When looking inside a beehive I feel like I’m a guest in nature’s cathedral.
The colors of pollen reflect the variety of local flowers the bees have been visiting. It reminds me of stained glass.
Bees have fermented pollen to make bee bread for millions of years. Bee bread unlocks more nutrition than pollen alone. Not bad for a creature with a brain the size of a sesame seed.
Bees need flowers to get that protein rich pollen.
What you might see as “weeds on your lawn”, bees call family dinner.
There are bee killers inside the hive too. The Varroa mite to bees is the equivalent of a bloodsucking tick the size of a backpack to us.
Imagine having a disease spreading parasite attached to you for your entire life. Sounds like a b-grade horror movie.
The bees use propolis to seal gaps in their hive, it’s like the skin of the colony superorganism, and we break it every time we open them up.
It’s like a minor surgery and the hive won’t get back to normal for a couple of days.
What’s shocking is that many beekeepers I have spoken to would tell me they would inspect a hive, find it to be healthy, and two or three weeks later come back and find the hive had died.
What happened in that in-between time?
Are even beekeepers not paying enough attention to the bees?