All tucked in

Lloyd and I walk down to say goodnight to the bees each night. It's interesting because they are all in by about 8:30pm. Only a couple of bees are flying around outside. Almost all are inside the hive with maybe one or two on the porch and one or two on the feeders. Hive two (as usual) is the first to 'go to bed'.

We always creep around the back and lift up the back of the top lid to sneak a peak inside. Inside the top cover you can see the pollen patties and the hole in the centre of the inner cover that leads down into the hive and the frames. there is usually a few bees eating the patties and a few bees crawling around the hole...sometimes a LOT of bees crawling around the hole. Amazing to see inside the hive - makes me excited to get in there and have a real look inside at what they have been working on in there - to see what they have done to the frames - see if they have drawn comb on the pierco plastic frames despite what I have heard. I hope my hard work at painting on the plastic and spraying them all has helped the bees accept them.

I wonder if I will get burr comb and I wonder how the Queens are doing and if they will have laid anything....(burr comb is comb that the bees create anywhere they shouldn't - ie anywhere except on the frames - so it can be between frames or on lids or between frames and hive box etc etc....you have to remove it so the bees learn to draw only on the frames and stay within the frames, but the burr comb is useful because you can bring it home and study it and look at it for eggs etc to see if your Queen is laying so it isn't useless. I'm kind of hoping to get some - I can photograph it :)

I wonder.

The bees are so clean and tidy. Last night there was a dead bee on the inner cover. Tonight it is gone. The bees have cleaned it away.

We have refilled the feeders and I wonder how long this syrup will last. As we were refilling the feeders, there were several bees sat on the side of the feeder and we stood and watched them for a while - their little red tongues sliding across the rim of the feeder drinking the syrup up - it was so amazing - I wished I had my camera and macro lens to catch that!

I look forward to saying goodnight to the bees - they seem much calmer at night to me - almost gentler and nicer to be around.

In the mornings they always seem so busy lol - but in the evenings they seem more laid back lol. Ok maybe I'm going nuts lol. I think its time for me to go to bed now - goodnight!