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.
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