Bees Swarming the Chicken Feeders
March 8th, 2016 · 1 Comment · Posted in Blog
I was a little surprised to find a honeybee in my travels around the farm this morning, just nosing around the still-dormant grass. You’d think it too cold still for insects this early in the season, a full week before spring. But as the mercury climbed toward 50 degrees Fahrenheit, there suddenly could be heard a mighty buzzing around the chicken feeders.
Bees were crawling all over our chicken mix, more of them seemingly by the minute.
Since we’d never seen anything like this before, I did a little checking on the internet and discovered such an occurrence is not so unusual. In the absence of pollen, bees will look for substitutes.
Which only got me thinking more: If it’s too early in the season for pollen, where are these bees coming from? And why leave the hive at all?
Just another mystery where man-made farming intersects with nature. As long as the chickens don’t mind sharing their grain, we’re fine with it as well.
Not just bees in the chicken house, but cluster flies are awake everywhere! It’s spring in NYS