Ravenous Rabun County Bees

The bees at my Rabun County hive are flying enthusiastically in and out of the hive, bumping into each other on the landing and generally looking as busy as bees.

I haven't looked in the hive in about three weeks. I came to Rabun County planning to feed the bees at the community garden, so I am armed with bottled sugar syrup - I have about 1 gallon with me.

Here is the hive with bees flying in and out rapidly.

It's nearing the end of the fall flow here but there is blooming goldenrod everywhere as well as many asters and the bees are having a field day.



I took off the third (top) box which is full of foundationless comb and completely empty. I was pleased to see in the second box that the bees are putting up nectar and therefore storing honey.



I had brought two medium nuc boxes with me as demos for the festival. These boxes were filled with drawn comb on medium frames. I decided to take this drawn comb and substitute it for the foundationless frames in the third box. Fall is drawing near by the minute and I didn't want them to need to create space in which to store the syrup I am giving them today.



I put the third box back on the hive. I also brought a shim to surround the baggie feeders. This is the first time I have fed this hive.

Now that I know there is a hive in the walls of the building just across the field from this hive, I am worried about robbing.  I put two ziploc baggies side by side inside the shim.

The bad news is that I am using a bottom board from a 10 frame hive for the top cover of this hive.  This means there is a back entrance and there is no way to close this hive up completely.  I feel sick that I didn't think to bring an inner cover and a top for a 10 frame hive.  I certainly have them in Atlanta.

Because I had no entrance reducer and wanted to make these bees safer from robbing, I stuffed pine needles into the opening at the upper rear of the hive to close it up.  I hope they will make quick work of moving the syrup from the baggies into the drawn comb I left them.

When I come back in two weeks, I'll put an inner cover and top cover on, but I hope they will be OK until then.  The good news is that there is a good fall flow ongoing right now in Rabun County, so maybe the temptation to rob will not be there for the in-the-wall hive or any other neighboring bees.

Butterflies, not Bees

In a meadow near the Hambidge Center in North Georgia, I walked a trail where I saw lots of butterflies, but only two bees - one on goldenrod and the other on Joe Pye weed. I decided to take pictures of the butterflies because they were so delicate and beautiful.
(And of course, I took a picture of the bee on the goldenrod!)

This one is probably a yellow tiger swallowtail, at least from pictures on the Internet.



The picture below is probably a meadow fritillary butterfly (what do I know?) but I thought it was pretty anyway, in the fall colors!


This beautiful blue and black butterfly was the prettiest of all and the most difficult to catch in a picture. Here it is on Joe Pye weed. It may be a female Diana butterfly.

Anyway with no bees, I thought I'd share these.



And below is the lone bee on goldenrod!