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.


And so we pray to the patrons of beekeepers for a good winter and will ask the Poor Clares to pray as well. We will be taking three large jars of honey to the sisters from this year's harvest the next time we are in Alexandria. They are the unseen keepers in our bee yard.

Oh, and in case you are curious, there are several patrons of beekeepers: St. Ambrose, St. Valentine, and St. Gobnait (I bet you never heard of her.). I love her story which you can read here. I also ask Lucia of Fatima to intercede for us. When she was professed her mother asked her what she would like as a gift and she asked for a bee hive. Her mother took it on the train. How would you like to share a seat with her on that trip? There are others and, if I ever do a post specifically about the patron saints of beekeepers, I'll include all I can find. With about 30,000 bees in each hive, they can use all the beekeeping patron saints they can get!

A big high five and thank you to the Poor Clare sisters! And remember to bee happy and when you eat honey remember a bee spent her whole life to make about 1/12th of a teaspoon of that sweet treat. Isn't God wonderful and glorified in his creatures?