I was working in my yard today and a neighbor from about a half-mile down the road came driving up, saying he had a bee hive in his garage! He mumbled something about insulation, but I dismissed it and hopped into my car to go have a look. When we got there, I could see that he was doing some renovation on the building. He moved to a piece of wall and pointed at it, ‘They’re in there!’

I looked around and could not see a single bee in the air. Then I looked at the wall panel quizzically. Looking at me like I’m an idiot, my neighbor pulls back the wall panel and then points, before rushing back a couple of dozen yards. I moved up and looked, and it was nest of about 10 bumble bees…. Oh well. I thanked him anyway. I would rather he call me to have a look, as opposed to just killing anything that looks like a bee to him.

On my bee front, the bees are really working hard. The Geronimo hive has a continual inflight of 5 to 10 bees landing and taking off every couple of seconds. They are rolling in and out. The Albo hive has a lot of activity, but probably at about half that of the Geronimo hive. The Westover Hive only has a few bees coming and going, but they are still in build up. Every bee that I see is a bee that I moved from Charles City County. There’s a slight chance that some new bees will be out of their cells by next weekend (21 days), which I am guessing will relieve the ‘old’ nurse bees to do what they were made to do at their age (forage!)

Finally, the bees are sucking up water all over the place. Every rooting or seedling that I water ends up with a couple of bees landing on the wet potting soil and sucking down the water. I am guessing this is due to the heat and a general need for water.