For some time, I have noticed that some bees have a light colored spot on their thorax. Is it a disease? Some sort of phenotypical variation?
Today I saw several such bees, so I caught one on camera (not film anymore- on pixel?). Getting this photo almost made me feel like a National Geographic wildlife photographer. I had to wait nearly 5 minutes and took several shots.
You can see the light streak on the bee's thorax. Note, also, the light-colored pollen on her hind legs.
The answer: the bee's middle legs have a "blind spot" where they cannot reach to groom. I remembered having read about this in The Biology of the Honey Bee by Mark Winston, p.23
I presume that this forager had visited a eucalyptus tree.

Late fall inspection

I hadn't been in the hive for a while and began to get curious about what was going on in there. The bees are still active (they don't leave the hive as early as before because of the temperature) bringing in pollen and presumably nectar. Their orientation flights are smaller in number.
The pollen they are bringing in is orange; no white pollen yet. I spotted some blooms high on the eucalyptus in Capitola. I had to use binoculars to see.
Since today was a sunny, calm and (relatively) warm day, I decided to take a look inside.
Lots of honey, still. 7-8 frames full in each medium super. There was only one bee in the top super. With the top super off, one can look down and see the spheroid area that the bees mainly occupy. In the deep box, two frames with brood and larva (I did see my queen). I see some pollen but not as much as the books illustrate. I figure it's my observation that is poor, not the girls' pollen collecting and storage. No queen cells and no drones or drone cells seen.
I'm reading Tom Seeley's Honeybee ecology that Cynthia so kindly checked out for me from the UCSC Science library. It's quite interesting, but he loses me with his mathematical explanation for the altruistic behavior of the workers. One bit of information I learned was that bees seldom forage withing 500' of their hive. This is one comment for which he does not give a citation. I expect I'll write to him to ask about it. Naturally, this means that my bees won't get anything from our yard, a disappointing thought.
Planning ahead- I want to divide my hive. The books and online sources say that one should move the new hive at least 2 miles away. This is something I would find difficult to do and I wonder how important it is to do so. I will be barraging my mentors with questions regarding dividing hives.

Heavy winds

Strong winds were blowing two days ago. I had read that the tops of hive can be blown off, so I went out and put a stone on top. The girls all stayed home because of the wind, but today they are back out. They are bringing in a bright yellow pollen. Soon the eucalyptus will be in bloom (I think already there is a little). That pollen is white, so I'll keep an eye out for that.
Every morning there are a few dead bees on the porch, but a few days ago, there were over a dozen. I saw that two had pollen on their legs (you can see one in the center). That meant that they had been foraging, and I immediately thought of insecticide exposure. That is one thing that can wipe out the colony, so I was worried. Nothing could be done except wait. As noted above, they are buzzing and apparently healthy today and no unusual increase in bee corpses.
I spotted a robber bee trying to get in, so I replaced the entrance reducer.