Sunday, June 21, 2015

Nature Photo of the Week - Week 25

The theme for this week's photo is "Birth." This is a drone bee (a male) emerging from a cell.



The bees had created a double layer of cells in the beehive to fix a frame-spacing error on our part. We didn't realize that the bees were so precise in amount of space they like between the frames in the hive. The spacing was off no more than a half an inch, but that made all the difference in the world to the bees.

As inexperienced beekeepers, we are learning how amazing and industrious these creatures are each time we visit them.

At any rate, we had to remove these cells from the hive, properly space the frames, and give the bees another opportunity to build onto the frame.

After we closed the hive, we were able to watch these drones emerge from their cells. It reminded me of when we had chickens and watched the little chicks peck their way from their eggs.

It's a slow process in the sense of the pace in which we live our lives. Yet, in reality, these baby bees know exactly what to do in a relatively short period of time.

Once they emerged, they walked around a bit and then began looking for food. Interestingly, there was honey in some of the cells that was leaking out. The drones found it and we could watch them eat it.

We placed the honeycomb near a container garden that is filled with flowers that attract bees. We're not sure if they went to the flowers since we had to move on with our day, but at least they were very near two food sources right after they emerged.

1 comment:

Rita said...

Oh wow! Were they too far apart or too close together? You are certainly learning about beekeeping. I'm kind of scared of bees and wasps so it is not something I could handle. Even if I know we need them to survive, they still scare me in real life. I can see pictures and watch nature shows, though--same with spiders and a lot of insects that creep me out in real life. They are fascinating creatures!