Buckets of Bees

Please, do not make fun of me. I know we were just at DEFCON 1. We may still be at DEFCON...perhaps a different number, or a mixture of several. Maybe I should use that crazy national security rainbow scale. But please, no mocking. Not where I can hear.

You see, the colonies of honeybees that seemed to be miserably afflicted and likely to be dwindling away to nothing are actually jam-packed-full of a humongous number of bees. Enough, in fact, that MaryEllen is telling me to check for swarm cells in January and I have to get right back out there to do it. Maybe I had a lot of mites because there were a lot of bees. Maybe there is still a killer crowd of mites in there capable of taking my masterful girls out.

They are getting a little crowded in there. The picture actually shows that Queen Elizabeth has laid eggs in every cell avvailable to her, and her babies are all mixed up with pollen and bee bread and maybe even propolis storage. Those Carniolan bees seem to love that propolis.

You can take a tour of the Wilde colony, and see how the sense of the situation changed as the frames from deeper and deeper inside the colony came to light.

I also have pictures from Twain, which seemed its usual healthy active self. It got late, though, and I got tired, so I decided to hold off the true physical until another day.

Judging from the swarm danger, however, that day is gonna be pretty darned soon. Geez, if it's not one thing, it's another. Now I have to go face my husband, who was rebuked for his assurances that all would be well. I think perhaps I will grab a glass of wine first...