Through the Lens

Another “Open” Beehive

Thu, December 29, 2011

giant sized open hive high on the bluff face in northern Randolph county

Our fearless leader Jeff Lampe featured a great photo of an unusual “open” bee hive ,in this month’s print issue of Heartland Outdoors, that had been found along the Spoon River. (go find a print copy folks and check it out!) . Yes I was fascinated. I was intrigued. I have never seen an open hive like that.

Then just the other day while I was cruising the flooded river bottoms in search of waterfowl, something up on the bluff face caught my eye. What in the world.. can it be another open hive? I quickly dismissed that thought. After all, we were told in the print article that according to Tim Cashatt of the Illinois State Museum he only knew of one other open honey bee hive in his 42 years in our fair state. Surely it was just a bunch of droopy dead mullein leaves or something similar.  But I couldn’t stand it so I wheeled the snapshot mobile around in a probably dangerous and illegal u turn and headed back to check it out.

I had to use binos and my 400mm lens as going up the sheer rock face of the bluff wasn’t the cards. Lo and behold - there it was - indeed another open bee hive hanging on the face of the bluff’s rack wall!

I was seriously wishing for my tree trimmer pals bucket truck at that moment as I would love to have had closer look and inspection.

For now I have to be content with just some not so great photographs, but I’ve notified all the appropriate folks at DNR and hope to get back there in the coming days and figure out a way to get close to it.

It was a monster of hive.. well over three feet long, and a good foot and a half across. 

Begs the question don’t you think - why are these appearing this year?

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