Bunches of Bees
May 26, 2011
Yesterday evening it was raining after a good 5 days of rain free weather here in Vancouver. I looked out my bedroom window and noticed the bees were still flying around the hive. When I took a look at the entrance and saw a LOT of bees bunching up under the frames. The temperature was about 14 Celcius (57 Farenheit) and there was still lots of room at last inspection about 6 days ago with about 4 frames they could have started to draw out. This morning I checked before heading out to work and the bees were back up in the frames, and not hanging from the bottom.
Were the bees possibly surrounding the queen or keeping warm?
Here is a video of the bees. First few images are of a sunny day on the 23rd and the last is yesterday on the 25th.
Oh and I just found out the red pollen that you can see the bees bringing in is from the local Horse Chestnut tress that are in our Neighborhood. Here is a link to a Wikipedia article on Pollen sources for Bees. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollen_source
View the clip at 720 for a clear image[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGqUqFkQW94]