The good things about FaceBook

My lovely friend Kristin Graffeo took this photo and it remains one of my very favorite pictures of me.

We had 11 Girl Scouts visiting the apiary that day (thank you again parents for that level of trust!) It was still fairly chilly so the bees weren't flying much and there was one single drone cell. There were probably a few hundred worker bees in cells, developing from a worm like larvae into adult bees, but the girls were worried about that one drone.

 

So when we got new bees in Brookline NH, we had to name one of the in honor of Girl Scouts some. This year the queens all have a white dot marking that they were born in a year ending in 6. So Daisy seemed like a great choice. Girl Scouts was founded by Juliet Gordon Low and her nick name was Daisy.

Snow's Hive

Joining Daisy will be Snow (since I picked them up in a snow storm!), and Carol, Queen of the Apocalypse.  

99 bulbs revisited

The 99 bulbs finally came up and bloomed. It was really fun to see the hard work in the fall show up so colorfully many months later. In the past, I had always tried to plant just pink and white thinking that keeping the palate of colors simple would work with colors of the house. I am so glad I let that go and embraced color. The tulips looked amazing next to the house and the purple and orange color combination was surprising pleasing to see everyday. The warm colors really drew attention as the other plants emerged.

I was sad this year to see our nice pink bleeding hearts not bloom - maybe they just couldn't compete with the spectacular showy beauty of the tulips.

The purple crocuses were much slower than the yellow and white never showed up. The remaining tulips were double tulips looking a bit like peonies.

Most years I find three or four cells of black pollen in the frames where the bees collect the tulip pollen together. I haven't seen it this year and I wonder if it is because so much of the pollen is late. Blooms are about three weeks later than usual so some thing are over lapping and without the draw of nectar, are the bees skipping the slim enticement of the black tulip pollen?  Or did they tuck it in somewhere I didn't look?

Sugar Syrup for Spring

Spring has finally started to show around the bee yard. There were moments I honestly despaired that spring might never arrive.

Mud is becoming more frequent and squishier with all the snow melting. We revived over nine, yes NINE feet of snow in the bee yard. But Turkey Vultures, skunks, and woodpeckers rapping on trees are more more welcome signs of spring!

Many signs of spring are important to bees and beekeepers. The red tips of maple trees are a sure sign that one of the most important nectar sources is on the horizon. Maple trees will be in flower in a few short weeks providing much needed pollen and nectar for the bees as they emerge from their winter of cuddling.

To help them get going this spring, I plan to feed them the remnants of  their own honey from last year but I don't expect that to go very far. I might need to supplement with sugar syrup.

In the spring I use a 1:1 sugar syrup. This means that for each cup of sugar I use one cup of water.

 I measure out both the water and the sugar so I am ready. I start the water heating and when it is boiling, I add the sugar and then remove the heat.

Then I stir it until it is clear and the sugar is dissolved completely. This will need to cool before giving it to the  bees. It is at this point if you want to add essential oils or medication, you can do so when cool. 

Thyme, lemongrass, and spearmint are common oils to add in the spring and can help bees cleanse their guts from overwintering. Other options include adding fumagilin B to help control nosema. 

On another, but related note, I was talking with a friend about keeping bees and why I do so. Part of my answer, which was longer than I expected, included that it is important to me to support the food supply and this is one important way I can help keep variety in my diet. So go bees!!

Beekeepers in Winter

Without being able to see my girls in the cold weather, I have to content myself with other ways to think about bees.

This past weekend I attended NOFA - Northeast Organic Farming Association at Worcester State University. The event has left my head buzzing with ideas. (Get it?)

About 800 people attended and just being with 800 other people who get the importance of bees is pretty cool. I spoke with farmers who grow incredible vegetables, beautiful chickens, and fuzzy sheep. The food, as you might imagine, was not only tasty but organic as well. All day long, the only thing I saw that wasn't labeled organic was the sugar in my tea. Which might have been organic, but unlabeled.

As expected, there were a couple of workshops on bees. One was on beginning beekeeping and I decided not to go to that. I am coming to the close of my 7th year beekeeping so I checked out other things during that time.

I did go to Dan Conlon's workshop on Queen rearing. He and his wife own Warm Colors Apiary. I learned a lot and this echos what I'd been thinking about. If I love a queen, I should actively keep her genes in my apiary.

So inspired by Dan, I am going to work to keep really clear records of my bee lines and learn to mark queens. I am going to select on two important characteristics: gentleness and honey production.  Right now, I am really in a record keeping phase but as we expand the operation here, which hive the queen comes from will be quite important.

Go bees!

Christmas Bees

It is unusually warm here on Christmas day so I though it would be an excellent time to visit the bees and see what they were up to. I also planned to drop off a Christmas gift. I snuck in a sugar patty in each hive. 

The bees were enjoying the sunny weather. They were very curious but not aggressive in the least. Often I find the bees in the winter a bit unpredictable. They are much easier to work when they have been outside. Bees don't pee or poop in their hive so on sunny days when the temperature gets above 50 degrees, they take elimination flights. These elimination flights allow them to relive themselves away from the hive. The warmer it is, the farther away they go.

I dropped one hive down a box but the other hive still had a couple of partial frames of honey in the attic so I left it and put their sugar patty up top just on the edge of the hole. 

The bees were not the only ones to get presents today. I got some new hive tools, a nifty all wood jar feeder, an new honey super complete with frames, and a nifty sign from from my husband (who also took pictures in the bee yard).

Honey harvesting

I am always amazed at the difference between summer and fall honey. This is all we have left of our summer honey on the right and the darker, bolder fall honey is on the left. It was a slim harvest for us. The bees in one hive just didn't produce much at all this year while the other was nicely productive.

My husband loves to help with harvest even when that means he's on cleaning duty. Here he is cleaning out a box that will go into storage this winter. 

Our productive hive really liked making wax. Normally we keep enough frames in the hives for the bees to fill with honey, but apparently I left an open spot. It wasn't empty for that long. The bees made a frame to fill the space. These bees are quite dark and that is generally true of all the bees in this hive. Some of the daughter workers have virtually no yellow on them anywhere. This is in contrast with our other hive where this fall's new bees are very golden in color.

Typically beekeepers assume that darker bees are more temperamental. In this case my experience belies that notion. These bees are lovely to work yet they also produce good amounts of honey.

99 Bulbs in the ground

It has been a busy weekend here. I planted 99 bulbs in one afternoon. Why 99 and not 100?  I planted three packages of bulbs - 50 crocuses, 25 late tulips and 24 early tulips. The folks who work on the packaging really make me crazy with their inconsistent numbers of bulbs but I am sure I won't care in the spring when there is a riot of pastel colors in the front yard. Some of the bulbs were planted in beds next to the door. This is the first time we ever planted bulbs there. Let's hope the chipmunk doesn't notice!

Crocuses provide a fair amount of pollen for being such a small flower. Tulips always give me pause in the spring. Their pollen is often black or dark gray. So my first instinct is to think the bees have moldy honey before I remember that tulips are in bloom.

We also harvested the last of the tomatoes. The tomatoes cracked me up this year. My daughter brought home two tomato plants labeled yellow pear. These beauties are Early Girl - no yellow or pear about them.

The final fall preparations are underway. The bees are still bringing in pollen although the cooler days have brought fewer and fewer bees out every day.