Looduskalender

Silver Fox wrote:There are now hundreds of bees in the hive buzzing and working.

The bees are there by the 100's now. Full swarm of bees are back again.
Maybe their activity has a relation to the temperature on the site ?
I read somewhere that they don't 'work' under ? 18° (memory fails me there as to the exact temp.)
( the sound is like the football matches going on at the moment... )

Yesterday I make a visit at my second fathers home and asked him a few things about bees, because he is an active beekeeper. He told me, that bees do not depredate the honey from bumblebees nests, but it is able, that sometimes a bee colony robs an other bee colony and take their honey away. That happened in times, there the bees do not found enough nectar. The problem is, if the found this way to get honey, they often do it again. The only way to “rehabilitate” them, is to bring them more than 4000 meters away from every other bee colony.

The bees get very many problems in the last years, one is an insect with the latin name “varroa destructur”. This mite is not endemic in Europe, it comes from Asia and Asiatic bees are able to detect the mite and kill it, European bees are not able to detect the mite and so the mite kills very many bees. Interesting is, that in Germany the town bees are the most healthy bees and the scientists thought, that the reason is, that town bees have a bigger offer of different nectar plants and not so many pesticides in the nectar.

I think I heard boars as well as buzzing but I cannot really see anything.



I have heard recently that the way bees are drug about across the country and put in single crop fields might be contributing to their problems.

Yesterday I took a picture of the new bees and I will it show here tomorrow because it is at my holiday-flat. It looks like that one I took in the beginning of the bee-show. But today we see only white - I don't know what happened in the meantime.
Kindest regards and have a nice weekend
Bleggi

I watched the camera yesterday evening at 21:30 Estonian time when suddenly someone/something attacked the bees and the camera started showing this white screen. I could hear something breathing in the background but I could not see anything. About 1/2 hours later I could hear some pigs screaming in the background. Could it have been an attack from the pigs?

Now I am in my other flat and have my notebook with this picture from(of) yesterday:
20:12

...and this is the pic up to date

greeneyes wrote:Yesterday I make a visit at my second fathers home and asked him a few things about bees, because he is an active beekeeper. He told me, that bees do not depredate the honey from bumblebees nests, but it is able, that sometimes a bee colony robs an other bee colony and take their honey away. That happened in times, there the bees do not found enough nectar. The problem is, if the found this way to get honey, they often do it again. The only way to “rehabilitate” them, is to bring them more than 4000 meters away from every other bee colony.

The bees get very many problems in the last years, one is an insect with the latin name “varroa destructur”. This mite is not endemic in Europe, it comes from Asia and Asiatic bees are able to detect the mite and kill it, European bees are not able to detect the mite and so the mite kills very many bees. Interesting is, that in Germany the town bees are the most healthy bees and the scientists thought, that the reason is, that town bees have a bigger offer of different nectar plants and not so many pesticides in the nectar.

greeneyes: Thank you for posting such interesting things. And thanks to your second father, too. "Vielen Dank!"
Kindest regards from Bleggi

Now there is that white/grey screen on the cam but we can hear the buzzing.
I suppose they go somewhere during the nightime ? Into the hive ?

Effect of Weather
(From Fundamentals of Beekeeping)

Weather is the key to maximum use of the pollinating force. Bees rarely fly when the temperature is below 55° F or the wind is more than 15 to 20 miles per hour. The stronger the colony, the lower the temperature at which the bees may initiate flight. Strong colonies do little pollinating below 55° F and weak ones do little below 60° F. Cool cloudy weather and threatening storms greatly reduce bee flights. The poor weather, bees foraging at more distant locations will remain in the hive and only those that have been foraging nearby will be active. Therefore, over an extended period of inclement weather, colonies may require greater distribution to get adequate coverage.

Bad weather also presents hazards to the plant. Spring frosts can kill fruit bloom, and temperatures of 40° to 50° F retard pollen germination and tube growth. Fertilization failure may result. If the weather is hot and dry or windy, stigmas may dry out so that deposited pollen does not germinate. Pollen release may be hindered by prolonged rains.

Effective pollination can take place with surprising rapidity in warm clear weather.

Some info on bees and weather. I still haven't found out where they go at night Surely they do not stay on that exposed 'screen' in bad weather or nightime ?
Maybe Greeneyes parent can tell us this basic fact ? ?

During the day we saw only this white picture and now it is raining cats and dogs.
Not the best weather for bees, I think.

I hope these bees are thriving, somewhere. I have just seen this, on a BBC page

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/science_and_ ... 371300.stm

On the right of the page there are links to other bee-related topics - one about an increase in infections if bees disappear. I haven't read that yet, but it is not surprising - honey has such a huge effect on many health conditions.

The bees are back

Were there a ghost?

Thank you Bleggi, what strange forms on the bee-screen. Yes maybe ghosts ?

18:39

The bees are back now in great numbers,like the 1st days after the installation.
(do I think I am at a football match ? here... )

The difference between afternoon and evening:
17:29:59

22:37:48