Wasps

Nothing to do with the bees today except let them get on with it.  It's been bright and warm all day, and intermittently pretty sunny with no wind all day, so the bees have been extremely busy.  They have been bringing in great masses of bright yellow pollen with a little of the lighter coloured pollen I saw previously.  There is (I think) honeysuckle within a few hundred yards, and a lot of the tall purple flowers I don't know the name of either. - They are basically weeds, but we do have some in the garden too.

Unknown purple flowers.

 Honeysuckle I think.

My daughter also made a welcome sign for the hive.

They've taken about half the syrup I put in on Sunday so I've made up some more and will top it up tomorrow so they should have enough to keep them going until the weekend then.  Decided not to inspect them yet, so they will wait until Sunday. - This should be OK, and I'm pretty certain the queen must be present and OK because they are so busy brining in forage.

So - Wasps. - There seem to be a bunch of wasps intent on attacking the bees when they can. - It's grizzly to watch as they will attack a specific bee - perhaps ones which are weaker / old, I'm not sure. - They will wrestle it to the ground, and sting it, then bite it in half, making off with the abdomen, leaving the dying head / legs.

The wasps don't have it all their own way - I've seen a few enter the hive, and a similar number are carried out as corpses by the bees.

I've set up a couple of (highly successful) wasp traps around the garden, filling them with a mix of sugar water and vinegar with a little salt.  This doesn't seem to attract the bees, but it does attract the wasps who can't get out of the traps and eventually drown. - I'm already more than a little protective over the bees!

I think today is the busiest I've seen the bees to date, and the closest neighbours have been in their garden working most of the day seemingly without being bothered by the bees, so - fingers crossed that the site of the hive is OK as I hoped it would be.