Our bees are building comb like gangbusters! My natural beekeeping mentor hasn’t been able to come out (he lives an hour away), so I guess the queen cage (hanging from a plastic strap attached by a large thumbtack) is just going to stay in there permanently because they are building comb right around it. At least that’s my guess based on how far the bees are clustering – I can’t actually see comb on that side.
We planted some seeds to hopefully provide some additional food for the bees. The seed packet says they should germinate in 10-15 days, so we’ll see if we can remember to keep them watered. Planting the seeds got us talking about how the bees know where to go on the flower. I found the following two resources really helpful – I think I’m even more interested than Adele!
THIS WEBSITE shows photographs of flowers shot with a UV filter, to approximate how the bees see them, because bees see UV light (but humans don’t).
Some examples:
Another cool RESOURCE gives some awesome color theory and shows the difference in the spectrum of color that we see versus what the bees see. A GREAT website!!
Follow the rest of our beekeeping adventures HERE.
