BEES

Here are some miscellaneous photos of the bees and the hives that I have taken over the course of a couple of weeks. The closer shots Robin took because she has the protective bee suit.

Here are the hives on the trailer when they were brought in. They were really upset after the drive but have since calmed down nicely.

Another shot of the bees on the trailer. Robin gave them a few days to calm down before getting out there and working with them. The clay pot turned upside down has a pan on it with water in it for the bees.

These2 photos were taken standing at the point where the middle of the strawberry field is to my right. In the photo on the right you can just make out the corner of the fence post. This is at the far end of the strawberry field. We placed these here in hopes that the bees would keep away from the market area. We are still thinking that we need to put some holly bushes around it to block it from view of wandering children and nosy adults.

A close up of one of the hives. The bottom opening is where the bees go in and out of.

This is the inside of the hive with the lid off.

Up close and personal with the inner workings of the bee hive. Once Robin starts her blog some of the same pictures will show up there but she will have greater detail of what is going and what all you are looking at.

Another photo of the outside of hive. Robin had said some little balck sugar ants had gotten in but the gentleman she got the hives from said to clean the outside of the hives and that would cut down on the ants. So she spent most of Saturday cleaning and scraping the tops to the hives.

This is another photo of the water plate for the bees. Apparently they are not very intelligent because Robin said you have to put rocks in the water for them to stand on otherwaide they will simply dive to the water and drown if there's nothing for them to stand on.

And last but not least a photo of Robiin in her bee suit scrubbing and scraping on the bee hive tops. Some of them were very old and had places that were rotting. So she started building new roofs later that day.