The good swarm
I discovered an unexpected benefit to negligence when a very large swarm found some of my equipment sitting around unoccupied. The hive bodies stacked in my yard awaiting a fresh […]
What did you do in the bee yard today? April 17, 2017
The last three years’ early, unseasonably warm springs have given way to our more “normal” rainy weather this year. I’ve hesitated to interrupt the couple of good foraging days we’ve […]
Flying at last!
Yesterday’s mild temperatures saw the first bee flights in my valley for many days. I also saw my first bumblebee queens of the year–two separate species right on this colony’s […]
Winter “shoulda”s
After a tumultuous fall and winter left me with less time for beekeeping (and blogging) than I would have preferred, by mid-January, I was finally beginning to see light at […]
What’s Blooming, October 2, 2016
This week we are fortunate to have a special guest writer, pollinator enthusiast Anne Schatz, contributing to the bloom record. Anne has been a Master Gardener since 2008. She is […]
What’s Blooming? September 15, 2016
It’s really satisfying to the gardener in me to have planted a plot that is buzzing with bees in mid-September. In spite of light frosts and our normal late-summer drought, […]
Fun with Queens
In the course of making my inspections over the past couple of weeks, I noted that my largest, strongest colonies still had significant drone populations. In my little valley, we […]
