Frances and the Bee

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...