Drinking

The bees have to have a water source. If you don't provide one close to the hive, they'll go right to your neighbor's kiddie pool, which the neighbors tend to find a bother.
My little bee pond is simply a plastic bucket with some rocks in it. The rocks provide a landing strip to prevent drowning. With the recent rains, the water in the bucket had gotten pretty deep, so I did have a few drowning victims this week.

I went out after taking these pictures and cleaned out the water bucket and put in fresh water. The bees are making good use of their little mini-pond today, with sometimes four or five bees at a time collecting water to take back to the hive.

According to the scientists who study these things, water collecting bees just collect water. Some members of the hive will focus on harvesting nectar and pollen, others will just bring back water to share. Today is a big water collecting day, with the temperature outside a little over 70 degrees F.