Checked in on the girls this evening, and was particularly interested in the results of my bee sculpture experiment thus far. They haven’t made as much progress as I’d hoped, but, as you can see, they have made some progress.
Now, you may be wondering, what’s the point of all this? What does it mean? Why am I sticking wedding cake black bride and groom dolls into a bee hive? Is it a statement on matrimony? Race? Should be bees be seen as a symbol of fecund nature, or dangerous deliverers of venom? Is the wax a sweet taste of honey, or is entombing them?
Yah, me too.
I thought this was coo, though: when I put the dolls into the hive, I had to leave a frame out to make room. Check out the picture below. They built a bunch of burr comb down into the cavity that I left (but apparently built around the dolls, because they weren’t attached to the burr comb).
Otherwise good progress in the hive. Hive 2 had just about finished filling the second honey super I had put on, so I added a third. Below are some pictures of their progress.
Hive 1 seems to be suffering from the chilling shade of the my neighbor’s laurel. They’re barely making it through their first honey super, and haven’t capped any of the frames. I talked to Jennie about getting her laurel cut back, which should help. She said she’d tried to do it a while back but got scared off by the bees. Makes sense. I put her in touch with a arborist and offered him my bee suit.
The shot below is from Hive 1. You can see lots of honey going in, but none of it capped.
