RE: Where is everyone/bees

Yep could be. Certainly the box is too small to hold much of a hive. It
is visible but not exactly easy to get to, so we didn't crawl under the
shrubs to take a close look. But when they were active we always saw a
few around the opening, now there's nothing.
However there is no shortage of bees in the yard anyway, the rabbitbrush
is blooming now and it was crawling with them. I love to listen to the
hum of a lot of bees.

Cyndi


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-gardenchat@hort.net [o*@hort.net] On
Behalf Of TeichFauna@aol.com
Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2008 10:28 AM
To: gardenchat@hort.net
Subject: Re: [CHAT] Where is everyone/bees

We used to have wild honey bees that took over a large planter (Vase
shaped)
that we had.  The bees lived there for 5 or more years.  Every  so often
we
thought they were leaving since hundreds of bees would leave, and  swarm

around, then congregate in one place with the queen, and then take  off.
However,
we soon learned that this was only part of the hive.   When a hive gets
too
full, with offspring etc.  they form a new colony that  takes off for a
new home.
 A smaller colony stays behind to continue that  hive.  This can go on
forever.  Our bees finally moved on after a  storm broke a branch that
fell on the
vase planter and shattered it in  pieces.  I suspect they would still be
there
if that hadn't happened.   Could well be that this is the case with
yours,
since the sprinkler box will  only hold so many..... that is just a
division of
the colony and not  actually the bees moving on.

Noreen
zone 9
Texas Gulf Coast

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