When bees get hot!

So finally it is feeling like summer. August heat does strange things to us all. The bees have been cooling off in the bird bath (which really does resemble a bee size swimming pool except they can't swim; they drink and feel the relative coolness of concrete.) They also love the dishes under plants on the deck for drinking fountains and our swimming pool- this is often fatal but we try to catch as many as we can before they drown. Finally they hang out on their deck just like we do.

New Chicks on the Block

Although we were going to get Golden laced Wyandottes, I couldn't resist the Buff Orpingtons so that is what we have. The names are so seductive and the babies are so cute, it's a wonder I only got six. They are safely secured in their own pen with their own chick house but the three remaining Rhode Island Reds are strutting up to the fence and saying the equivalent of Hmmff!

Sweet August

We put the honey supers on last Tuesday, August 4th. Too busy at work and outside to post at the time. It was a glorious morning and although there is supposed to be little nectar out there, the bees around here are finding all sorts of treats. They are on the sunflowers, the black eyed susans, the corn tassels and the zinnias on the deck. Just after realizing that the zinnias had bees on them and I could get a picture, a hummingbird came and fed at the feeder but not at the moment that I had a camera in my hand. I have plans for tons more flowers that bloom in late July and August so they will never be without blooms and neither will I.