Frances and the Bee

We are always seeing the changing seasons, aren't we? Fall really lets us know it, though. At the beginning of August, something fun happened this season that I wanted to share here before I give an update on our hives. Some friends of ours said they had bees going in and out of a knot hole in an old oak tree.  When we visited, we observed the activity and saw that they were honey bees!  Over the years of beekeeping, we have lost many bees to early season swarming, when half of a hive leaves with a queen to make a new colony.  We have always comforted ourselves that, although we are losing something, we are contributing to nature, but this was the first time we have ever seen a colony like this for ourselves. It was so amazing to see a colony "in the wild!"  I have heard positions on either side of whether honey bees should be considered "native pollinators" since they were brought to the U.S. from England. Honey bees have stolen a lot of the public attention as...

It has been a hot, dry summer and we have been trying to stay both busy and cool. Those two things don't often go together in early August, but we try to soak in as much warmth as we can during this time, in hopes that it will keep us warm when the seasons change. The way that nature continues on in its cycles continues to be motivating and beautiful, just like the monarch caterpillars and butterfly above. Our garden beds are booming and we have stayed in awe of the plants growing and the honey bees working as hard as ever throughout all the difficulty of the last year.  Here is one bed in our garden. This snapshot features our son, and it's back in May when the tomatoes were having a good start...  ...and now. We have to get the ladder out to harvest these! In years past, I have talked about each of our honey bee hives individually, giving specific details about how we have made decisions.  Having six distinct hives, it would be too much explanation. Instead, I will give...

In my last post, we were holding our breath to see if spring had really arrived.  Update: it did arrive!  The unseasonably warm weather made a swift end to winter and gave all of our hives (as well as ourselves) an unpredicted boost. For the first time ever, all of our hives survived the winter.  We were checking on the hives and had a hunch that we needed to get to splitting the hives, but it seemed too early.  It turns out the bees were quite ready to split. It was wonderful and, on Mother's Day, forced us to "level up" our beekeeping - in more ways than one! We were finishing our family time together outside when our company noticed "the bees were really busy."  Mr. Bee and I saw that they were coming rapidly out of one of the hives and flying up and around...and away.  We could even hear a difference. This was a swarm. Swarming is the honey bees' usual way to reproduce and make more colonies. Imagine a hive has survived winter.  The weather is warm...

The springtime weeks when tiny green leaves sprout all about just never get old.  These flowers bloom first in our yard. They are only a few inches tall but, trust me, they are packed with hope for warmer weather and brighter moments to come.  The unseasonably warm weather we have been having has many of us Minnesotans wondering if spring really is here to stay. Most agree we probably still have at least one surprise snowstorm yet to come. If you put your snowblower away, you know, that will be the day it snows. Regardless, the beautiful, warmer days have had the bees very busy. We even broke a record for a high temperature last week when we reached 84 degrees F.   Since we are talking about breaking records, this is the first time we have had all of our hives survive through winter, and we couldn't be more happy about it.  We attribute the success, so far, to a lot of things we did differently last fall, including heavy end-of-season feeding and treating for va...