The Healthy Honeybee

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I took a little trip to Better Bee Supplies today, to pick up some frames for my honey supers and some gloves. Gloves were not something I really wanted to work with; it's great to have the sensation in your fingertips and be able to 'pet the bees' with your bare hands. However, my allergist tells me I have a Colophony allergy, which is basically an allergy to coniferous trees and products made from them.

This is an issue because the propolis - the super sticky gummy glue that the bees make and use to seal and weatherproof their hive - is made using things like pine or spruce sap. Too much touching that stuff, and I'll end up with a major rash like I did last summer.

So - on go the gloves. Monogrammed, even - see the 'S'??
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My only real issue with this video is the stingers on the boy bees. You can't have a stinger package and a *cough* male package. There's not enough room. The girls get the stingers, the boys get the ability to genetically alter the next generation. Fair is fair I guess. In both scenarios, the bee dies after using it once. Quite the sacrifice.

Thanks Ken for sending me the link.
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Here's another reason why I thought the blue hive was dead: no dead bees on the outside. Bees are such tidy insects - they'll haul out their dead so the hive is kept clean. No dead bees on the outside made me think they were all dead on the inside! Not the case, though, as I mentioned in a previous post. They're all happily working away at building their colonies, and in a month or two they should be up to about 50,000 bees or more in each hive.
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200 pounds of honey in a house. My guess is, there were probably about 100,000 bees there too. If you have 2 minutes:

Video Link

Yikes.
Thanks to my friend Carolyn who sent me the link.
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When I checked the bees on Sunday, many were carrying these 'pollen packets' on their hind legs. They actually stuff the pollen into the pouches on their hind legs and bring it home to feed the larvae. I saw pale yellow, dark yellow, and some shades of orange. They obviously have a few sources of flowers these days!
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So here you can see the hive I fretted and worried over, thinking it was dead. Busy as can be! I'm so happy to have two good hives. Next trip out will be for cleaning, this one was just to check on them, take off the tar paper and move the straw bales out of their way.
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Bees are such clean insects. They won't relieve themselves inside the hive, not even in winter; they'll wait until it's warm enough to fly out and release their pent-up waste outside. This photo was taken today when I went to check on the bees - the first time all winter - and you can see evidence of their 'cleansing flights' on the snow. You can also see lots of dead bees, which is typical.

I'm a bit worried about one of the hives, though: I think it's dead. I could hear activity in the one hive when I put my ear up to the back of it, but the other was silent. Time will tell. It's still too early to open up the hives and take a real look.
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