Twitchy is Good.

When Kirk supplied these bees he mentioned they were twitchy. That is his term of bees that want to do things their way and do not care for human interference. These are definitely twitchy, not Africanized, just twitchy. I have been stung on the head because I was too close to the hive and did not have my bee hat on. They do come and check me out if I am too close or trying to work on the hive. The head stings were because they got caught in my hair, not because they were attacking me or I would have a lot more bees up there.

That being said, these are very hard working bees. I had planned on doing an inspection today but when I went out they were very busy. I had my Droid phone in hand and decided to try my hand at using the video camera. It cannot zoom or anything but it takes good video. You can clearly see how busy these guys were. They did not need me to be poking around the hive so the inspection has been put off. This type of fervent activity is not at all unusual for this group of bees. They are at work constantly. This is not the Orientation Flight activity or bees robbing. All the bees are checked before they are allowed in. I do want to see how much work they have done since I was end at the first of the month. They are constantly bringing pollen and I have no idea where they are getting it this time of the year. Twitchy but very hard working, as far as I am concerned, twitchy is good.
(Just remember to suit up and use smoke when needed).


The video above was taken on the LA coastal area on Nov 20 at 2PM which was a bright sunny day even though it was not really warm. As noted the bees were very active.

This video was taken the next day which started with bright sun shine but it was overcast and 5-10 degrees cooler at noon. Cooler or not the twitchy bees were still working very hard. Look at all the pollen they bring in. I had the camera about a foot from the hive opening and dared not get closer since they are the Twitchy Bees. This is another video off the Droid which does not have a zoom so I have to reach in slowly and be ready to move away if they request that.
. It is in the low 60's after noon in LA, we are almost freezing... LOL

For anyone in the Los Angeles Area, the next meeting of the Backwards Beekeepers will be Sunday Dec 20, 2009. Click on the group name for details, there are directions on the group pages, look on the right side of the page. The meeting date may be old but the directions are good.