Blue Heron Visit on November 9, 2010

Julia and I stopped at the Blue Heron to feed our hives and get a feel for how they are doing.  Her hive is still questionable, but we added food to the hive top feeder that still had a good bit of food left from our previous visit.  We worried that the food was below the duct tape line but it was not.  We did see (and I took pictures of) bees inside the mesh to drink the syrup.

My hive was full of bees and they had emptied the baggie, but not the Boardman jar.  I replaced both the baggie with a new full one and the jar with a full one.  The hive was quite heavy and I am hopeful that they are using the most recent box I added for syrup storage.  I did not pull up a frame to see, but will the next time I am there because there's no point in leaving an empty box on through the winter.

Here's the slide show of what we saw at Blue Heron. Remember you can click on the slide show to see the captions, to change the speed of the picture changes, and to see it full sized:

The Bald Faced Hornet is Back

I watched with dismay today as the bald-faced hornet systematically attacked and carried off bees to feed its young. The hornet swoops down and captures a bee. Just as quickly it flies up to the paper nest in which it lives high up in a tree above my deck. I'm sure the nest is located there to take advantage of the beehive restaurant.

Here's a face-on look at the lovely insect. I think the hornet looks menacing as I'm sure is nature's plan.

I never snapped a picture of the five bees I watched the hornet capture in the space of less than five minutes, but here the hornet has killed a yellow jacket.

Yellow jackets robbing the beehive

In front of Bermuda, there were scores of dead bees and yellow jackets today. I have recently seen the yellow jackets congregating outside the front of the hive about a foot from the porch. I guess robbing happened and bees and yellow jackets died.

When I inspected the hives today, I put the entrance reducer on both hives. If the yellow jackets continue their assault, I'll put the robber screen back on the hives.