It's a Rainout in Georgia

It's not just a rainy night in Georgia - we have flood warnings for the next several days and the promise of three to four inches of rain as a possibility.

And we haven't even completed the fifth inning....so the game doesn't really count,

There's no re-play in the nectar flow like there might be in baseball.

It's also COLD to add insult to bee and beekeeper injury.

Jerry Wallace posted on the MABA Facebook page a couple of days ago a photo of blown down tulip poplar blossoms.  Here's one blown down (among many, many, many) in my backyard right in front of my hives.

The blown down blossoms are multitudinous and are no longer blossoms from which the bees can draw nectar.  The tulip poplar is only one of the spring flowers currently in bloom now.

All of our bees are being affected by the weather.  Both they can't fly and when it's raining, blossoms are destroyed and the nectar available that particular rainy day is not reachable for the bees.

Also virgin queens can't mate in these conditions, so people who made splits in the last three weeks are not going to get well-mated queens, if the queen can mate at all - can you imagine being a drone trying to aim for the queen in rainy, windy conditions?

So time will tell sooner than later what the impact of our very wet and cold spring will have on the honey production for my area.

PS.  I just heard on the news that the Atlanta Braves are rained out tonight for only the 17th rainout in the 16 year history of the Braves at Turner Stadium in Atlanta.  So the bees and the Braves are suffering.

Rainy Fall Morning

The other day I woke up to find a chilly rain outside. I wondered what do the bees do inside in the rain - no TV, no entertainment. The house bees all have jobs but what do the foragers do when it rains?

For some reason, thinking about the bees indoors reminded me of a Sesame Street video from long ago that my grandson likes to watch on You Tube about the ladybugs sitting around. For your entertainment, here it is.

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.

It Was a Rainy Night in Georgia

Finally - we had a rainy night in Georgia and actually waked up to a rainy day! I can't believe it. We've had so little rain that I've forgotten how the beeyard looks on a rainy day. I just had to post a picture because in this drought, this is a very unusual sight!

I'm thrilled for the rain, but the hives look a little forlorn. I'm so used to seeing the girls out and about, foraging, cleaning, zooming out of the hives.

A Moment in the Middle of SEVERE Drought

Yesterday at my office I heard a strange sound and thought I must have a mouse behind my couch because of the regularity of the click, click, click. I walked over to look and realized that it was raining outside. So much time has passed since our last rain, that I didn't even think to identify the sound as rain hitting the window!

On the maps we are having severe drought in Atlanta. In my part of the Atlanta area, we can only water our gardens on Saturdays or Sundays between midnight and 10 AM. If you have vegetables or herbs in your garden, you can water any time. I gave up tomatoes because the squirrels ate every single one of them and currently am only growing cucumbers and herbs. So no watering for me until Saturday.

In past summers in Atlanta, the usual course of the day includes a sudden, brief afternoon thunderstorm. The state climatologist says we are in extreme drought conditions "defined as those expected once in 50 years, based on many indicators."

For the period of March through May, the Atlanta airport only recorded 5.07 inches of rain. Whatever happened to April showers bringing May flowers? My cleome in my garden is normally growing tall at this point. Today the plants are only about 10 inches tall and are blooming at that height. The water level doesn't support their normal growth.

The bees must be suffering. I see them languishing on the front porch of the hives without any nectar to gather.

It did rain last night for about 30 minutes around 9 PM and we must have had quite a storm late into the night because my computer had restarted when I got up this morning.

Small Swarm Appears to be Doing Well

I didn't inspect the hives today, but wanted to glance in the small swarm nuc to see how things look. You'll see very few bees on the landing, but I don't think they have much need for foraging right now. I supplied them with a full frame of honey from Mellona as well as the honey around the edges of the brood frames I gave them.

Currently they have three frames of brood cells with honey on the edges and one completely filled frame of honey (in the #5 posiition, the one marked 2007). And they have a frame from the old hive left from the swarm's arrival in the #1 position which has some pollen on it but nothing else (the one with the staple at the end).

I opened the nuc and didn't hear the "we-are-queenless" roar. Instead they are quietly working and there are many bees - you can see them between each frame.

If the new queen (assuming she is there) has started laying, as she should have in the last day or so, then we can assume there will be a need for foraging for pollen. I may look for signs of laying tomorrow, but feel pretty assured that there is a queen alive and well in the hive since they didn't use the last egg/brood frame I gave them for making queen cells.

BTW, we had a tiny bit of rain during the night last night but it is still so dry here that when I checked my garden this morning, the soil is bone dry less than an inch from the surface, damp from the rain last night.

