I grew up in Louisiana and I know hot weather, and well, it’s been hot here in Durham. I mean really hot. 8:30pm and it’s still over 32 degrees (C), hot. It’s so hot that the bees have taken to a rather freakish behavior… bearding. In a nutshell, after all the workers return home from their foraging, they decide not to go inside. Instead, they hang out on the front porch. No word on whether or not they are sipping mint juleps. From what we could tell this morning, they probably wound up bearding all the way to the top of the hive box. Fortunately, the bearding doesn’t imply that they’re about to swarm, but I can say that the bees that look so cute individually are slightly terrifying en masse.
(the picture’s a touch blurry, but the sun was going down and it was an iPhone… we do what we can)
Who are you? One of the freaks?! (nb: the link is not “Jill-approved”, but it goes through my head every time I see the bees beard)
Glad to hear that your bees know how to survive the heat wave. Though from your tagline, I was expecting to see your new circus act where the bees were actually bearding Jill’s face.
Comment by Moriah — July 10, 2012 @ 9:53 am
That would have been awesome! I’ll work on making that happen 🙂
I hope y’all are doing well.
Comment by cec — July 10, 2012 @ 11:25 am