Frances and the Bee

It has been since spring that I made an entry here. We have enjoyed another full season of beekeeping, which we are close to wrapping up. Here are some summarized notes about this season: We started with two hives and a destructive visit from a bear (see previous post). The bees weathered the bear's disturbance really well. For the hive that was spilled all over, the queen was not injured, so the bees went on building the colony and I think that the reduction in numbers may have helped them not need to swarm. Both hives spent the summer on the farm. The hive that was left untouched was pretty feisty to start the year but became one of the most pleasant hives to work that we have ever had. I am really hoping we can get these bees through winter so that we can have more time with them. The farm continues to be a beautiful refuge for the bees, and we enjoy our moments there, too. The kids get to play and learn, and us adults get to stop and visit a while. This year has had some especi...

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...

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...

Since I don't update the blog often, sometimes, when I sit to write, I wonder where to start.  After the last two years of beekeeping, we found ourselves in a place of learning mostly from the mistakes we made. Honey yield is not our main goal of this pursuit, but it is a goal, and we just didn't have the harvests we'd like to see. We haven't been as successful at getting our bees through winter as we want to be. This beekeeping year, we regrouped and have been working hard on keeping up with spring feeding, doing inspections more often and with more intention, learning MUCH more about pre-swarm behavior and inside-the-hive space management, etc. Each week, I kept thinking of updating my notes here, but I knew that several days later, we'd have more we had been thinking or doing...and so here we are in July, 2020. Oh, 2020.  I won't address the upheaval this year has brought with it except that, in the particular theme of things here, it brings to my mind quite ...