Grey Skies and Water

Today the weather is overcast and breezy, the temperature has not gotten over 16C. The current reading is 14C. Traffic today has been steady but rather low volume.

The bees need a safe source of water. They had been going to the stream, but Danna took away the rocks that made the slow moving part and set up an aquarium with rocks and moss for them to drink, and it is a pretty popular spot:

the key is having something safe to stand on while drinking, and this bee drinking fountain is perfect in that regard. however, the bees have also been going to a bowl that was left out for the birds, and it has proved a dangerous place

I fished several bees out of the water. i put them on the rock in the middle to dry out, hoping theyd make it back home none the worse for wear, but the two on the rock pictured above just stayed there moving very slowly -i think its too cold for  them to recover very quickly from a dunking like that.  I since dumped the water out of that bowl, but of course theres nothing to be done about the many dangerous puddles all around that a bee might fall into. Bees are not good swimmers.

Not to linger too much on danger and death, but there was a dead worker right outside the hive entrance this morning, then several hours later there was another. I dont know at what rate bees normally die off but i thought i might mention it here just in case, because they were lying on the board literally right outside the door.

i also witnessed a couple drones buzzing very loudly and moving back and forth in the air very rapidly outside the door before going inside. what are they doing when they leave the hive? my guess is they are looking for flying queens.