Bee beach

[bixaorellana]

I have a very wide clay casserole that serves as a bird bath. It's so popular with the birds, especially at this time of year, that I keep another smaller one next to it to make sure there's water and room for all.

There is a grindstone setting in the middle of the casserole to give the smaller birds a place to stand and bathe. It's extremely hot and windy right now, and I'm not even trying to keep the birdbath full of water.

I went out to check it a little while ago and was amazed to find the hole in the grindstone full of bees. Even after I went back and forth to pour in water, they completely ignored me, jostling each other for position at the water hole. As I stood there with my face right up to the bees, then with the camera snapping away, they simply continued to arrive and fly away and to be replaced by new water seeking brethren.

The birdbath has always been used by the wasps, who also don't fly away when I'm there filling it, but the bee invasion is new.
I put out a tuna tin filled with water and with a sponge topped with sugar floating in it, but so far I've only seen one bee partake.

This is the actual size of the grindstone hole and the bees.

[Deleted]

I am enthralled with this,and I have looked at a half a dozen times because of. First off,the aesthetic of the bees going to this millstone,which I am in love with,(and want one of,always have... ).secondly,I am so curious as to how deep it goes? Where,or can you see are they amassing to presumably build their hive or have already?(sounds as though it is in progress,but,bees move in fast after they've determined where they are going to hide and protect their queen.)
I would love to hear more on this.
Great pics and commentary.Thanks.

Our beekeeping project btw, which I'll post on when a little further along in the BEEKEEPING thread,is still in progress. The bees are just coming out of their winter dormancy as we speak and will soon to be ready to go into the hive and set up soon,soon. I saw a few this morning and am monitoring closely.

[bixaorellana]

It's hard to see in the middle picture, as it's looking straight down, but the hole is only @2" deep. The bottom of the stone is flat, but at the hole portion seems to be slightly off the floor of the birdbath, so there is very little water at the bottom of it.

They seem to like going right to the bottom and hanging upside down to drink. In fact, the whole bee/birdbath thing out there is sort of a microcosm of the smart ones in a population surviving and evolving.

When I first noticed them out there, one was drowning in the small birdbath, where there's nowhere for a bee to stand. And when I added water, I was careful to pour it slowly on part of the grindstone, so that there was moisture and surface tension water. Only a few bees partook of that, which would seem easier than turning themselves into siphoning devices, although perhaps that's more efficient. The same with the sugared sponge. You'd think it would have instantly been covered with bees, but it seems they need to learn what it is.

What I find so interesting about that is how it is similar to the way birds act around here. In the US, if you put up a bird feeder, you practically can't make it back into the house before the feeder is well and truly flocked. I have never seen a feeder put up by anyone but me the whole time I've lived here. And when I put one up, it was completely ignored. I had to go through a process of putting seed underneath it for a while, and practically applauded when the first bird figured out what the feeder was for.

[Deleted]

How could you have failed to notice that the local bees were so thirsty?

[spindrift]

It's so kind of you to care for the birds and bees....I do the same myself. They obviously don't see you as a threat when you approach them. Anyone who would give them water would not want to kill them. I look forward to more pictures.

[Deleted]

I misread this,I thought they were going in there to make a hive...
(Where my head is at ).
Still and all,very cool and just as fascinating. Are their little tongues hanging out with thirst as they jet in?
(The hive might be real nearby!)

[bixaorellana]

I would love to find the hive! And yes, I do think their little tongues are hanging out. They weren't very cooperative photo subjects, and I never managed to get a good picture of how many would crowd into the water hole at one time.

I don't understand why they are only now appearing en masse like this, unless it has something to do with Spring. I've also noticed far fewer wasps. Usually the tiny black ones were always around the water, with a good representation of their big brown cousins.

Spindrift, you can't imagine how un-aggressive these Mexican bees are. They're always buzzing around candy and pastry stands and ice cream stands. You have to brush them aside to make your selection, and more than once I've found a blissfully drowned bee in my ice cream.

[bixaorellana]

After talking about bees learning above, I stumbled across this article this morning:
www.livescience.com/animals/bees-recognize-faces-100204.html

[spindrift]

Bixa - I find the idea of friendly bees very charming. I am inordinately (K -?) fond of them.

[bixaorellana]

Aren't bees only aggressive if they've been disturbed?

Here are some pictures and a video from yesterday. You'll see that the sugar-soaked sponge has been discovered by more bees and by the wasps. I was thrilled to capture some of them with the proboscis extended to suck up the sugary water. A few of them seemed to use it to sort of hook themselves to the side of the tin.

The noise in the video is from the very strong winds we're having.

[bixaorellana]

Here is an educational video about honeybees. The more I watch these creatures visiting my porch, the more I want to know about what they do, where they go, and how they live.

