you never can tell with bees

a surprise early spring honey harvest

hive at the farm- currently this hive has 3 more supers on it (and it has swarmed once itself!),
and it has been joined by a second hive

view from the hives of the farm cabin with the lake beyond

the current state of our little backyard apiary

one of the swarms way up high

It would be a rather sizable understatement to say that it has been an interesting spring and summer when it comes to our bees.

As of this writing, from our two over-wintered hives we have had nine (NINE!) swarms so far this spring.  And a few of those are swarms from the first round of swarms.  I'm only aware of us ever having had one other swarm in our 5+ years of beekeeping.  We've certainly preemptively split hives early in the spring, and there have been years where by early June we've had 5 supers on a hive, but all of this swarming?  Crazy town.  Of the nine, we successfully caught and held onto three of the swarms.  One we put in a top bar hive here with our other two hives, and the other two are out at the farm where I work. We did catch two others but they didn't stick around.  One of those just wasn't covered in time and they flew off, and the other was a bit of an ordeal.  We saw them land way up a white pine in a neighbor's yard and Mike just couldn't bear to watch them fly off so he donned a full bee suit and got out his climbing gear and climbed up (70 feet up? 80? 100?) with a cardboard box (and again, a FULL bee suit/veil along with his climbing gear) and brushed as much of the cluster as he could get into the box but sadly we think he missed the queen and so....... no dice.

The others just weren't really reachable (or, once we got to a certain point, we had simply run out of boxes and didn't want to go back to the bee supply shop again for more).  One landed somewhere way high up and then left, and the other, pictured above, was 70 or 80' up on the outer branches of an oak, over the power lines.  Another stayed high up in a walnut tree over our backyard for three days (!) before deciding to finally take flight for better digs minutes before friends came to attempt to collect them.  And one of the hives out at the farm has also already swarmed.

We check on the state of things in the hives, we add space as needed- as far as our human eyes can see they've got plenty of room to grow but, well, I suppose these particular bees just have a serious drive to spread their gene pool and get out and explore.  Or something.

That wise old Pooh Bear was right, you just never can tell with bees.

midsummer garden

these days it's really all about the greens, the herbs (I'm putting chopped parsley and basil on just about everything), the berries (I've lost count of how many quarts of raspberries we've picked, but it has been enough to gobble them by the handful, make a few batches of jam, and get some in the freezer~ and now the blueberries and blackberries are starting to come in), and the flowers.  the flowers have shifted over from a predominantly purple and somewhat delicate larkspur-lavender-poppy-nigella mix to the full-on summer explosion of day lilies, rudbeckia, liatris, zinnia, calendula, coreopsis, sunflowers, bee balm, coneflower (etc, etc).  I'm beginning to save some seeds from the earlier-blooming flowers, and the cucumbers, beans, and squashes are coming on strong, the first summer squash picked a couple weeks ago and the first small basket of beans picked a few days ago.  

it's a nice time to be a gardener- it's one of those small lulls where most of the work has been done for the mean time (aside from the always needed weeding, of course, and a smattering of second plantings here and there), and you can sit back and watch and wait and nibble.

state of things

early May strawberries!

it's been a while...... lately I've felt that this space is really just a little journal of sorts for me- a place to keep track of the garden, funny things she says and does, our general goings-on.  do people even read other people's blogs anymore?  I mean, I know the answer is yes - at least to a degree.  still not a smartphone owner, I'm not on instagram, where I understand there's a lot of community and action going on.  sometimes I feel pulled in that direction, wanting to check in with folks and stay connected, but mostly I enjoy the un-connectedness that my old LG cosmos affords me.  we shall see.

so, as a way to keep track of our garden, my girl, our general goings-on...... here's the latest camera dump, a somewhat accurate and balanced glimpse at what the last couple weeks has been like around here. (oak pollen-covered front porch, huge laundry piles, and piles of cat puke under the bed not pictured)

love, love, love the 4x4 prints from artifact uprising. love.

sauteed ramps are a good topping for anything

cleaning up the hive boxes in preparation for the new bees!

a little treat that was left behind- pulled from an old frame during the cleanup and quickly enjoyed

a little color added to one of the hives - indigo with white accents, to balance out the white with indigo

miss queen in the queen cage - we ordered nucs but ended up getting packages when the medium nucs were delayed by a few weeks.  a bit more of a process to install, and a bit more fretting over things going well and settling down, but so far so good.  we've had to play around a little to try to even things out after a bit of drift, but we think it's all good!

