Thursday, January 7, 2016

2016-01-07: Honey Bee Pollination

I'm a little late to the party but I came across this animation from National Geographic today about where honey bees are transported to do pollination across the country.  Very impressive!

The overall article is about building a "super bee".  Make sure to click the "featured article" link at the top to read more.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/05/building-bees/transport-map

On the home front there isn't too much going on.  I put a "Winter Bee Kind" candy board that I received for Christmas on my Cutout hive.  The cluster was at the top of the hive and they were moving around slightly in the 30 degree temps.  I also put a home made, no cook candy board on the Nuc hive but I could not see the cluster in the top box and didn't have a light to shine down into the bottom box to see them.  Since I left honey supers on the other two hives I am not adding candy boards to them.  I continue to see new dead bees on the landing boards of the hives so that is a good sign.  If there were no alive bees inside the hive, then there wouldn't bee any dead bees brought outside the hive!

My BroodMinder's continue to monitor and collect data from the hives.  I had the battery die on two of them so far and I've replaced one of the batteries but haven't put the BroodMinder back out on the hive.  The producers continue to work through the issues and make progress on the software so that is a good thing!  They are starting work on a similar device that is a hive scale.  That would be super useful!  If it is anywhere close to the price of the BroodMinder then I'll be all over it!

Happy New Year readers!

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