Sunny, Warm, Bees Flying and Hauling out the Dead

Today the bees are bringing in large loads of pollen.

This is a good sign.  When the winter solstice arrives on December 21st and the days change and start becoming longer rather than shorter, the queen senses this deep in the hive.  She begins gradually to lay brood in preparation for spring.  Usually she just lays a little at first and the build up is slow but sure.  The pollen lets us know that there is brood in the hive that needs feeding.

At the same time a lot of bees have died in our recent cold and the bees spent yesterday and today hauling out the dead.  Yesterday the side of this hive looked like this:

This afternoon here's what it looks like in the same location:

These are bees who have died over the recent weeks when it was too cold for the bees to carry out the dead bodies.

Tomorrow we are back to wet and coldish weather so they will be confined again.  Tom reports that the bees at his house are flying (the two Bill Owens' cut out hives); the Stonehurst innkeeper reports that bees are flying from both of their hives; I haven't heard from Sebastian.

Relief - Both for Bees and for ME

After days of below freezing Georgia temperatures and a raging thunderstorm that woke me up at 4 AM and brought flood warnings all over Atlanta, suddenly the sun is breaking through and the temperature is 58.9 degree F.

The bees are ecstatic because they can fly out into the world and relieve themselves, carry out the dead and probably (just to anthropomorphize them) enjoy their aliveness in the world.  I am ecstatic because my bees (at least the ones at home are ALIVE).

You can see the bees both outside of and under the Billy Davis robber screen.  There are hundreds of them.

They also use times like this to take out the dead.  You can't tell in the photo below that there are both dead and alive bees in it but there are at least five live bees managing the body count on the concrete around my hive.

I wrote my friend Tom who has the Bill Owens' cut out hives in his yard.  Hopefully he'll write back that those bees are flying as well.

HOORAY - but not to rain on my own parade, Atlanta's winter has really just begun and we often have much cold weather in March, so my hives are not out of the woods/through the winter yet.

Asters in December

It's December - usually in years before Global Warming, we would actually have cold weather.  The supposed first freeze date in Georgia is generally November 15.  So far this year, as last year and the more recent warm years, we haven't had a freeze yet.

The temperature dipped into the 30s at least two nights, but still was two degrees above freezing.  The problem for bees is that if they fly out of the hive, it is usually to relieve themselves.  There isn't food to be had.

However, walking today I came upon an aster blooming happily and covered with bees!

There are beekeepers all over Virginia Highlands in Atlanta where I live.  I just hope these joyful bees are mine!

For more on Global Warming, here's a TED talk: