The Bees are in Town

I'm late in posting about the most exciting thing to come to the farm since chickens: BEES! It's been over a week now with the bees. And it was an exciting weekend. Morgan, Jason, James, Neil, and Emily came up for a weekend of fun! I drove down to Vacaville and picked-up the critters to live on the farm. Three queens, each surrounded by 4lbs. of bees.

Part of the reason for such a late post was that I wanted the bees to get started before blabbering about how cool they are. The first two times I checked on the hives, 4 days after they arrived, and yesterday, I didn't notice any brood (new baby bees in larvae form), which the new hives desperately need to survive. However, I checked on them today and found brood in each of the three hives! I'm over the moon!!! This is great news.

While the great news doesn't mean the bees are completely out of the woods and on easy street, it does mean the chances of survival are much, much higher. This is because female worker bees (who do ALL the work) only live about 4-5 weeks, maybe 6; and it takes 21 days for a baby bee to go from larvae to worker. This is a pretty small window of success, dictating the survival of the entire hive. But now, with fresh brood on the way, the old bees now working their buts off will have a fresh batch of replacements. Reminds me a little of the bugs in Starship Troopers, but much cooler, of course.