Eager BEEvers

Today we had cool temperatures and intermittent rain all day. In spite of this, the bees were out flying. Here is my thermometer on my deck - so you can see how cool it was. Below is Mellona where the bees were out and about.

We've had incredible amounts of pollen in Atlanta - one of my friends calls it Atlanta's spring snow - and you can see it on the deck, marked by raindrops!

It's Raining on my new Beehives

It's raining in Atlanta tonight and Proteus still doesn't have a telescoping lid or an inner cover (both arriving on Monday). So I have a bottom board on the top of the hive to protect it from the elements. And in looking at the bottom board (now on top) I was worried that rain may leak in on the brood through a crack between boards....so I took the top from the two nucs and made a makeshift cover for Proteus.
























I also replaced the 1:1 sugar syrup on each hive box. Proteus is draining its jar so I gave that hive a quart jar and the other two a pint. I hope the weak Bermuda makes it. The number of bees foraging from Mellona and Proteus was more than double the number leaving occasionally from Bermuda.

It's finally raining in Atlanta!

I woke up to a thunderstorm this morning. We've been without rain for a very long time.

At 7 AM I went out to see the bees. Wet clumps were clinging to the hive to dry off. If you click on the second picture to enlarge it, you'll see how wet the bees are.

I thought the lower bee in the third photo was dead. I brushed her with a pine needle and she moved. She is hanging onto the hive to dry off her wings before she can move again.

A few bees took shelter in the handhold of the super!

I wonder what goes on in the hives when it rains? All of the bees have designated jobs and they keep the place spotless. When I can't garden, I can always clean out a closet. What do bees do? Some of them must feel an intense desire to fly. I see bees coming in and out of the hive even with the rain falling.

No more Boredom in Beedom

We've had three rainy days in a row in Atlanta and the bees have been confined to their hives. I saw a few venturing out in the rain, but mostly it's been all quiet on the bee front. Today both hives are a-buzz with lots of activity. This picture doesn't begin to capture the energy of all the comings and goings.

I don't imagine that bees have emotions, but if they did, I'll bet it's very boring in the winter when they stay in the hive huddled together with only the job of keeping each other warm. I expect they "feel" some of that on rainy days as well.

Bee-ing in the Rain

It's pouring in Atlanta, as it did yesterday. Ultimately the bees will be glad because we've had weeks with no rain, but the rain also causes problems for the bees.

There is a growing puddle on the front porch of Bermuda. The bees continue to leave and return to the hive, even in the rain. The numbers are much smaller than on sunny days, and I have to think these are the suicidal bees in the hive who leave.



The struggle to land and enter or leave the hive is complicated by the large puddle on the landing.


The bees slip onto their backs in the puddle where unless they can turn over, they will drown. You can see orange pollen in the puddle which has been lost from the bees' legs as bees flail in the pool.



In the last picture you can see the motion in the water caused by the bee using her wings to help her turn over.

This morning every bee I saw in the water managed to turn herself over except for one drone (who probably WAS on a suicide mission) and I gently pushed him off with a pine needle. On the ground he righted himself. Yesterday my daughter Valerie helped a bee in the same way and the bee was able to fly from the deck.

I've always wished for a tin roof to hear the rain. My bees can listen to the rain drumming on their roof all of this rainy day.

I do know from what I have read that drumming is disturbing for the bees. If you are trying to get a swarm out of a tree hollow, for example, drumming the tree with a regular beat below the opening is one way to get the bees to leave the tree.

I wonder what the effect of an all-day tin roof drumming has on the bees? Maybe this is why some of them leave to forage in spite of the rain - the drumming drives them out of the hive!

Bees huddling in the rain

Last night the heavens opened up and rain poured with no light shower preview and no warning. I looked out to see how the bee beards were faring. As I watched the bees who were clustered on Destin fell to the porch in clumps.

When they cluster like this last little group is doing, they cling to each others' legs. Wonder how they decide to let go? You do it! No, you let go first! Clumps the size of the palm of my hand fell to the front porch, let go of each other and went in out of the rain.

The cluster in this picture remained this way throughout the storm. They were somewhat protected by the cut out hand grip and the telescoping cover. I went out this morning expecting to find dead bees all over the deck, but there were no more than usual (4 - 6) scattered over the deck where the mortician bees had dragged them and there were 2 dead on the landing area of the hive.

Bees and the Beehives after the rain

Here are the beehives in the early morning sun after a night of rain.


The two bees in the first picture are bumping heads - hmmmmm. Is it a kiss? Surely not. Are they talking to each other about the weather? Is this the bee way of saying, "Have a good day?"
Here are the bees venturing out of the hive. They have some water to navigate on their way out to forage.