Bees Can't Swim

When a new neighbor moved his bee hives in across the canyon, we noticed that the bees were soon drowning in our birdbath, so last year I created a bee landing platform out of cedar boards with holes drilled through them for the bees that was supposed to alleviate the problem.  See: Water For Bees

It worked...sort of.  The bucket we initially had the platform in turned out to be much too deep; it was a pain to fill and the platform got stuck in the bucket as the water level sank.  So Cindy found a shallower bowl to put inside the bucket and that worked for a while.

Eventually, though, the cedar platform became so water logged that it sank below the water level and became even more of a hazard to the bees than the birdbath was, so Cindy took it out and we forgot about it for a while.

Since we've been having unseasonably warm weather lately, though, we've both been fishing drowning bees out of the birdbath again, so we've filled the bowl back up and the bees seem to be re-discovering it.

Bees On The Edge

We're hoping it works better this time.  We want all our critter friends--both avian and apian-- to be happy and safe.