An Israeli beekeeper made this colorful hive. I think it must be the Taj Mahal of beehives. Somebody please make me one for Christmas!
Saturday, November 9, 2019
Thursday, September 26, 2019
The Temps May Still be Tropical, but It's Bee Winter Already!
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Stores galore in these two colonies. |
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.
Labels:
backyard bee keeping,
bee winter,
reducing the hives
Monday, July 29, 2019
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!
Monday, February 18, 2019
Sunday, January 20, 2019
Poor Bees
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St. Gobnait, patron of beekeepers, Pray for us! |
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.
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