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#bees

85 posts62 participants4 posts today
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Mazz@1984

@feather1952 Yes - it's a tragedy. In my local area there are still essentially no bees and haven't been for a couple of years now. I'm elated on my walks to ever see them in other areas.
Here at home, I had one and then two little bees visiting my flowering parsley a few months ago so I didn't disturb them. They have disappeared and I haven't seen any more here. Pretty concerning 👀 #NewcastleNSW #Bees

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Tom

I made bee swarm bivouacs. It's an old branch with a black sock attached to piece of plywood. The sock is coated with dirty beeswax and some lemongrass oil added. I put them in the closest trees to the hives. I guess the idea it to make it look like cluster of bees so they gather up there if they leave MY hives, instead of 100 feet up in a tree, so they can be captured. It's mentioned in the 1861 Hive and the Honey Bee book by Lorenzo Langstroth.

A photo showing a square board with a round piece of wood hanging perpendicular and downward from it that has a beeswax coated black sock/stocking on it. It is hanging from a pine tree branch and can be lowered from the ground. It's sometimes referred to by some as a scion but the idea is referenced in Lorenzo Langstroth's 1861 book Hive and the Honey Bee. "Having noticed that a new swarm will almost always alight wherever they see a mass of clustering bees, I find that they can be determined to some selected spot by an old black hat, or even a mullen stalk, which, when colored black, can hardly be distinguished, at a distance, from a clustering swarm. A black woolen stocking or a piece of cloth, fastened to a shady limb, in plain sight of the hives, and where the bees can be conveniently hived, would probably answer as good a purpose"
A photo showing a square board with a round piece of wood hanging perpendicular and downward from it that has a beeswax coated black sock/stocking on it. It is hanging from an English walnut branch and can be lowered from the ground.
#beekeeping#bees#BeeSwarm
Public
𝑩𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝑯𝒂𝒓𝒑𝒆𝒓

I installed my liquid feeder on the hive a few minutes ago. I'm glad because it will help jumpstart the production of comb for storage and baby bees. 🐝🐝🐝 They seem to have enjoyed their sugar block though.

I'm getting pretty good at lighting the smoker and producing thick, cool smoke. I'm using a blend of cedar chips and burlap. The bees don't seem to mind me at all. I'll check on Bee Arthur this weekend.

Have a good evening! 🌆

A cluster of honeybees on a dry sugar block in the top of a Langstroth hive. The sugar block has holes tunneling into it.
#beekeeping#HarpHives#bees
Public
Tom

I took the new hive and I divided it vertically to make two 5-frame bait hives. I had a deep sized divider so I just made another one with the ability for the upper one to slot into it. It should work and I can put frames in the lower box too if I want to keep it divided this way for longer.

Now we wait for warmer, drier, less windy weather.

A photo showing two stacked Langstroth deep boxes that have been divided vertically. A slotted board was inserted from the entrance direction and the lower divider placed in it with tabs to block the frame rabbet and a slotted cleat to accept the upper divider that is shaped from plastic core-flute. 5 frames are stacked out of the way to the left.
The 10 frames that are divided being shown.
A split photo, the top showing a plug for the inner cover hole, and the bottom showing the lemongrass oil bait bag laying over the top of the upper divider inside the inner cover hole.
The assembled hive on a stand which is two deep boxes. There is also an external divider to separate the entrances, it fits into the slotted board that extends out from the entrance and is pinned in place with a loose nail. This keeps guard bees from seeing each other if they take up residence and it is also white on one side and bare wood on the other so it makes the entrances look different to the bees if they can't read the words "bee" or "castle". ;)
#beekeeping#bees#SwarmTrap
Public
Tom

The bait hive, or swarm trap, is set. Lemongrass oil put on the cotton ball in a little plastic bag and it hangs between the first two frames. I rub propolis on all the top bar sides, and I rub saved comb wax from hive inspections that hasn't been rendered on all the foundations. I don't have extra brood comb to use.

This sits at about eye level behind my hives under a little pine tree.

