My friend Ron lets us keep some hives on his farm and he provided this update to me today.  There is an obvious nectar flow based on the activity in front of the hives.  Ron reported the honeybees were “like bullets returning to the hive.” Ron also reported that the bees were foraging on “everything except the queen’s lace and the little white daisy looking flowers.”  To follow is a list of what he observed our...

Sunflowers…a honeybee favorite.

Honeybee on a flower loaded with pollen.

Worker bees tend to the care and feeding of the queen.  The queen busily lays eggs for new workers and a few drones on occasion.  The pink dot is marking paint that the queen breeder applies at the request of the beekeeper.  I prefer mine unmarked.  I can usually see them without the paint and the paint wears off in a few weeks anyway. Now it is time to clear up the common misconception that the queen is in charge here.  It turns out that the...

This is an early summer swarm. Honeybees increase there numbers this way in the wild. Managed hives also swarm if space is not adequate going into summer.

Africanized honeybees, also known as “killer bees” look very similar to their friendly European cousins but are very different.