[bixaorellana]

This was taken yesterday. Even though there is ample space, the bees tend to cluster together, even crawling over each other. I want to find out what this and other behaviors mean.

[Deleted]

These are amazing and fascinating photos Bixa!
I too,am fascinated by these behaviors. There are a couple of really excellent books out there on the subject. I am reserving much of the stuff I intend to explore in the BEEKEEPING thread,as soon as we get the hives out,which is due to happen probably next week.(keeping fingers crossed!).
(I realize this thread is not about beekeeping,but,much of the information crosses over,and I don't want to confuse or repeat).

[bixaorellana]

I'm looking forward to your beekeeping adventures. Reading and being able to ask questions about how a real person keeps a hive in a city backyard could be the impetus for several of us to try the same thing.

In the meantime, I want to urge everyone to read A Hive of Bees, by John Crompton. It's a wonderful, sprightly book that will appeal to anyone with an interest in nature. Really, I like it so much I am going to put in on my wildcard list in The Library.

Here is an review from Time Magazine, December 1958:

A HIVE OF BEES (180 pp.)—John Crompton—Doubleday ($3.75).

The busy little bee that improves each shining hour is a slouch compared to a great many natural-history writers. Such a one is Britain's John Crompton, who has proved once again that a true passion—even a love of man for insect—is the substance of literature. Displaying a talent that recalls Rachel (The Sea Around Us) Carson, Apiarist Crompton has in the past written engagingly on the ant, the hunting wasp and the spider. But evidently the bee is his true poetic faith—and the bee in his bonnet is as good as a sonnet.

Unlike Maurice Maeterlinck, whose The Life of the Bee used the insects in part as a flight vehicle for his own soarings into the wild extramundane blue yonder, dedicated Beekeeper Crompton lets the bees buzz for themselves. He follows them, with cries of pride and lamentation, from their hexagonal cradles to their grave in the grass.

Boring Man. In a sense, A Hive of Bees is the story of a conversion, for Author Crompton records his emergence from the dark night of being a bee hater (he had been repeatedly stung). Although he adds little to the available scientific literature of the bees, he gives an exciting picture of what it must be for a man to have a hive and to know just what happens inside. The bees, says Crompton, are dedicated to Mom (who breeds incessantly), but they have solved certain Oedipal problems by permitting only one mother to exist within their waxen skyscrapers, and by keeping spare mothers in reserve in sealed closets.

Man bores bees, and bees will do much to keep this inept and sweaty creature away from the true business of production—honey. They will sting, and when they do, Author Crompton insists, the bees know that they give their lives for a good cause. The most successful career woman in the insect world converts her useless ovipositor into a weapon of aggression—and self-destruction. Only the queen bee has it made. Not for nothing did Napoleon have his robes embroidered with the bee symbol: that belated Beelzebub knew who was Lord of the Flies.

Social Security. Although it is about bees, this is a human book. The sensitive might almost weep as Crompton tells how he has been obliged to silence diseased hives with Cyanogas, and heard the orchestral voice of his insect friends shut off "as if a hand had been placed over an echoing string." And he follows the worn old worker bee to her last rendezvous with social security. Her wings are torn; her last load of nectar is nothing much; she falls short of the hive. "Just at the time the youngsters at the hive are coming out for school, her grip relaxes and she falls into the wet grass below."

No one, after reading this beautiful beeography, can again regard a spoonful of honey as merely a convenient way of disposing of a slice of toast. And only a captious reader will complain of sedulous Apiarist Crompton's unholier-than-thou attitude toward the bee. The bee is better than me, seems to be his buzz.

[Deleted]

What a beautiful treatise on the book. Yes,I definitely want to read this.
Thanks.

[bixaorellana]

Just found this video online. It's tons better than my video, but shows exactly the same activity.
Watch to the end for some basic but surprising (to me, anyway) facts.

[Deleted]

I think bees are just becoming lazy. We need to get them back to work!

[Deleted]

It is fascinating to see this report again. I have been paying a lot more attention to bees lately, especially after all of those news reports of their declining population.

[htmb]

When I was growing up, my father always worked with beekeepers who would leave their bee boxes in the citrus groves to help pollinate the trees. We always had lots of fresh orange blossom honey at home, and a real treat would be when the bee keepers would give us a large piece of honey comb to bring home. It was fascinating to look at the structure of the comb, and to suck out the leftover honey.

Now it seems beehives being brought into fields and orchards in the U.S. have often been transported back and forth across the country several times, rather than be kept in the same area. I read somewhere recently that there are scientists who believe the decline in population of honey bees is related to this practice.

[bixaorellana]

That would make sense, wouldn't it?

Not only would it be debilitatingly stressful for the bees, but as efficient as tourists bringing home new strains of flu.