Thanks Neil.
Yes, washboarding is mesmerizing. It looks like the bees are dancing back and forth.

I'll be meeting with a group tonight that includes somebody who brews great beer including a fantastic stout. I'll have to ask him if he ever considered using honey in any of his beers.

Just thought I'd post a pic of when our bees swarmed. My son is the beekeeper, I don't know a lot about them, but this was fascinating!

Wow, that must be an awesome sight to see. Excellent picture, Arlene.

Thank you for sharing.

I'm not sure what swarming entails.... Margaret, did you go over that?

Welcome to the beekeeping forum Arlene. Great photo of a swarm.

Christine swarming is the bees natural method of increasing their colony. I haven't wrote about it yet on here but do have an article on swarming in the works. May be awhile before you see it though because I want to get some pictures of hiving a swarm before I publish it.

Basically what happens when bees swarm is the old queen takes half of the colony to moves to a new home. The other half of the colony is left with a newly hatched queen.

Very interesting, Margaret, I look forward to the article.

and welcome Arlene!!

Thanks. I am learning about the bees too from my son but this forum is interesting and informative. Maybe when I have a question I can ask here instead of looking stupid and asking my son.

He has six hives but when we moved from MD, the day we were packing our neighbor noticed an old barrel we had on our deck as a plant stand and she told us there was a nest of bees. I took some pictures and sent to my son and sure enough! So we waited until dark and wrapped the barrel up and put it in the back of the truck. He set up a nuke and when the hive got settled, he put a hive over here and transferred the bees to our house. so we now have a hive in our back yard!

My husband takes care of them, what little we know to do, like giving water and sugar water. And we planted crimson clover. I have lots of flowers but of course it's just a small amount of what they need. But I'm anxious to get honey this spring!

Arlene honey bees are so interesting to watch. If you haven't found them yet there's a list of articles on honey bees and plants they forage in the Garden Ideas.

Quickest way to get to them is to click on my avatar and scroll down my profile page to find the list of what I've written.

They pop up from time to time in the Random Ideas area too.

Will do! Thanks.

Arlene! And great photo too!

thanks! I have hubby reading articles and teaching me. (He used to be a teacher) He likes the forum also!

Signing off for tonight but I'll be back!

What an interesting column, I am really enjoying it. I am a new beekeeper and am trying to do the best for my little charges. I am planting lots of flowers, most of which are on the link that Mindy posted the link to.

I do have a question, I am reading lots of books on bees and some say to not feed them when the trees and flowers start blooming but others say feeding too long could lead to disease. I started my hives during some bitter cold weather at the end of March and fed the bees (a quart of syrup a day) until about 2 weeks ago when it really got warm here and my mentor told me I should stop but had me add a honey super on top of the brood box. However, the weather went back to being cold, about 40-50 degrees duting the day and I was worried that I didn't see many bees flying. When I opened the honey supers (I have 2 hives), there was no comb being drawn, even though there were lots of trees and flowers blooming and it was about 70 degrees. I felt bad so I started giving them syrup again and the weaker hime is back to a quart a day but the other one is going more slowly on it.

My question is, is it okay to keep feeding them? I put a pot of catmint near their hives and it was in full bloom but there were only 2 bees on it yesterday and none the day before when I placed the pot near them.
I appreciate any advise you want to give me, because it will all help my ladies.
Thank you, Terri

Welcome to the beekeeping forum Terri.

We feed our bees until they quit taking the syrup. Just because things start blooming doesn't necessarily mean the nectar flow is good yet. Bee prefer the natural nectar to syrup so will quit taking it when the nectar is plentiful.

When the temperature is below 50 they are in a cluster to keep warm so you won't see much activity then.

We usually don't add a super to the hive until they have almost filled the two bottom boxes. Each beekeeper does things differently so just go with your instincts when it comes to your bees. Read and make your choices based on whether the information makes sense to you for your bees.

You won't see very many bees on a pot of catmint but if that stuff should ever spread into a big patch in the ground you would see more bees working it. They know how many workers they need to harvest the number of blossoms available.

Enjoy your adventure in keeping bees.

Thank you! I will put the catmint in the ground nearby in a few weeks. We have some construction going on so I was waiting for that to stop, and I did not want to plant too close to the hive. We have a lot of ticks and chiggers here and I don't want to give them anyplance to hide out near the hives.

Another question, my bees get morning sun but are in dappled shade around noon, full shade after 1pm. It can get hot here during the summers so I was thinking that would be good to have some shade, or does that not matter?

You are welcome.

You have them in a good spot. When it's hot they spend a lot of time keeping the hive cool so being in shade during the hottest part of the day will help them.

Good Morning,
Just keeping up!!

Good morning Robin glad to see you dropping by.

Not sure if this is the thread to post to, but we're seeing tons of bees on the ball clover both in the field and the yard. Letting it all grow in the yard and just mowing the grass around it. I'll try and get some photos tomorrow.

Good for you all for not mowing their food supply.

It's swarming season here right now.

I doubt we'll have any swarms, hives have been stressed.