My wife was out on the front porch that day, and told me a bee came up and landed on her arm to rest. I told her that 3 years ago she would have probably freaked out and frantically tried to brush/shake off the bee; but now she just waited for the bee to decide to take off on her own!
Today was even better for the bees - the weather was great, a lot of bees were flying, and some even managed to find pollen from somewhere. There were a few bees (not many) coming in with a dark pale yellow pollen. I couldn't get a picture of the bees with pollen (those bees are fast!) but you can see in this picture the bees coming in:
I also had an interesting thing happen today; last week I took off the top box of the dead green hive. I took pictures of the dead-out for my last blog post, and I just put the box on it's side in the back of the garage.
Well, with the weather so nice, we had the garage door open all day. My bees managed to find that box of frames (which still had nectar and honey in it) and told all the other bees, and we had a bee smorgasbord (FREE FOOD!!). My son Jacob was not pleased one bit with a garage full of busy bees! I walked over and grabbed the box and moved it out to the back deck so the bees could have it, but it took hours before the bees stopped checking out the garage (where's the food? where's the food?). I should have known better, as something similar happened last year.
Don't forget I'm giving away a jar of honey at the end of the month; see the blog post here for all the details!
I would guess that it is skunk cabbage or pussy willow pollen. Skunk cabbage usually leaves a line of pollen on their backs as well, so it is fun to look for.
ReplyDeleteMy girls started bringing in orange-ish pollen yesterday - crocuses I am guessing.
Yay!