Hive at the garden is making up for the other 5 that died during winter. Pulled 6 frames of honey with at least another 6 frames that were not entirely capped.
Faith Mountain Farm – Backyard Bee Hive
I stumbled across this site tonight after getting severely side tracked. For a while, I have been tinkering with the idea of getting hives in to more backyards with the goal of spreading out my hives and encouraging more people to become beekeepers. I am pleasantly surprised to learn that Faith Mountain Farm, located a few hours away in NC is already doing something similar. They have a program where they lease and/or sell hives to people to put in their backyard. Provided with the hives is the opportunity for the client to acquire the skills and confidence to learn how to be a beekeeper. Or at the very least, help finance the ability for others.
Faith Mountain Farm | Backyard Bee Hive
Honeybees obviously produce delicious honey, but they are also necessary for one third of the food we eat. The plight of these critters has caught the attention of the world with recent large bee loss…
Lost the third hive (of three) in the backyard.
This was the strongest hive, which had about half a box of capped honey, no sign of brood, and only a handful of dead bees on the bottom board. The bees have been collected in to a jar. Time to put my tax dollars to work and get the state inspectors to help me figure out WTF happened. Anyone else experience hive losses this winter?
Damn parasites!
“Zombie” Fly Parasite Killing Honeybees | Observations, Scientific American Blog Network
A heap of dead bees was supposed to become food for a newly captured praying mantis. Instead, the pile ended up revealing a previously unrecognized suspect …
This is a good trend that has been taking place over the past few years. Are there any businesses in your area that are keeping their own hives to enhance their core business?
Hotels get into beekeeping business
— Thanksgiving dinner guests at Carmel Valley Ranch can expect the Central California resort to serve a honey of a meal.
It would be nice if all honey was inspected on the way in to the country. The illegal honey from China and a few other asian countries makes it difficult for US beekeepers to make a living and it subjects US consumers to a disturbing amount of antibiotics and chemicals.
The only way to be sure that what you are buying is actually honey, buy local. Most farmer’s markets have local honey available. Prices vary, but the flavor will be much richer than the imitation “honey”.
Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn’t Honey
Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn’t Honey. Ultra-filtering Removes Pollen, Hides Honey Origins. by Andrew Schneider | Nov 07, 2011. More than three-fourths of the honey sold in US grocery stores isn…
My asparagus is blooming and the bees seem to love it. There were honey bees, bumble bees and another blue-ish native bee.
This is an interesting video I stumbled across that shows flows the way bees see them, in ultraviolet light. The video also shows bees in infrared. There are a lot of high quality slow motion segments with bees flying around.
Due to a mini vacation and rain, it has been over a week since I last fed the bees in the backyard. Today’s weather forecast was clear so I mixed them up a fresh batch of syrup. It took almost an hour before any bees were at the feeder and despite them having a few hours to rally the girls to come clean up, they are mostly ignoring it. There are at most a few dozen bees at the feeder at any moment. There are still 5 hives in the yard, so I would expect more bees than that. The Goldenrods are in bloom, so the Fall honey flow might be in full swing.
Before putting any hives on my property, I spent a large amount of my free time reading about what to expect and how to be a good neighbor with a few hives. Bees need water and will use a source of water whether you like it or not. Bees like dirty water, chlorinated water and salty water. I did a google satellite search and didn’t see any pools anywhere near my house, so I didn’t think that would be an issue I would potentially encounter. Just to be on the safe side, I keep the fountain full with a few goldfish to give the water some flavor. There has always been a very active presence at the fountain. Anywhere from a dozen to a few hundred bees actively fetching water from the found. This gave me the impression that I was providing a good water source for my bees.
It turns out that a neighbor behind my property has a pool. I cannot see it from my yard, but I learned this when the owner called me about “a lot of bees” constantly visiting her yard to sun on her deck and enjoy the salt water in the pool. She was very friendly and understanding, despite being inconvenienced. Her and her family have even been stung while trying to enjoy the pool. Bees dislike being splashed, even unintentionally.
When she said “a lot of bees” , I had a mental image of thousands of bees draining her pool. Something like this.
“A lot of bees” is a relative term. It turned out to be 4-5 bees at a time, but a steady stream of them coming and going during the hotter parts of the day. Thankfully, it was not like I envisioned. The phone call was friendly, so I hand delivered a jar of honey and let her know that we’d try to do a better job of enticing the bees away from their pool. It was later in the day when I visited and didn’t see any bees going to the pool. There was a bee flying around the yard looking for something. It was interested in us, so I encouraged her land on my finger instead of anyone else. Bees in the field are usually friendly and I was trying to show that you don’t need to swat at them if they are hovering around you. In fact, you’re more likely to get stung if you do swat at them.
Given the low amount of bee traffic to their pool, I put out a giant ice bucket full of water in the back of my yard and connected it to the drip irrigation system to help keep it full. I plan to make the water more attractive for the bees by adding some lemon grass. Bees are attracted to lemon grass oil, so a 40 gallon bucket of lemon grass “tea” will hopefully reduce the bee visits to the pool to an unnoticeable level. I do plan on moving some of the hives off to other locations as soon as I pick up the pickup in two weeks. I don’t think it’s possible to stop all bee traffic to her pool because there are a few beekeepers in the area and it is a nice pool.
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