Hives of Industry

I took a detour on the way home from doing the groceries this morning. True to fashion, I ended up going for a bit of an explore up country....

Eventually I found these brightly covered hives. As there's been a lot of thefts from hives recently, I'm not going to state where they are, so it will just have to be a mystery. I'm glad I had my zoom lens though; originally I was planning on going close and doing a wide shot, but approaching the hives I got a lot of interest  from the inhabitants, so decided to fall back to a safe distance. If you look closely on the image you may be able to see streaks of bees!

As you can see I got an obligatory shot of a ute in the frame too; I stopped to speak to the farmer as he moved cattle up the track, just shooting the breeze, talking about the weather etc, like good country folk do. His cattlebeasts had moved out of frame by the time I got back to my position, but his dogs were having a bit of a time moving some wayward ones out of the undergrowth as I took this.

In the extras, there's another shot from this morning, before the nasty southerly came through. This one is from up on Orari Gorge Station, looking up the river towards the back side of Mount Peel. I wager there may be a bit more snow on it in the morning....