So I’m coming back with a clean slate, sort of. I’m quickly gonna get the last two months of activity out of the way, then get on to something that I find interesting: Hive 1b didn’t make it. I honestly don’t even know if they ever reallly moved in. There seemed like there was lots of activity, feeding jars were getting drained, then I popped the lid and nobody home. Either neighborhood wild bees were coming in, drinking the sugar syrup and then heading to their own home elsewhere, or the hive moved out a day or two before I opened it. Big mystery, X-Files shit, we’ll never know.
Hive 2 continues to make slow progress, it’s almost harvest time but I’m not particulary optimistic about what I’ll get out of them. Only two of the supers are close to full, where I had six last year. Also, last year I ended up harvesting supers that weren’t fully cured (the water hadn’t been fully evaporated from the honey) which has led to some of the honey fermenting (not bad to eat, just changes the taste), so I’m afraid of harvesting honey from incompletely sealed cells.
That’s the catch-up bee report. Other stuff happened, you’ll never know.
Instead, I’d like to turn your attention to Boing Boing, which had a couple interesting posts this past week about bees. The first was this bizarre story about how Los Alamos scientists trained bees to stick out their tongues when they smell explosives. As you can imagine, I am ambivalent about this. On the one hand, I’m proud of my little guys, out there on the front lines in our battle against terrorists. On the other hand, I hate the idea of these innocent pollinators being dragged in to human conflict. It reminds me of the stories of dolphins being conscripted as living torpedoes. On the third hand, I feel that this is, at some level, a validation of my patent pending idea for a bee powered alarm system (which I know realize I was not first to think of…sigh).
The second Boing Boing post was a follow-up to the first, correcting some error factual errors and providing tons of links to BEE PORN BEE PORN BEE PORN BEE PORN and even a bit of honest to God bee porn. All well and fine, but honestly, none of these are nearly impressive in my opinion as my friend Pmatt Freedman’s hot Hive Mind bee porn (yes, my girls, exxxposed on the Internet). Here are some highlights, check out the rest of his photography at www.silentcolor.com.
