Bee Education

When my alarm failed to wake me at 5am Saturday, I woke from a dead sleep 67 minutes later, supposed to have been on the road a half hour and more. As I stepped outside, the wind whipped around me, and the early bits of dawn were a weird grayish yellow. Hurricane Irene was coming to a beach near me (well, three hours away) at some point that day, and if I left for my bee workshop, not only would I be out of cell range of my family, I would have our only real vehicle.

On the other hand, I knew little of the information from the bee workshop, and I am not sure if my poor bees will survive the winter. It was a real dilemma.

But in the end, I made the three hour drive to the Spikenard Farm Honeybee Sanctuary to get the third workshop on bees, unsure when, or if, I'd be able to get home.

Phil said later that there was windy and drizzle all day, and when I got home at about 8pm, the clouds were blowing the wrong direction: rather than west to east, as usual, they were going north to south, which felt odd indeed. But they were in no danger, and the meager .3" of rain we had was less than we would have wished. Irene passed us to the east, and so ends that story.

I always enjoy my trips to Floyd, Virginia. The three hours, alone, in the car gives me good reflection time. Some trips I have been in a very agitated state; some trips I'm exhausted, or discouraged. This trip was sheer joy. I sang hymns and meditated on Psalm 1, which says, "Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night."

And it struck me, really for the first time, that the blessing for that man is that he isn't walking in darkness, but in light. I think I had always figured that the blessed man was getting external, material blessings. But I think the blessing is simply that he has delight. (And, yes, the next verse says that he yields fruit in his season, and whatever he does shall prosper, and I do like that part, but I'm not convinced that happens immediately, and maybe the fruitfulness is not, again, material prosperity.)

I thought, too, about not having a house. I laughed this week when I read The Boxcar Children to the boys. It had always been a favorite for me as a child, and reading it even now, I thought, "Oh, those lucky children! They just wander in the woods and find a boxcar and live there. How fun!"

And I literally had to stop reading for a bit, because I suddenly said, "Wait! I practically live in a boxcar now!" Except mine is better because it has electricity, so we can live here year round. It was as if I made peace with our living conditions. They aren't anything like the upper middle class life we had in Boulder, but there are benefits I've been gradually reconciling myself to these last two years. I like that.

At the workshop itself, we talked a bit about honey harvesting, and how to treat for mites, as well as how to secure the bees for the winter. I was interested to learn that the real period of frame building is done for the season, so to expect my bees to make a second level of wax frames and fill them, is really not realistic. It was helpful, though, to realize that's not the fault of anything I've done, or they've not done. It's just the season we're in.

The bees are also living longer. Bees born now might live until November or December. The short, six-week lives of the frantic summer workers are done; the bees now will live longer, albeit slower-paced, lives.

I was able to ask Gunther what to do about my poor hives, which haven't fully recovered from their horrible breakage issues this summer. (Gunther likes his hives to have two deeps and a super by the fall, which means two large brood boxes and a smaller box on top for honey; my hives, due to my interference, and their initial refusal to build comb from the top down, have only about nine frames finished in the bottom deep, and no frames done, and hardly any started, in the second deep.)

So, in the next month, I am going to feed the bees as much honey water as they can eat (I had been doing sugar water, but I'm going to try honey instead), no longer at a 50:50 ratio, but stronger, maybe 2:1 or even 3:1. I pulled the second deep off both hives, and concentrated the most completed frames into the bottom. Gunther said that, in a month, if both hives can have six frames of full honey, they have a chance for the winter. If not, I will need to combine them, in order to keep one hive alive, rather than lose both.

In opening the hives today, I had hoped to find some progress on the upper levels, but there was little activity there. It is definitely better to bring them both down to one deep, and feed them enough to get that lower level packed with food. Happily, both hives had growing brood, so they are still reproducing, living bees. And they had a good bit more honey stored than last time (which was almost none).

In the gorgeous, perfect weather we have right now, sunny and 85 degrees, the bees were incredibly mellow, even as I clumsily managed to peek in their hives. Glorious.

One of the best things about the Honeybee Sanctuary was seeing the bee garden. Just 3" twigs two months ago, the perennials and annuals have grown enormous, flowered, and fed the bees well. I hope to get my own bee garden going in the near future. (Both photos today are from the Hauk garden, not mine! Beautiful.)