When I first put some queen brood in a native bee hive I wanted to watch their progress. I used a router to fit a sheet of perspex to the top so I could see what was going on.
I was amazed to see how busy these little girls are. It did not seem to matter what time of day I checked, they were busy.
Once interesting thing I noted was that the native bees placed small patches of resin in irregular patterns on the hive floor. At first I thought “maybe that’s where they will build next. Next I thought “maybe that’s where they put spent eggs” Nope and kind off.
I watched for days looking in through my window, like a spaceman boggled by the size of earth. “What are these patches?”
One night I had Dean my bee friend come over for a visit.
“whats that dean?” pointing to the resin smudges
Deans eyes narrowed in on, not the smudges but a few single eggs.
“I don’t know if those eggs are good or they are a pest”
He was right, I had not noticed some eggs sitting on the resin patches. They were full eggs not empty and in the day they had not been there.
I took some of these eggs out carefully and put them in a jar to see what would come out.
Over the next few nights I watched these patches and saw something quite unusual. The native bee workers were tearing off the odd egg and carrying it to these small resin beds. There they would work to help baby bees out of their eggs and leave the baby bees to dry out a bit. Its almost like a nice smelling floor to welcome the baby bees. How thoughtful! Native bee hatching beds!