A photo showing a bottle of lemongrass oil and a small jar that is labeled Bee Propolis and a piece of propolis sitting next to it. They are in front of the entrance to a swarm trap bait hive that has a rotating entrance cover that is blue that provides a split opening, a queen excluding opening, and a vented and solid closures.
A photo showing a small zip lock type plastic bag with a cotton ball in it. The bag is thumb-tacked through the bottom and attached to the top of a langstroth bee hive frame and the bag hangs opening down. The bag is left slightly un-zipped.
A photo showing the frames all in place in the bait hive. They are labeled in black ink "BC" for Bee Castle, and in blue ink "Acorn 2024" to indicate the plastic foundation is Acorn that was purchased in 2024.
A photo showing the swarm trap bait hive in place and ready to attract a big friendly swarm. It sits on the stump of a Leyland cypress tree that was cut down and partially under a small pine tree grown from see to the left of it. It holds 6 deep frames with space under them and a telescoping type lid. The entrance is on a wide side. It has handles on each narrow side. It also has a frame on the back so it can be attached or hung from a tree.
#beekeeping#bees#SwarmTrap
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Tom

I spotted the first migratory hives across the river so I guess it's time to put out some bait hives / swarm traps. Looks like a stack of 8 hives. These are apples but I imagine the cherries down river probably have hives too since they'll be blooming first.

A photo showing white objects in the distance beyond a body of water and behind a silver birch tree. They are multiple bee hive boxes on pallets that are stacked at the edge of a trellised apple orchard on the side of a dirt road. There is also crack willow that looks yellow and red-osier dogwood that is reddish on the shore of the water. The orchard has many white looking poles or posts and is a little green from new leaves and buds.
#beekeeping#bees#BeeSwarm
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The Bee Guy

Late.
Yep!
Out sitting with the queens in the sunshine.
And my what a lot of queens there are.
Place is literally humming.

‘They got a message from the Action Man
We’re humming hope you’re humming too…’
#nature
#bowie

#theBeeAt3

Basic bee facts every day at 3pm.

# 87

#Bumblebees leave a scent mark (a sticky secretion) behind whenever they land on #flowers and can distinguish between their own scent marks, those left by fellow nest-mates and those left behind by #bees from other colonies.

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Vivek Nityananda

A recent paper argued that bees trade off reward to avoid pain. Jenny Read and I re-analyzed their data and argue that the paper's analysis is flawed. We've written up a constructive critique of the work with some modelling and recommendations.

Read on:
biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/20

bioRxiv · Motivational trade-offs as evidence for sentience in bees: a critiqueEstablishing if insects feel pain can have far-reaching consequences for insect husbandry, commercial pollination and scientific research. Research in this field therefore requires careful experiments and strong evidence. One important criterion proposed for measuring insect sentience is the ability to show a motivational trade-off, in which "the negative value of a noxious or threatening stimulus is weighed (traded-off) against the positive value of an opportunity for reward". A recent paper investigated motivational trade-offs in bumblebees and concluded that bees can trade-off heat against high sugar rewards. In this paper, we develop a signal detection model to highlight which features would be key to supporting the argument that motivational trade-offs are evidence of the capacity for experiencing pain. We then re-analyze the data from the original paper and find several limitations. Our own re-analysis finds no support for the final conclusions made by the paper. We therefore provide recommendations for future studies investigating the ability of insects to feel pain. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.
#science#bees
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Petra van Cronenburg

"In this week’s podcast, Emily Polk learns of the enduring generosity and spirit of survival of these tiny creatures, and glimpses the greater circles of loss that connect us with the more-than-human world. Listen to “Telling the Bees." via @emergencemagazine emergencemagazine.org/podcast/

Emergence MagazineEmergence Magazine PodcastEmergence Magazine's podcast features exclusive interviews, author-narrated essays, contributor conversations, fiction, multipart series, and more.
#natureWriting#reconnectingWithNature#bees
Public
𝑩𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝑯𝒂𝒓𝒑𝒆𝒓

It's official, Bee Arthur, Queen of the Yellow Hive is loose! They already ate the candy plug so she walked right out and down the 3rd frame when I removed the metal disc cover. I'd have gotten her picture but she took off into the hive.

On a secondary note, notice all that bright yellow by the reduced entrance? IT'S POLLEN, THEY WERE FORAGING!!! I'll check back in on Saturday to see if Bee Arthur is laying brood. 🐝🐝🐝

Have a great evening friends! 🙂👋🏼

Seven European honeybees hanging around the entrance to a yellow Langstroth beehive at the end of the day. The entrance reducer is dusted with bright yellow pollen.
#beekeeping#HarpHives#bees
Public
The Bee Guy

In the time it takes to blink your eye democracy and decency will die…so don’t blink.
Don’t blink.
Don’t.
Blink.
#resist
#donotlookaway
#donotblink
🌍🐝

#theBeeAt3

Basic bee facts every day at 3pm.

# 86

In the time it takes to blink your eyes flying #bees will beat their wings approximately 65 times.

‘Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings…’
- John Gillespie Magee Jr

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