#bee swarming

[adragonsoulants]

Forgot to share this crazy happenstance of events. So my family and I keep honey bee's, last year I developed an allergy to their stings but that's not important to this story.

Gonna put a break here but there's pics of bees swarming below the cut if you're interested!

So we have a little homemade green house out by our beehives and I was in there planting some gourd seeds that finally started to sprout ( 2/10 so far 😭) and while I was out there I was like "why do the bees sound like they've been getting louder?" Figured it was just me and didn't pay much mind.

Then I turn to leave the green house and see loads of flying around!! Startling! Caught them right as they were starting to swarm. I go in to talk with a family member about it but we've only had this happen once before and we didn't know till it was too late and haven't had a hive make it over the winter since. I decided to head back out and see what they're doing now a few mins later and sure enough! They were in fact swarming and had clustered on a nearby tree right in easy reach for us!

They were really weighing down those branches, I think one cluster fell off because of the weight haha.

Sadly in the rush of things I left my phone inside while changing so I wasn't able to get any more photos of the process but it's a pretty simple one.

I'll try to explain it!

So basically we go grab an empty hive and put it under the clusters and just shake them off into the box haha.

If we had a little thing to put the queen we would go looking for her first (though we've never been good at that) so that we can be sure she got in. It kinda looks like those plastic hair clips with the claws, but like to hold a bee haha.

We know the queen is in the hive once other worker bees literally start marching into the box, highly recommend looking up a video of it, it's wild they just form a line walking right in. Other bees will stick their butts in the air and use their wings to fan out pheromones for other bees to find the nest.

After we get most the bees in we close up the top, we did put in some frames with some honey on them to give them a little boost and entice them to stay ;)

During the whole process the bees are surprisingly chill! Swarming bees (assuming they aren't of the killer bee variety) are! They have no brood or honey to protect at this point and are really exposed.

We had gone and checked our other hives as well as the one this came from to see if any others were about to swarm and they are all remarkably chill as well, we suspect whatever pheromones the swarming hive gave off was also affecting the other hives.

Oh and to add the hive that had swarmed had already FILLED with honey?! ITS NOT EVEN JUNE!! We gave them an extra honey medium and even took two frames out of their brood deeps that were just honey and scored them to uncap them so that the honey would be recollected by all the hives. And we replaced them with empty frames for them to hopefully put brood on this time.

Also the photo above, they aren't trying to establish a home there. They're collecting there to wait for scouts to come back and tell them about potential new locations for their home. Figured I should add that.

Also when a hive swarms they more like splitting into 2 hives. The one that leaves has the current queen that they've been training and getting ready for this. And the old hive is in the process of making a new queen with premade queen cells and they feed the larva a very rich honey, often called Royal Jelly, to turn what would just be a worker into a queen.

These little bugs really plan this shit out.

So anyways that evening we went to check on them and make sure they were still in the box and sure enough they're still hanging around!

You might also notice that doesn't look like a typical wooden hive box. It's made of styrofoam so it's lighter than the traditional wooden nest while also being like 10x more insulating.

It gets pretty cold in the winter here with a lot of temperature fluctuations, lot of melt and freeze, and some strong northern winds so it helps them out in the winter.

Thanks for reading this word dump!

[botanyshitposts]

ah to be a fat bumblebee in a pollinator garden or restored prairie…..

[lowpolyanimals]

Frog from Bee Swarm Simulator (Roblox)

[puddinzducky]

hello... do u perchance have any bee swarm simulator stamps... or any food themed ones!!!!!

how abt.... BOTH !!

[jesting-bug]

been playin alot of bee swarm simulator as of late! So durin a roadtrip I made this little doodle. You neighbors get art from an actually art program this time, enjoy!!

Transparent version below V

[one-time-i-dreamt]

I was making a sandwich but the lid to the peanut butter jar disappeared and I had to go through Roblox and I saw people illegally printing money in Bee Swarm Simulator. I never played Bee Swarm Simulator.

[spriinglocked]

i love these games

[banzack]

various bee swarm stamps! i will do more bees if requested!

[m00ntunaart]

when I getchu’ cobb when I getchu’ cobb when I getchu’ cobb

(Basically a depiction of what my mind looks like when I’m working on my art)

[eddiediazismyhusband]

if you want eddie to fuck a priest then go read eddie/priest fanfiction on ao3, but leave it at that

eddie does not need another relationship before buddie canon regardless of what some of yall seem to think about queer people somehow needing to be infantilized and needing to date around before settling down which is not true at all and i (as a queer person) am tired of seeing that narrative that someone’s queer realization has to be through a stepping stone relationship

(also this notion just completely saying fuck you to the character development of eddie’s insanely demi coded self)

but of course knowing tim minear and his proclivity to infusing random ass kinks into queer ships he may be unable to pass up the opportunity to profit off the priest kink of it all and force us to watch as he writes a knock off fleabag rather than just committing to the chemistry and subtext he himself has infused into his work for 6 years🙄😒

[number1cloudspirefan]

*There would be distant footsteps and Troy would push the door open.*

LINT!

-Troy

Troy! I'm so glad you're okay dude!

