Bee Update!

I generally dislike close up images of flies, bees and other insects here on blip....just not my thing i guess....but i am so fascinated with the information i am learning about bee societies! plus i like the honey combs here!

So today, there was another sort of swarming going on in front of the hives, quite a bit away....very loud and a cloud of perhaps a few thousand! We called Dennis!!!
He arrived about 40 minutes later and by this time they had settled down - but he was planning to do some more splitting of hives. Apparently in one of the hives there were 9 queen cells....this could potentially cause another real swarming situation! So he spent about an hour, moving queen cells, essentially he has created 10 hives out of the 6 he originally brought us! All very interesting and he had lots to tell us about queens and he believes that what Terry saw earlier was a young queen breeding with many, many drones! She can then decide which sperm and eggs should go together to be fertilized!! and she can decide when to do it! isn't that astonishing!

In other news....lots of work done in the studio, and now it's time for a glass of wine and dinner preparation!