Frances and the Bee

Our first few rounds of inspections have gone really well. Our queens had been released and were laying eggs in all four hives and workers were bringing in pollen from the get-go. Honeybees have many suprising, specialized features in order to do their work, including pollen baskets on their back legs. Here, they place pollen in the form of a nugget that they can carry back to the hive. Beekeepers sometimes call these "pollen pants". These are smaller pollen pants, but you can see the lovely color of pollen that dandelions provide for honey bees (please let them grow!): Little Miss Bee suprised us by being ready to put on her suit and she helped Mr. Bee look for eggs and she helped by handing us hive components when the inspection was finished. I was fortunate to again work with our beekeeping mentor, Mr. Martin, volunteering at a spring event at the Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge. He brought a live bee display and we talked about honeybees to people of all a...