Bee inspection/Cicada Killer

The garden is parched right now, the rains expected over the weekend were nearly bust for us, perhaps 1/8 inch of rain. Raleigh got 4.31 inches on Saturday with several bands moving through on Sunday as well. Chapel Hill got 2 inches in a short time, I saw puddles in the pavement there today, bands also passed through Chapel Hill and north of us on Sunday. The weatherman now says we have an 2 inch deficit for rain this year. Considering all the rain that missed us I'd say our garden has a 7 inch deficit. The only good news on the rain front here is we might have collected 50 gallons of water for the rain totes, still could save another 450 gallons if we got a good rain.

It had been 5 weeks since I looked into the beehive, the last time was when I added the new brood box. The new brood box is doing real good, all the frames have drawn comb on them. Several frames are close to filled up with brood and honey. No pests seen thus far! I had a few bees that seemed annoyed with me, one crawled on my knee where I got stung once before and today I did not get stung, so far one sting is all I have gotten at the hive.

I did not look into the lower box, there we a lot of bees in there and it was in the lower 90s so I left them be. Not sure how to take the boxes apart without killing too many bees that get on the bottom of the top box and top of the lower box, guess I'll learn that in time.

Here is one of the new brood box frames, it is doing nicely. You have capped brood in the center and the bees at top right are in the process of capping honey.

These photos above and below show what I believe is brood about to be capped, you can see the white larva in those protruding cells. If I'm wrong about these about to be capped please let me know, I might have pulled the caps off pulling the frame out, not too certain.  The larva is white and looks healthy to me.

Below the bees are working on a circular section of cells, not sure what they were doing?

On Sunday we had an Eastern Cicada Killer, Sphecius speciosus flying around the yard, not sure if we have had them here before. Cicada Killers are huge wasps up to 2 inches long (5cm), they capture cicadas, some twice their own body weight and bring them to a burrow in the ground and feed them to their larva. I said bring them, they can usually fly down with cicadas from trees, but because of the weight they can not fly up with them, it is interesting to observe.The camera was not handy went I saw it.

This morning I found this preying mantis that have killed this Annual Cicada and was having it for breakfast. Yes mantises can be cicada killers. I have seen mantises with bees, butterflies, dragonflies and a hummingbird. Back in 2004 when I was tagging Monarchs on the Eastern Shore of Virginia I found Monarchs in the clutches of mantises quite often, even a Monarch I had banded the day before.

Wet Weather We'll See!

I'm getting pretty sick of being a slave to the water hose and watering can. Since June we have missed about every strom that has came up. This morning I was reading the Carolina Butterfly Society newsletter and a member in Raleigh was whining about the drought there. In the past few weeks every big storm that has came by dumped some good rains on Raleigh(hope his article was at least dated) and missed us entirely. This morning more rains passed through Raleigh and we got drops on the rain chains. Yesterday Charlotte (2.5 hours from here) got 6 inches in two hours, flooding in fact, we got nothing.

The heat, yesterday was reported to have a high of 88, first day in the 80s I can recall in sometime. Every week the forecast never drops below the 90s, we might be breaking an all time record for days in triple digits this year, we are very close. The news reported Raleigh(1 hour from here) has broken the record for 100+ degree days in a year and said that the hottest years in recorded history 5 of them have been in the last 10 years, due to all the concrete and buildings there.

On to brighter news I started the beehive because last year we did not get one squash in the garden. Today I found over a dozen blooms on the summer squash that got planted late. I think it is 3 year old pattypan squash seeds, Meg planted it under the pea trellis with Kentucky Wonder beans which are doing great too. This 7 foot trellis I have been hand watering 5 gallons a day from the rain tote under the deck. I believe the upper rain tote is empty or very close to empty. Hoping the rain today will fill the rain totes back up, we can store 600 gallons of water in them combined.

Pattypan Squash, we hope to find out. Pattypans are my favorite squash!

here is our pond, drying up pretty fast, the brown you see is mud. The water lilies are out of control, bad mistake to put them in the pond, we do see hundreds of flowers at times, this morning I noted 2 flowers under very overcast skies.

This blog is approaching 300 posts and 4000 comments (only 13 away from 4000). We made a milestone recently my garden art post from 2009 hit 2000 visits and installing rain chains made the top 10 all time posts, first post to reach that goal in the same year let alone month!

Currently Doppler Radar shows rains directly to the south of us, we might get some of this rain. Here is a link to the local doppler map, we are at the top center of the map.