I'm glad you are all enjoying bee updates! (Well, my two faithful readers, anyway). To answer a few questions, the burr comb is real, they build comb wherever there is space. But when they build outside of the frames, everything gets stuck together and it becomes hard to manipulate the frames and later to extract honey. I need to ask our bee mentor about why beeswax is yellow - but I have a very good guess. It comes out of their wax glands white, they then chew it up and manipulate it, which makes it more white. However they are bringing in all sorts of pollen and nectar which I think stains the wax the yellow color. I'll update on this once I know for sure. I found this picture on the internet of the wax coming out of the bee's wax glands:
This kind of grosses me out because they look like fish scales. Which gross me out.
Anyway, I leave you with
this amazing video of how they communicate food sources to each other.
OH! And we found out our beautiful black queen is rare! They are usually more honey colored. Which makes me love her that much more.
4 comments:
Dude you have 3 readers, keep up! lol
That does look like scales. Ewww.
So is the queen bee down below the one that is all black? Clara and I were having a debate about it.
You're right - 3!
The queen is all black and right in the middle of the first picture. Once you see her, she really stands out. Her body is longer and more sleek than the workers.
okay, once the bees really get settled + fill up the frames i'm inviting myself over to see them (ha!). i'm kind of scared of them, but extremely fascinated at the same time!
congrats on your rare queen bee. how fun!
Sarah, you are always welcome to come see the bees! It might be a less scary first visit if you come when the hive is not open. You can sit right near the opening, watch how they interact, see what color of pollen they are bringing in, see that they don't care about people if you aren't bothering them. Then you can see what you think about an open hive visit :)
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