Bees on their front porch

As we are having almost record heat here, the bees are trying their best to stay cool.

It's early evening and the bees are hanging out on their porch, as it's still very warm outside. One of the hives has a very large number of bees hanging out outside -- it is about to be expanded, since we need to give them a little extra room.

Since it was over 100 degrees fahrenheit yesterday and today, we put the bee syrup in the fridge to keep it a little cooler. The bee syrup is a one-to-one mixture of water and sugar. In addition, we put in a bit of lemongrass oil since it's supposed to help fight tracial mites.

Here's a quick snapshot of the bees getting some fresh air on their "front porch":

Bees cleaning the syrup pan and funnel

Stuart makes special syrup to help supplement the food supply for our bees. After he's done, he likes to leave out the pot and funnel on the back deck to let the bees nibble on the remnants. They tend to find them right away. Once I step out onto the back deck, the buzz of bees buzzing around is almost deafening. I've become used to this sound now though, and realize that they have zero interest in stinging me. They just want to nibble on syrup. The last time we did this, I snapped a few pics:

A useful picture of a honeycomb - labeled:

The Basics: Two Types of Hives

I'm sure that there are more that we don't know about, but for us, there are two types of hives. The typical type is Langstroth and the new one is called a Top Bar.

The Langstroth:



The Top Bar: (picture below):



For about two years, we have used the traditional type of hive. Then, Stuart found a website that suggested that this new type, the Top Bar was more a more natural approach for bee keeping. So, based on the designs on this helpful site, http://www.biobees.com, he built the first two Top Bars.