Autumn has finally come in full force and with it cooler mornings that have enabled us to test out our new infrared (heat sensing) camera!
Here are some pictures of a few colonies in nesting cavities and in bee boxes . Ambient temperature this morning was 7-8 C.
This is a tree on the
La Trobe University Bendigo campus that has a feral honey bee colony in a bird or bat nesting box. The whitest part of the picture is the nesting box. It is surprising how much heat trees generate!
The next three pictures are of another feral nest on the way to Maldon, Victoria from Bendigo. You can see the heat from the tires of my ute and in the foreground the orangish pink indicating some heat from the tree. The next picture is a close up of the tree hollow.
Finally, some pictures of bees in boxes. You can see the yellow patch of the cluster in the bottom box of each of the double colonies and see some heat in the mid section of the nucs. Each of the doubles has a solid 8 frames of bees and the nuc boxes have 5 frames of bees.