I Want One of These: A Beehive Made from Legos

An Israeli beekeeper made this colorful hive. I think it must be the Taj Mahal of beehives. Somebody please make me one for Christmas!

The Temps May Still be Tropical, but It's Bee Winter Already!

St. Gobnait joins St. Ambrose and
St. Valentine as a patron of beekeepers.

And time to get the girls ready. We usually reduce the boxes to three and feed. But when we examined the hives today, the two large colonies had stores galore! So we only fed the smallest, two-box hive. There are plenty of bees in that hive, but limited food. We transferred a full honey frame from each of the two larger colonies and gave those girls a bag of sugar syrup. The other two bags will go in the refrigerator and be brought out for the next inspection in mid October.

We reduced the largest hive from five to three boxes and next time will plan to reduce both hives to three. There was just too much going on in the hives to do the reduction today -- and that is not a bad thing!

Lots of pollen is still coming in: yellow and bright orange. How lovely to behold!

Hopefully, all will be well for all three colonies. Going into the winter strong is key to a healthy colony in the Spring.

We Love Our Sunday Brunch!

Almost every Sunday we have brunch with our local daughter and her family. Often others join us for the fun. My sister-in-law comes sometimes and a young friend with her daughter and foster children. Lately, I've been thinking of ways to make it particularly special. A few weeks ago we had a "jungle brunch." I set the table with jungle animals and cheetah placemats. Actually, it was the placemats, which I picked up at a consignment store that gave me the idea. The kids all shared their favorite jungle animals and told us something about them. I chose a giraffe.

We saw a baby giraffe at the zoo a number of years ago and watched the video of the birth. Wow! Poor baby dropped onto the floor. I guess that's kind of like a doctor who gave babies a smack on the bottom to get them taking a deep breath. I'm glad they don't do that any more. Poor babies. What a welcome!

Fun Napkin Folding -- Make your brunch or dinner party really special!

Poor Bees

St. Gobnait, patron of beekeepers,
Pray for us!

Winter is setting in with a vengeance the next few weeks. Tonight the temps are expected to drop to single digits and for the next few weeks we will mostly see highs only in the 30s. That means the bees are clustered and can't break out to eat or fly. (Even bees need to go potty.)

 The temps aren't the only things impacting the bees. It's supposed to be grey and mostly cloudy in coming days. That means no sun warming up the hives internally. So they will be clustered and if the food is too far away they can literally starve to death.

These are the days I turn to all the patron saints of bee keepers and those who kept bees. St. Ambrose and St. Valentine are patrons, but there are others. St. Isidore the Farmer probably knew the value of bees for pollination and maybe even kept some.