In winter the bees cuddle up and take turns doing ab crunches in order to stay warm. We wrapped them with insulation to help out. I expected that not looking in would be quite tricky, but when I thought it would be like cruelly pulling all the blankets off them and would make them grumpy, I found it easy to leave them to their mysteries.
I borrowed an infra-red camera and today we unwrapped Rachael's hive from its silver winter jacket. Looks like there is a nice warm cluster of bees at the sunnier end of the hive. Though, to be fair, this close to the solstice there is only sun on the bee coop first thing in the morning.
We say "winter" but there have been a lot of calm days with 14°C highs on which I've been seeing a good number of foragers coming and going. Lately it's often been with almost white pollen (possibly from the Roy Street magnolia trees just down the hill), although the ones coming in when I wanted a photo just now must have been doing something else. The porch is still cute, however, and I think they like it.
While the hive was unwrapped we quickly peeked in the windows and were pleased to see honey on the outside frames and a few bees working there too, so maybe these had found some early nectar.
Picture This: https://youtu.be/QbdCpi4qTNY
by Blondie
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