Not As Easy as They'd Like You to Beelieve

I have a little 19 second video of my bees buzzing madly about. I am giving up trying to post it, but I am going to tell you about it. If you want to see it, let me know and I'll e-mail it to you. Or maybe I can post it on Facebook.

As you may know, it has been raining in Ohio. A lot. The day I set up my third hive, Tuesday, the rain had stopped briefly, but for the most part, it had been raining for two days already. Hives 1 & 2 showed no activity. Wednesday was rainy, too. Yesterday, Thursday, we had some sunshine and from the kitchen window I could see bees zooming around, so I walked across the future meadow to see what I could see. Hives 1 & 2 had plenty of bees coming and going (they surely had been suffering from cabin fever), but the new hive was crazy with activity. So I shot 19 seconds of bee frenzy. Watching the zooming in the video is interesting, but listening to the buzzing really adds to the fun.

One thing I noticed is lots of dead bees in front of hive 3. There were a number of dead bees in that package and when I installed the bees, the dead ones fell in with the live ones. Bees are fastidious and do not allow dead bees to stay in the hive. They drag them to the front door and push them out. That explained the dead bodies in front of the hive. But the truly amazing observation came later. Worker bees came out of the hive, dropped to the ground and dragged off dead bees. They moved them farther from the hive and some of the workers actually managed to lift a dead bee and fly off with it. I wonder where they took them.