So anyway, Saturday afternoon I decided to try and get some photos of the hives in their usual hot afternoon frenzy state.
This hive, I don't even know why it has that landing board, it's not level with the entrance and the bees don't even use it. I've seen a thing where a guy hung a CD out of the hole for the bees to land on, making the landing board even more redundant. Well they don't see to mind not using it anyway. They can walk up walls, they can even land on walls ffs.
This photo doesn't really capture anything worth looking at in terms of the afternoon frenzy.
At 7am, basically you'll see 1 bee leave the hive every 20-30 seconds, and another will return at the same frequency. In fact that's all you ever see really, bees swapping places, it looks like a one in, one out type of business.
At 6.30pm you'll see 1 bee every 5 seconds swap places.
At I guess from about 2pm to 5pm you see 2 or 3 per second swap places. That's how much more chaotic the afternoon shift is than other times of day.
It's considerably more noisy around the hive due to the bees in the holding pattern and exit patterns. To exit mine seem to be spiralling up out of sight. I don't know which way they head off, when they get to about 15-20 feet up they are too small and too fast to see.
This hive has a landing board level with the aperture, and the bees use it, though the holes are so small they have little choice. The little guy (girl actually) I've enlarged you can barely see it properly but it's got two sacks of pollen on it's legs. Not all the bees return with pollen, I knew to look for it, but I didn't expect it to be so obvious, they look llike they are wearing smart yellow clogs as they whip into the hive to deliver.
So anyway, I've learned that my camera, despite being a few hundred pounds when I bought it is pretty terrible for photographing quickly. I was waiting for a pollen carrier to enter the frame with all the focus set and then hitting it as soon as one shows up and it still took 6 tries to get this really bad photo. These here consumer rated digital cameras are just snappers. I guess if I want good photos I need a digital SLR, or even better, go back to chemical film.
I decided I don't care enough about photos to bother. Enough random attempts I'm bound to get a good photo one day.
Anyway I was due to go into the hives tonight to see how those queens are doing, but it started raining, figured that since the bees were still active, things ain't dead enough to worry about yet.
