Anyone know what this flower is? I found it in a shady spot the bees love it. It grows in low shrubby form.

PS. This plant has been IDed as "Spreading Dogbane". Thank you "The Bee House"

This is Common Vipers Bugloss "Echium vulgare", I love the colors on this plant, it has a semi-thistle like fuzz that can irritate some one who is sensitive. The pollen from this plant is blue!

Sumac, bees love this stuff, not sure of the species, apparently their are many including poison ivy.

Common Milkweed, "Asclepias syriaca".

White Clover, "Trifolium repens", stuff is everywhere.

Alsike Clover, "Trifolium hybridum", apparently this is NOT a hybrid, its name is derived from a town in Sweden, according to wikipedia.com.

Red Clover, "Trifolium pratense".

Sweet White clover, "Melilotus albus", this isn't a true clover, its a legume.

Birds Vetch, "Vicia cracca", stunning purple flowers!

Bird's-Foot Trefoil, "Lotus corniculatus", also known as Bird's-Foot Deervetch.

Yesterday I had a bit of a scare, I found a dead queen bee outside hive #8, the workers probably hauled her corpse outside while cleaning. I checked today and found open brood and capped brood, AND a jet black queen, now I'm scratching my head wondering what happened. When I saw the queen I put everything back and closed up the hive. So I don't know if there were eggs, this hive had been progressing much slower then the smaller hive right next to it so I thought maybe they had superseded their queen but the math doesn't work out, open brood puts new eggs under eight days ago, a queen from just hatched egg is about fourteen days. If I am mistaken and didn't seen open brood just caped brood and the queen I saw was new and un-mated, this might work since worker brood is twenty days to emerge, with the queen being sixteen days. At any rate I have a queen, I hope it was a supersedure then this hive might pick up the pace, basically the bees are re-queening themselves because the old one was used up.

I started making more boxs since I still need thirty for my ten hives, probably more, gota start somewhere though. This time I am making them 257mm tall (about 10") since I can get boards that are 11-12" wide I wont have to make boards, and I am box jointing the corners. My butt joints are not holding up to well, I think the wood I bought wasn't dry enough so it started to warp a bit, plus the box joints are prettier. I'm glad I didn't make thirty of the larger size right off the bat, also the shorter boxs will be a bit lighter when full of honey and the frames will be easier to manipulate since they are shorter. Each frame now has an area of about 11" by 9" inside still a lot deeper then deep langstroth frames. I think this should be deep enough for the bees to build nice natural brood comb.

Hive #5 was almost drawing comb in the second box when I replaced it with this shorter one, just in time.

Here you can see one of my foundation-less warre frames from hive #5, this one was blank when I moved them into this hive from a tbh on the 5th, most of the nine frames are drawn out now, not bad for ten days.

Some birds vetch I found in my "Bee Garden"
My patch of sweet yellow clover I planted late last year is going to flower this year!
A close up of sweet yellow clover buds.

Zombies no more! All three queens I put in are laying and fat and hopefully happy, I checked yesterday to make sure they were laying even though all three seemed to be accepted sometimes the bees change their minds.

#5 has yet to move into its new box they are however crawling all over it, it hasn't been very long since I added this box though and they still have another frame to draw out in the first box.

Our clover is in full swing, its hard to see below the grass, it's defiantly there though, the girls are bringing back loads of muddy green pollen (clover), my sweet yellow clover has buds so it will bloom soon as well. Sweet clover seems late this year.

Well royal jelly at least, I let my three queens out of their cages today, their new sisters seemed very happy since they had been working on this ever since I put the cages in. The first one was kinda slow and hungry looking, I hope she makes it, the second was nicely fed and lively and the last queen was a bit thin but went to work right away as though nothing happened. I will check them again in a few days to see if they are laying eggs, I am planning on moving them into warre hives in a couple weeks tops.

I also checked up on hive #5 since they were close to full when I moved them on the 5th, I was surprised to see they had drawn out one whole frame from empty in only a couple days, they also seem to have filled out all of the frame space left over from changing over from the TBH, this means about one third of each frame, thats about 4 frames plus reorienting too their new environment all in about six days. I'm excited about this kind of speed since it seems faster then my old tb hives.
I finished building ten lids, bases, stands and quilts, I also fixed an issue I found out about when I was trying to place the inside square of cloth directly on top of the hive. So I'm almost done this part of my bee project, ten hives doesn't look like much on paper but it sure seems to take a lot of work to build, fortunately I love building them, I have even started thinking about building a few hives to sell.

Well these queens have really put the miles on their odometers, they came all the way from California? Some where south of the border where the bee season is longer, they came to me for the express purpose of resurrecting my three zombie hives. A fellow beek kindly delivered them on his way to his own apiary. We put them in yesterday, all three colonies appeared to have at one point had a drone layer, whether a queen or laying worker only the bees know. All three colonies seemed very exited to see the new queens in their little cages, they moved over to her as soon as we placed her cage on one of the top bars. I was advised that one might be able to tell if they would accept her just by watching how they react to her from this brief contact, from the looks of things they will get along just fine. Tomorrow I will check in on them and release the queens if they haven't been released by their new subjects already.

Yesterday I was able to move my second colony into their new home. This hive was a bit larger then the first I was still a little disappointed with its size, only about three bars had brood. I'm not going to complain to hard though since they are queen right having survived my missteps. They had some honey stores from our resent dandelion flow that I had to remove (honey comb is much to soft and heavy to fix safely on a frame that is to tall) so in the evening I put one of my feeders on with a litre of sugar, just to get them through our current dearth, and to compensate them for my abuse of their home. Robbing activity was sky high, I figure the dandelions quit all at once.
Two days ago it was hot and I needed to work in my workshop I left the windows open, this time I removed the screens to let the occasional bee out, when I come back I find a crazy buzzing frenzy all over the shop! You see I have been storing some mostly empty comb in the shop until I could render it down, you would think they had found Valhalla from the looks of things. Anyway big mistake so I put the screens back on, propped at a slight angle to let the bees wanting out find the open crack, the ones wanting in can't figure this out as quick, they keep trying to fly through the screen. This removed 98% of the paradise seeking cuties then I shook of the screens for the last 2%, problem solved, I also moved the comb inside.