yours truly, finishing the installation.  SO good to have these little creatures back- I really missed them last year!

she isn't so sure that french breakfast radishes belong in the 'breakfast foods' category, but she loves to pick and wash and nibble on them.

yum, yum

we picked our first peas yesterday (May 4th)- sooner, I think, than we ever have before!

planning to get these babies in the ground this weekend!  

the spinach is doing great, we picked a colander full and enjoyed it with our pasta last night with loads of last year's garlic, which is still hanging in there surprisingly well!

he mowed the grass yesterday.  first, he picked all of the fleabane in the yard and brought it in, thinking (correctly) that his girls would enjoy it.  sweet man.  I don't know what I enjoyed more- the act itself, the flowers on the windowsill, or watching the morning light dance across the blooms this morning.

the sweetest ever, despite the bitterness

newly hive-less and with a plan to take the year off from beekeeping, we find ourselves with an early spring honey harvest.  when added to the harvest from last July we're hoping this should get us through the next year or so, maybe even until we've got some girls buzzing in the back yard again with honey enough to spare for us.

it is the most delicious honey I've ever had.

weekend hodgepodge

the images from my camera this past weekend are a bit all over the place, but they tell a pretty accurate story of our goings on the last few days.  our 13 year old cat, Ziggy, is experiencing renal failure and has been needing a lot of extra TLC in the form of meds, special food, and, until a couple days ago, subcutaneous fluids (administered here at home to save some $$).  the first day it was pretty simple because he was so tired and listless from not having been eating well.  so he didn't put up much of a fight.  since then, however, giving him liquid meds and pills a couple times a day and jabbing him with a needle to get extra fluids in him has been as enjoyable as one might guess doing such things to a cat would be.

which is to say, it is not enjoyable.  for anyone.  but alas, onward we go.  fingers crossed we can get him over this sizable hump and then maintain his health for a good while longer through some specialized nutrition.  because I'm pretty sure he's got at least a couple years of mousing and purring snuggles (wherein he and I spoon- I'm the big spoon, and it's so nice and warm) in him.

enough about our feline situation though.  there are old linens from my grandmother to be enjoyed, a nubby pink hat finished and being worn (finally she happily wears something I knit for her!), seedlings reaching for the light.  I've been making soups and frittatas and other things that I can easily throw tons of veggies in.  My body is really craving GREEN FOOD these days.  not that it isn't always, and not that I don't eat much green food in the winter, because I certainly do, but it isn't anything like the rest of the year when I can just grab handfuls of greens and other veggies from the yard and munch on them all the time.  this whole having-to-go-to-the-store-to-get-the-veggies thing is tiresome and I don't care for it.  so here I am, stocking up regularly at the store but dreaming of backyard kale and green beans, collards and chard, tomatoes and carrots and peppers, and, and, and…….  soon.

she had ballet, I'm reading a book I probably shouldn't read because it just makes me even more twitchy and anxious about food and water and plastics and exposures to all sorts of things.  and I'm already fairly twitchy and anxious about that stuff.  holy cow, it's a scary world we've created folks.  it's like a perpetual Erin Brokevich out there.  ooph.

the last of the syrup was finished off, bringing us up to a total of about 2.5 gallons this year, down from about 4.5 last year (but having tapped less than half the trees we expected that).  I'm pretty thrilled with that and pleased to know we've made ourselves another year's worth of the sweet stuff to be used in granola and baking and on yogurt and on pancakes and french toast and gosh wherever we want a little splash of sweetness.  we also busted out the extractor we borrowed from a friend and got about 2.25 gallons of honey from the supers off of the two hives we lost this winter (that makes it sound like we have other hives- we don't, that was it).  still leaning towards taking a bee break for the year, but not 100% decided on that.  the happy thing is that we've got all this liquid sweetness filling the pantry now. we could just about call ourselves sugar-self-sufficient if it wasn't for the bit of powdered sugar and granulated sugar we use here and there.

also, kite flying.
rather, attempted kite-flying.  there was a bit of wind, though.  we got it flying around the yard for brief fits and spurts.  mostly it was just crashing immediately into our bare fruit trees and the woodshed.  we'll give it a go in a better location sometime soon.

weekending with Karen