Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Hot bees

Driving home from Ottawa today, the car thermometer registered 34 Celsius. That's 93 Fahrenheit, but the humidex values were up around 40C, which meant it felt like 104F. On September 1st! Yuck!! I'm sorry but I've had enough. Apparently so have my honeybees, who were hanging outside the hives to cool off:

This D.E. hive has a lot of passive ventilation and when it's hot, I always seeing fewer bees bearding (bee equivalent of hanging out on the front porch to cool off) on it than I do on the Langstroth hive:


Poor hot little bee-girls!



If you look on the lower left corner of the hive bottom, you can see some honeybees hanging off in a chain. Sometimes they do this when there's nowhere else for them to go; they'll just hang off each other!



See them "chaining" over the edge?



It's supposed to cool down down on Saturday. Bring it on!

6 comments:

  1. Poor bees - Im ready for the cooler weather too

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  2. Oh no . . . hot bees are unhappy bees!

    You need to get them a bee-conditioner!

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  3. Interesting... didn't know bees cooled off like that. Poor bees. Hope you get the cooler weather. It is cooler here at night, but is supposed to heat up in the day Fri and Sat and then go down to the 70's. I'm ready for cooler weather too.

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  4. Nice pictures! Poor bees... we are ready for the cool weather too!

    The Chicken Keepers
    thechickenkeepers.blogspot.com

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  5. Hmmmm the bee gals are just too hawt to handle! :)

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  6. Chef Nick, you need to go invent me a bee-conditioner!

    Callie, those bees are pretty smart (for insects!) Think of them as a bunch of guys hanging out on the front porch in their undershirts, beers in hand... only cuter and more useful! Hope you're getting cooler weather. We got some rain last night and the weather seems to have cooled off a bit at last.

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Thank you for all your comments, which I love to read!