It’s early November when the clouds parted and the sun popped out. The day started warming and the bees started flying. It had been overcast and rainy for about a week, so I guess the bees were anxious to get out, but I was surprised to see so much pollen coming back in. The Warre hive had bees flying but not returning with the ‘gobs’ of pollen like the log hive…could it be because I’m feeding sugar to the Warre hive and not to the log hive?
I have no idea what kind of pollen they are bringing back. Nothing is blooming in the garden but rosemary and borage and I don’t see many bees on it. Is this normal behavior this late in the year? Comments are appreciated.
After reading the comment from Emily Heath, I started looking around the area for ivy. To my surprise it was growing all over the place. It’s one of those things that you don’t see until someone points it out to you. I had to get close to see the blossoms and that’s when I saw the bees. I hope some of them came from my hives.
Adventures in Natural Beekeeping 
They are doing it in California too. This is a total guess by an amateur, but I notice through the observation window in one of my Top Bar hives that they are not clustering in cold (what we call cold) mornings. In fact , they were out foraging yesterday on a chilly morning when the hive was still in the shade.
Lots of comb full of honey and they are still bringing in nectar. But they seem to have stopped building comb.
I just read in Wyatt Mangum’s new book on Top Bar Beekeeping that he weighs some of his hives to get a reading on the amount of honey in there.
I’ve done that by lifting each end of a hive but last week I tried it with a bathroom scale I bought at the local hardware store. I plan to weigh them every 15 days as we go into winter.
Two sunny weeks when the Eucalyptus bloom in January/ February
and if the hive shows a weight gain and it’s full of comb I’ll take some out from far end, away from the brood. Then weigh them to see if times get too lean before the unpredictable arrival of spring.
Uh Oh…. Just broke the scale. Got to get a heavy duty model.
That’s got to be quite an operation to weigh a top bar hive, what with the legs being apart. You’d have to balance a board across the scale that holds up two legs at a time. Hope you have help with that! 🙂
Pollen coming in is a good thing, they will be taking advantage of any warm days to bring it in and store it ready for the early spring when the queen’s egg laying picks up but pollen is in short supply.
Ivy is a big late pollen and nectar source in the UK, though not sure if that’s true where you are. Your autumn must be warmer if borage is still about.
Thanks for the tip about the ivy. I waited for a warm sunny day, found some ivy in the sun, and shot some video of bees working it. I wouldn’t have looked if you hadn’t mentioned it. It might even have been English ivy. 🙂
Yay, great that you tracked down the bees!
I added the ivy blossom video to this blog thanks to you.
It’s a fantastic video, I especially like the way you ringed the orange pollen for us. Thanks for sharing it.