Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Nectar Sources

We pulled honey from our hive with the Hawaiian queen. Our Hawaiian queen (and her bees) are lighter than our Russian and split queen. Going along with the theme...the Hawaiian honey is lighter than our Russian honey. Of course, this has nothing to do with the coloring of the bees, but we thought it was interesting. All this means is the Hawaiians got a good part of their nectar from a source that is different than the Russians. Another HUGE difference...when we took the honey frames from the Hawaiians, they were very chill about it. Just picture them peeking out of the hive and looking at us like, "Hey!!!, what's up??" No anger, no chasing, no increase in hive sound. These bees are just really calm and relaxed. The Russians however....well, they were another story. They were almost homicidal! They chased us down the driveway and hung out by the garage....1 even chased me onto the back porch. The Russians didn't give up easily either. We found out they have very good memories because a couple of them hung out for about 30 minutes reminding us how unhappy they were with us! It seemed that every time we thought it was safe to remove our veils, 1 would be there to start "bumping" us in the head. Don't get me wrong...we love our Russians and they are hearty, productive bees. They are just a bit more temperamental. We've been told the Hawaiian queen may not tolerate our winter well. As chill as she and her bees are, we are certainly hoping we heard wrong and she comes through the winter with flying colors!