The weather has been ridiculous. We are currently in a stretch of mid to upper 90s and the sheep are hot, the horses are hot, the cats are hot, Pinot's hiding in the air conditioning and I'm...trying not to cry. The bees are hot too.
Bees work very hard to keep their hives warm in the winter and cool in the summer. They do this by working together to generate heat when it's cold or try to fan it out when it's hot. There are lots of interesting articles online about this. Here is a good one.
Stella and I had the good fortune of having a small building and some trees to provide afternoon shade for our bees when they were up on the hill. Here's a link to a great Stella and the bees story and also a picture of our set up. She also had an old leaky cistern and the bees gathered water there every day. I'm not sure if I have any pictures of that.
There's no shade down here for the new hive and I had been thinking about how I would handle that. Sure, the bees could probably take care of things on their own, but why add any extra stress to an insect that is already facing so many stressors these days.