[adragonsoulants]

Guess what,

The bees swarmed again today

And of course I only found them incidentally while checking on my garden after a rain.

This was just one cluster and probably like half the size of the one from this spring. Real wild they were swarming, didn't think they did that this time of year, it's usually a late spring / fall thing.

They were probably about 112-15 feet up in the pine tree, we barely had the means to set up another hive box for them, just wooden hives left at this point and they're all pretty old and worn at this point.

We also had to use our tractor to lift the box up to them and then my mom just like scooped them in with her hand. I would have done this part but I'm allergic now and any risk of me getting stung we can remove we try to hah. But they were SUPER chill, even poking them directly they hardly reacted. I ended up poking them later lol.

It was a kinda funny ordeal.

For some reason they clustered on the back of the box by the lid, I was worried the queen was on the outside of the box there. I think that the lid just didn't fit well and there were gaps and that where the pheromones were strongest n what not.

Bees doing lil bee things

Might be hard to see but this was the branch that they were clustered on and we noticed this large part of the branch that just looked chewed up. Wonder if this is normal for clustering bees or if maybe that damaged part of the branch was why they were clustering there. 🤷

This species of honey bee is clearly doing well, two swarms (that we know of lol) this year after previous years of not even having a colony make the winter.

[leglimh]

dont slip man

[rafora]

i'm thinking

[ifitwasediblewouldyoueatit]

Swarm of bees

[to-be-a-dreamer]

I talked about this in the tags of a reblog but I need to expand on this because my brain is vibrating and it's all Hank Freaking Green's fault. This will not be coherent at all just roll with it.

I don't know if it was on purpose or not but the scene where The Fix and Pasha were flirting by exchanging fun facts did so so much for the Fix's character in my mind because like. Pasha is the only character we've seen who had a positive response to the Fix's fun facts right off the bat. (Presumably the orphans at the Home for Wayward Interests had positive responses but I'm specifically talking about on-screen reactions.)

The targets that the Fix talks to are so terrified by his facts that they just disintegrate on the spot. The DA is mildly annoyed at best by them. Even the other Prefrontal PIs are freaked out or confused by them at first. It takes a couple episodes for them to come around to his fun facts, especially after "half the bones in your body" one. It takes them some time to realize that that's just how The Fix communicates his thoughts and ideas. He uses his fun facts as a way to connect and bond with friends just as much as he uses them to intimidate his targets.

But Pasha is the first person we see and, presumably, one of the only people in The Fix's life to hear one of his facts and not only immediately accept and understand it to be a method of conversation, but to also respond with a fact of their own and have an entire conversation with The Fix in the way he feels most comfortable.

We've seen so many times that The Fix goes out of his way to try and appear less threatening or even avoid people altogether because he knows most people are scared of him because of his appearance. It takes him so long to convince the other Prefontal PIs that he's really not going to hurt Conrad (compare how quickly Dan is a part of the group and how his motives are never questioned despite how vocal he is about hating Conrad and being all too eager to turn him over to the police and/or have him murdered to how long it takes The Fix) and he doesn't even seem hurt by the idea that all these people think he would murder a child when he's clearly a very kind and loving person, especially to children.

He's just. Come to terms with the fact that everyone's first impression of him will be this big intimidating presence who enjoys hurting people. But he's not. He's just passionate about his job, like everyone else in the city. It just happens to be that his job is to keep Elias focused, which means letting go of the butterfly tails. When he's tasked with eliminating someone who doesn't seem like they need to be eliminated, he immediately stops and questions the case. As far as I can tell, he doesn't like to kill people, he doesn't do it for fun. He does it because that's his job, literally the only thing he was made to do. But he's come to accept that most people will always be afraid of him because of that job.

And then he meets Pasha, who immediately accepts his form of communication without question or confusion. Who isn't afraid or intimidated by him. Who isn't just entertaining his fun facts but is actively engaging and returning with her own. She is the first person (who isn't a child, who is the Fix's peer) that The Fix could talk to without having to explain himself. The first person who wasn't afraid or confused or annoyed by the way he expresses himself.

Like. I dunno I imagine it would almost be like moving to a foreign country as a child and not being able to speak in your native language because every time you do people are suspicious of you or annoyed that you aren't speaking the local language or just plain don't understand you, even if they're trying to be kind about it. And it's harder to explain yourself and express your thoughts in this new language but you learn and you adapt because it's the only way to survive. Then you meet someone who speaks your language. Someone who allows you to speak freely and for the first time you can actually express yourself fully and easily. And they're speaking back to you in the language you think in and for once you don't have to translate everything before you say it out loud and after you hear it. I think that would feel so freeing.

So yeah, I'm guessing that scene was supposed to be a silly goofy one-off gag that's just funny and cute but it genuinely means so much to me. Truly I don't get people who say The Fix isn't as deep or interesting as the other characters he is FACINATING to me and this isn't even touching on his relationship with Conrad or what he might be feeling after learning Ichabod was Pasha's brother. (If it gets revealed that Ichabod was one of The Fix's first hits I will lose it.)

Thank you for coming to my late-night nonsense ramblings I hope I was mildly entertaining