april romance

Today was one of those fickle April days of snow and sleet and sunshine and rain and sunshine and hail and sunshine. When I got home, I found a quiet hive with a few bees flying in and out. I've been driving myself crazy with worry, wondering if they've absconded or not or were starving or was the queen alive? So I made a syrup (1:1 ratio of honey and water), put it into a ziplock bag, and changed into my bee suit. By then the hail had stopped.

I took off the lid and removed enough bars to be able to remove the bee box from the hive. I found that the queen's box was empty, and above the empty hanging box was a clump of thousands of bees all huddled together. I placed the ziplock bag with the syrup into the bottom of the hive, slit a few small cuts into it, and closed the hive back up.

Then I noticed that the bees were trying desperately to get out the window, so I decided, as a short-term fix, to duct tape over the window. As soon as the window was covered, the number of bees flying out of the exit multiplied.

There do seem to be a lot of dead bees on the floor of the hive and a few on top and outside of the hive, but once I saw that ball of thousands of bees in the corner of the hive, I felt relieved. In the photo above, bees are clustered together on the corner of their bee box after I pulled it out. I'm hoping they all made it back into the hive.

When finished, I discovered that the sun was shining and the sky was blue. I had some library books due and some others (on bees, of course!) awaiting my pickup, so I took a walk amongst the apple blossoms and other flowers to the mecca of books.

 

I was surprised to find poppies.

 

And new ferns in my front yard.