During these hot August nights, it can get mighty warm inside the hive. The bees will gather outside on their front porch to spread out and cool off just like people were want to do before air-conditioning.  This is called “bee bearding” and is a normal activity for the bees.

We may not sit on our front porches anymore but we can keep cool with a cold glass of iced tea made with HONEY ICE. It will cool the tea and slowly sweeten it as it melts. During extraction of honey from the honey frames, the wax cappings that cover each cell must be cut off. Before the cappings can be melted down into bee’s wax, it must first be washed in clean water. This water is very sweet and can be frozen into honey ice for those hot summer nights!

Bees also cool the hive by fanning their wings at the hive entrance. In the picture, you can see individual bees on the lower edge of the entrance with their stinger end pointing up. These are fanning bees but there is so much congestion at the entrance, it probably isn’t doing much good.