Bee Log #5

You can see three of our hives in the above picture. There is a swarm issuing from the center hive. The hive on the left was the weakest at the beginning of the summer but finished the summer as the strongest hive with no intervention on our part. The flowering plant in the foreground is cilantro going to seed. The bees loved the flowers and the chickens loved the seeds when they formed.

I did an exterior check of the hives today and there are lots of dead bees at the front of the hives (like 40 to 50 bees on each hive). The bees are active enough to move the bodies out of the hive but not active enough to cart them past the entry. I think this is just a normal fall die off and not a symptom of something worse. The temperatures are now in the 40's in the daytime with rain and wind. The bees still fly a bit when the sun comes out but those days are few and far between.

See the note in post #4 about the bee class. If you live in or near Seattle or Everett and you want to keep bees, consider taking this class. It looks like a good one.