Last night the soft rumble of thunder started around 9:30p. I could hear it once in a while as we sat in the living room. At first I thought I might have mistaken the sounds of a car rumbling by or something but I was hopeful since they did tell us there was an 80-90% chance of rain. They have, however, been known to be wrong. They being pretty much all the meteorologists. 🙂 Anyway, they were right and we had a fantastic storm packed with flashes of lighting (some soft, some glaringly bright in the night), thunder that ranged from soft rumbles to startling claps, a touch of wind (much more than a touch west of us in San Antonio), and several inches of precious rain. Our rain gauge showed a little more than two inches as I posted over on the Seguin blog. Other parts of the area reported a range from one to five inches. We are all happy to have the rain and it was exciting to drive to work this morning and see the gushing waters here and there. Awesome.
You Know what else is awesome? The pollen the bees are carrying into the hives in the backyard. We have been seeing more and more brought in but besides the mustard growing wild, I’m not sure what else the bees are working right now. Over the weekend, we saw different colors of pollen, from red and yellow to bright red. It was so nice. These first two shots are from Mark when he checked on the teaching hives we have here at the house. Things dried up nicely throughout the day and the sun peeked out here and there. It warmed up enough for the girls to get out and do their foraging thing. I love the shot he caught of one of the bees on his hand. I am always still fascinated by the pouches of pollen they carry on their little legs. What’s more amazing to see is when they deposit the pollen into a cell on the frame. It hits me how small an amount each pouch is and how many pouches it may take to fill up each cell. Then multiply that cell by how ever many are on one side of a frame. Then double that for the other side of the frame. Then multiply that by nine frames per box. Is it just me or do you also find that a bit staggering to think these tiny little bees work themselves to death literally, to accomplish this? Sometimes this sort of thing drifts through my thoughts as I watch them at work or look at pictures Mark has shared with me since I couldn’t be there with him and his girls.
Here’s a shot of the bees this morning. I snapped some shots of them as Smokey and I checked out how much water was still standing on our lawn out back. I thought it looked so pretty. Everything is so green right now and this is so different from last year for sure. We haven’t seen puddles like this in two years I dare say. Yay for us and yay for the bees. Not to mention the wildflowers to come soon! Can’t wait to see how the rain will impact the blooming season and then the honey harvest.
Gretchen Bee Ranch 
That bee has a nice lot of pollen in her baskets. The amount of pollen required to rear a single worker larva has been estimated at 125-145 mg, containing about 30 mg of protein. On average workers collect pollen loads of 16mg (8mg x 2 pollen baskets), so collecting enough pollen to feed just one larvae requires around 8 or more foraging trips – mind boggling!
Emily, that is amazing. I learned from our drought this past summer just how important pollen is for the health and strength of the hive.