Lost and Found in E11

.....a honeybee-hive entrance, 14th June 2015 I inspected our two beehives on 14th June and again on 21st June. One of the resident colonies was doing very well in that it had a very fecund queen, a large population of worker and drone bees, and an increased quantity of capped honey stores. What was very encouraging about this colony is that it did not seem to be making much of an effort to swarm. Our recent weekly inspections have found only a few queen cups and just one drawn out queen cell; which was empty, as in there was no egg laid in it. Both of our colonies are based on new queens produced as a result of our bee colonies swarming in 2014. The second and lesser of our colonies did not over-winter well,  and emerged in the spring, as it did, weakened by a varroa infestation and an inappropriate over-wintering hive arrangement. That said, it (the colony) seems to be recovering. The queen has developed a good (egg) laying rate and the number of brood frames occupied by ...

Lysos, Cyprus. 15th April 2015. I visited Cyprus in April. I photographed just a fraction of the splendid flora I witnessed while travelling across the island. I was surprised to have taken an unusual image of a honeybee foraging on what I think is a variety of Oxalis. My identification of the plant might be mistaken however the correct plant identification may not be as relevant as the technicalities which account for the peculiar visual/photographic phenomenon of the bee's wings caught in motion as they are. I took the picture using a Samsung smartphone camera. The settings of that device - model GT-S5830i - were, for the above image: 5 mega pixel / 1200x1600 focal length 3.55 f number 2.6 macro I'm intrigued by the fluid ripples or pulses of the bee's wings in contrast to the clarity, solidity and suspended (near) stillness of the bee's body, its tongue extended in anticipation of the nectar. I don't know how odd or extraordinary the effect...