faced hornet feeding on the sugar.
If you couldn't find them, I have circled the yellow jackets in red and the bald-faced hornet in blue. Everyone's hungry, I guess!
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3 comments:
I found bumble bees, yellow jackets and lots of lady bugs hanging around the hive. They can all smell the sweet sugar from the feeder. I made sugar patties using caster sugar and syrup and they really like them.
The second photo is awesome! I did not know bees had tongues! I learn so much from you beekeepers.
FYI, you can "Read" L.L. Langstroth's "Hive and the Honey Bee" by downloading an mp3 recording of it at librivox.org for free! In it, he does talk about giving his bees hard candy, and seemed to prefer it during colder weather.
The hornets have been working everything overetime lately!
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