Yesterday my beekeeping mentor came over to help me find the queen bee that I thought died. He was nice enough to check on the activity in the hide, explain rotation of frames again and help find the queen. I was relieved when we hit frame #6 that there was a live and laying queen. She was not happy about being exposed to the light so she was somewhat burried under a pile of nurse bees.
This was the first time I witnessed bee "fanning" and bee "dancing." Both of which were super cool to see. One little bee at the entrance was fanning and several bees were dancing about in the hive (shaking their tail feathers at their sisters). BTW/bees don't have feathers I just thought it would be cool to type that. Anyway, all is well in casa de bees. Won't be long now before a new hive body will need to be added :)
Bee "fanning" :
Bee "dancing" :
I love the bee dance!! The children's science museum in our town has a bee hive display and the boys and I used to spend hours just watching the bees go in after foraging and then doing their "where to find the flowers" dance!
Soooo glad that Queenie is alive and well!!!
When Maya was in 2nd grade the same instructor I took my beekeeping class from went to teach them about the honey bees. She came home so excited about the "bees dancing." She explained it to me and somehow I thought they did some crazy chacha in front of the hive. LOL! When I actually got to see the dancing it was a surprise. One, it happens inside the hive and not outside like I thought and it was much cuter than I imagined. The fanning is very interesting as well. I don't know why but when I see the bees I see pet dogs. How weird is that???
Yea today I managed to film some dancing bees if you want here is a link to an explanation of what the dancing actually means, not my vid btw.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NtegAOQpSs&feature=related
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