Oak Orchard Honey

This is a test to see if I can upload movies from my iPhone. I was out at sundown and tried a 15 second movie of the evenings's activities. Now I just have to figure out why it's sideways...

Cold with a bit of snow today; kind of thought we were past all that. I took some pictures of what is blooming in the yard so I could look back next year and get an idea how early or late spring is. The dandelions have just appeared in the past couple days. I've always liked dandelions and felt that they are wildflower not a weed. I think of a weed as one of those things with thorns that causes intense pain when you step on it. Now that I have honey bees I feel like mowing all those great flowers is not as easy as it used to be, especially when bees are working them. The catalpa trees have small buds and some are starting to open on lower branches of the young trees. The older ones look as if it were mid-winter, not any signs of life. The cherry tree pictured here has bloomed within the past two days, while the Bradford pear has been in full bloom for about the past five or six days. A few honey bees were on the blooms in the late afternoon when I got home the other da...

Things look active at both hives, but I won't see them for a week because of vacation. I'm writing as we travel down 95 on our way to Kure Beach. The forsythia and cherry trees are in full bloom as we motor along the Virginia countryside. I'm looking to see if there are honey bees on the blossoms, but haven't noticed any yet. I have heard it said that spring travels north at about twenty miles an hour. That puts flowers like the ones I'm looking at about twenty days away. That's not too bad.

I tell people I have a growing list of things I don't know. There is really no way for a person to keep up with the information that becomes available every minute of the day - it's a battle I have conceded after years of self deprication. Now I'm happy with a general working knowledge of a few concepts. Beekeeping is a new world to me filled with ideas and knowledge gathered by multitudes of observant people over the past hundred and fifty years or so. It seems like such a peaceful past-time with roots in an earlier days before corn syrup and fast-food. I can walk out to the back corner of our big yard and go back in time, and slowly learn information about honey bees that has been common knowledge for over a hundred years, and yet for me it is the unknown.

Scientific Queen Rearing by Gilbert M. Doolittle, published in 1889, is a wonderful story. One can sense the time and place in Doolittle's writing and feel the tug of nostalgia for days-gone-by. And, even though more than one-hundred years have past, Doolittle's outlook on life and beekeeping seem to be what many of us are looking for in our "modern" world. It was very nice of Michael Bush to republish this work at: http://www.bushfarms.com/beesdoolittle.htm

Things look good down at the two hives. The placement of the apiary seemed to have worked out well this winter. Living at the top of one of the highest spots around leaves our property exposed to the West winds that blow across the open fields. I was able to locate the hives on the lee side of a stand of sumacs, blocking the worst of the winds. I was lucky on the first summer of beekeeping, the field that borders our property to the East was all red clover. It will most likely be field corn this summer, but it could be soybean and that would be great. For now I'll keep feeding the bees until I see some signs that the maple trees have bloomed. I've read that maples could be a good source of nectar if the weather stays warm enough for the bees to fly.

I can't expect too much from March. It looks like Saturday will be a good day for bees and people, then the long haul to Wednesday.