Bees of Bats Hollow

20/05/2023

Happy World Bee Day! 😎🐺🐝🦇❤️

26/02/2023

Our swarm capture hive stretching their wings in late February.😎🐺🐝🦇

01/02/2022

The Bees of Bats Hollow enjoying this unusually warm February 1st. 😎🐺🐝🦇

08/06/2021

Give them all a wide berth!
I was once stung 23 times when I mowed over a nest of Yellowjackets! 😎🐺🐝🦇

07/06/2021

DID YOU KNOW ?

Similar to our circadian rhythm, honeybees sleep between five and eight hours a day. And, in the case of forager bees, this occurs in day-night cycles, with more rest at night when darkness prevents their excursions for pollen and nectar.

When bees fall asleep, a bee's legs start to flex and it brings its head to the floor. The antennae stops moving and if a bee is really tired it sometimes fall over sideways. Many bees hold each other's legs as they sleep.

Sleeping bees can be identified by a posture reflecting a lack of muscle tonus, in which the antennae hang down, and the legs are folded beneath the body. Young bees sleep for shorter periods, and not in the day-and-night rhythm so often seen in foragers.😎🐺🐝🦇❤️

01/06/2021

17/04/2019

We need bees. They're the world's most important pollinator of food crops. In fact, it is estimated that one third of the food that we consume each day relies on pollination mainly by bees. But as much as we are used to seeing them buzzing with work, they need their beauty sleep as well. Recently, w...

14/04/2019

08/04/2019

03/04/2019

One of the best swarm captures
I’ve ever seen! 😎🐺🐝🦇

29/03/2019

😆🐺🐝🦇

15/03/2019

If only we could🤔🐺🐝🦇

14/03/2019

After a particularly harsh winter, with temperatures close to 70 today, I was pleasantly surprised to see our hives buzzing with activity.
😎🐺🐝🦇

28/01/2019

In West Virginia, mining jobs have been declining for years, and there have been few other options to make a living. The Appalachian Beekeeping Collective is hoping to help turn that around.

19/01/2019

The bee moves from one flower to another, continuously moving. It never settles anywhere, it never becomes stagnant. It loves the flower but never grows attachment; it remains free.

By imitateing the honey lovers, I find myself obtaining hives all over the place and never truely possessing them. The bees are not mine to keep, not mine to own, they remain free.
Here is the home of the swarm and I caught together the other week. Sitting peacefully in Chelseas garden for us to share and bask at her beauty ❤

The bee is never possessive over a flower.

The moment a bee discovers a honey flow, instead of hiding it, instead of keeping them for itself, the bee returns home, to the commune. It is non-possessive, and knows all kinds of flowers, all colors, all perfumes. Richer and richer experience.
ABUNDANCE

Above are words inspired by OSHO intermingled with my own.

18/01/2019

A honeybee leg. Bees have six legs, each covered in tiny hairs ideal for gathering the pollen that the bee needs to feed its larvae. On the left you can see, in extreme magnification, that even the hairs have hairs, and these images also give an indication of just how small each grain of pollen must be. Flowers can attract bees in various ways, including scent, the offer of nectar, and the provision of a landing ‘lip’ in the shapes of their petals.
Photograph: Gerd Guenther/Science Photo Library

13/01/2019

Beeautiful! 😎🐺🐝🦇✌🏽❤️

22/12/2018

‪Today is the winter solstice - the shortest day of the year. As the days begin to lengthen, queen bees will increase their rate of egg-laying as the colony builds up into the Spring. It may not seem likely to we humans, but the bees will start preparations for Summer from now on!‬

14/12/2018

30/11/2018

Precious words to live by...

28/11/2018

10/10/2018

Ceratina. A bee genus so common it is found on every continent except Antarctica, but with many mysteries among the >350 species.

Did you know that some Ceratina species are not solitary?

In some species, the mother bee (foundress) has a small first daughter (the dwarf eldest) who helps raise all the other young to adulthood. The dwarf eldest is called by some the "Cinderella" bee, and she will forage for pollen/nectar, build, clean, and guard the nest, and provision for her sisters/brothers. This is great help for the family.

Dr. Sarah Lawson (Sacred Heart University) talks about her research on Cinderella Ceratina bees here (audio):
http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/pollinationpodcast/2018/08/27/dr-sarah-lawson/

The Native Bee Society highly recommends this podcast series, which has had multiple native bee experts/researchers interviewed. Host Andony Melathopolous (Oregon State University) does a great job bringing in people with expertise on native bees. The Native Bee Society will be highlighting more of these great podcasts, so stay tuned.

Ceratina species are known to have direct parental care: the mother may guard the nest until the young are fully developed and emerge the next year, and she may open the cells and remove parasites. This type of inter-generational contact (mothers meet their children as larvae, pupae, and as adults) between bees is not common across the 20,000 species of bees. Some Ceratina species, as described in the podcast above, go the next step and provide alloparental care (a non-parent provides direct care). Ceratina bees typically become adults before winter, and it has been shown that the mother or Cinderella sister can feed these new adults in the fall (in the nest) to help them survive until Spring.

Ceratina are most commonly called 'small carpenter bees' and they are closely related to the 'large carpenter bees' (Xylocopa spp.). Ceratina nest in the interior of pithy stems/twigs which they excavate while the much larger Xylocopa nest in wood that they excavate. Both Genera exhibit direct inter-generational/alloparental care.

For a great paper on Ceratina, see Alloparental care in a solitary bee by Vern Lewis (Department of Biological Sciences, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, 2014)
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/62646434.pdf

Photo: (Ceratina dupla - New York) USGS BIML
www.flickr.com/photos/usgsbiml/ #
Ceratina dupla typically has 2 generations in one year.



Note that some Ceratina species (Ceratina dallatorreana, Ceratina acantha) can reproduce via thelykotous parthenogenesis (female bees are produced without insemination)!

08/10/2018

02/10/2018

29/08/2018

I’ve done this with a bumblebee 😎🐺🐝🦇✌🏽❤️

28/08/2018

Hope they stay outta Bats Hollow!😳🐺🐝🦇

22/08/2018

Pollinator: level 1000😎🐺🐝🦇❤️

10/08/2018

Summer early evening......ahhhh....

05/08/2018

04/08/2018

03/08/2018

Gotta do this someday 🤔🐺🐝🦇✌🏽❤️

31/07/2018

The Bedford Bees continue to bee
the strongest hive we’ve ever had! 😎🐺🐝🦇💪🏾

28/07/2018

Bee Friendly! 😎🐺🐝🦇❤️

19/07/2018

We are trying to get a stand of sunflowers going. I’d love to see something like this😎🐺🐝🦇

15/07/2018

Fascinating 🤔🐺🐝🦇

Queen bees mate with dozens more males than previously thought and some of these drones father more appealing future queens, according to entomologists at North Carolina State University.