Back to Bee Blogging and Dreaming of Spring

Hives in winter

February 20, 2012     Happy Family Day!

The sky is a robin's egg blue, the sun is shining brilliantly and it's 10 below centigrade!  Gorgeous day to stay inside and finally get back to writing in my blog.  

The bees have been clustering in the hives all this time and hopefully are doing well eating the honey I left them.  Every now and then the queen will lay a few eggs to make sure that there are new bees coming but not a lot of them so that the bees don't spend too much energy taking care of new brood.  They need to keep their strength up for the spring.  Whenever the sun shines on the hives and it's not too cold the bees will fly out for cleansing flights.  They don't defecate in the hive...remember...they can hold it for up to a month but then they need to get out.  Sometimes it's too cold for them and they die and sometimes they are old and they die outside which saves the other bees the work of taking them out of the hive.  There isn't much going on at the hives but we still get visitors and Bill and I are happy to talk about what they are up to.

Bill explaining the cluster to my great nieces

Bees that didn't make it back into the hive

Bees enjoying the sun on Jan 6

I am reading my latest Canadian Gardening magazine today and am dreaming of the garden.  I would like to plant  what bees like though I know that they forage far further afield than  my little garden.  I will over seed my grass with clover since I know that is the best plant for the bees...more nutrition in the pollen,  a great source of nectar...and really tasty honey!  Clover also builds up the soil with nitrogen so it's a win-win situation.   My little patch of sage was such a great hit with the bees last year that I was thinking I should grow a lot more herbs such as thyme, mint, lavender and oregano.  I adore dahlias but the bees are not interested in them at all.  Too bad for the bees...humans need beauty too and dahlias are so stunning in the late summer and fall that I will continue to grow them.  

As I dream about the summer I also see the beauty of the winter garden now.  

My daughter's metal sculpture on the back fence

Bits of Bill's work with an abandoned wire gate

Echinacea seed heads in the snow

Like all gardeners I am getting itchy to get going.  I have so many plans for the garden and for the bees.  But I will have to wait and hope that all is well in the hives.  The books suggest opening the hives up on sunny warm days to check on the clusters but I haven't had the time nor the nerve to expose them to the cold yet.  Perhaps in March.  In the meantime, I am reading my bee books again to get myself prepared for the spring and I drink tea sweetened with the honey I extracted last year.  

And here is why bees are cool...just in case you didn't think so yet.  I was given an ornamental orange tree about 7 years ago.  Every year I put it out in the garden when the weather warms up.  It usually gets flowers but this year those flowers were visited by my favourite insects, the honey bees!  It got 9 beautiful oranges the size of plums!  We ate one yesterday and though it was somewhat sour, it did taste like an orange!  

Ornamental orange tree pollinated by the bees

Very cool!  

Will write more about my plans for the bees in my next posting.