Our beehive is just a wooden box with a flat roof…
…Exactly 10 feet away from our bay windows. It’s quite close to the
house and it’s never stopped me from mowing the lawn around it, in
spring and summer last year, because it’s full of nice bees…
At the moment, in our part of the world, it’s winter, which means that
the temperature rarely goes above 50 F. By the way, what I call our part
of the world is the suburb of Paris, close to Versailles, which you
have probably heard about.
Needless to say that at this time of the year, our bees are all inside
the hive, keeping the queen warm and eating what we left for them after
the harvest and the candy we added, just in case there wasn’t enough.
So we watch other garden creatures.
Throughout the winter, we hang feeders for the birds, with sunflower seeds, nyger seeds, peanuts, fat balls… we have regular visitors, like 3 or 4 species of tits (your chickadees) our goldfinch (slightly smaller than yours, with less yellow but some red on its face and orange on its breast) common sparrows, starlings… Should I tell you about our robin, the size of a sparrow but always ready to defend what he considers as his part of the patio against any other bird in sight? What about the hive then? Well, sometimes, when the temperature rises a little, we can see one or two scouts going out or coming back, but nothing else. Except at the end of December 2017, the only day when we had over 55 F! Bird feeding was in full swing, it was what I call « frenzy time at the feeders » and suddenly the bees were out as well, after being cooped up for a few weeks, they had to come out!
As the hive is just half way between the feeders…
…And the bushes the birds spring out of, the activity was fantastic to watch! The tits were zig zagging to avoid head-on collisions, some bees were hovering over the seeds, fortunately, they all managed to sort themselves out without any casualties. The show was so great that I’m thinking of feeding the birds longer than usually. Normally, the feeders are put away when there are insects all over the garden and the birds can fend for themselves. I’ m really looking forward to next spring! GET STARTED IN BEEKEEPING WITH BEEOPIC