Bill's Bee Movie

The past two summers a neighbor has kept 24 of his hives on our property most of the summer. We have come to enjoy the free honey in the late fall, especially the Meadowfoam honey - that stuff is so good and so different tasting from other honeys we get locally. He comes and goes, checking on the bees each week until one day in the late fall when they leave to go live in California with the Almonds. Too bad Filberts don't need bees.


The bees have water at the hives but apparently not enough. Our large plastic dog bowl is always swarming with thirsty bees, looking for something to drink. They can easily drink a couple gallons a day and luckily for them, the faucet above the drinking bowl leaks. The water causes another problem for the bees though - a lot of them are not good swimmers. So Karen and I carefully place large sticks in the water, strategically so the bees can climb up on the stick from most anywhere in the bowl, dry off and fly away. The sticks kept disappearing though or being found a few feet from the bowl. We kept accusing the other of removing the stick until the night I spied the raccoon drinking from the same bowl. Aha! I'm pretty sure he had to use his paws to drink - they seem to do everything with their paws - and the consensus is that she was the one removing the stick almost every night.

I took a video of the bees and posted it to Google.