I have been reluctant to check on the bees: even pulling out the monitor under the hive to see where they are clustering seems a bit risky to me. But with beautiful weather today, I put on my bee veil and one of Phil's white t-shirts over my clothes, and headed down.
Pollen-laden bees were flying into the back of the hive, as if to deposit their hard-gained bounty there. And the screen had, incredibly, several wax flakes on it, those tiny bits of beeswax that each been secretes in periods flush with food, heat, and energy (eight tiny wax flakes per bee per day). This seems awfully early in the season for bees to be building!
At the front of the hive, I realized why bees were going in the back. Fruitless though that endeavor was, the number of bees attempting to access the small entrance was incredible. I suited up fully and went down to remove that mouse reducer.
A boiling of bees emerged, humming loudly. Clearly, there was pent up energy lined up, waiting to get out.
It was beautiful. Hundreds of bees hovered about two feet from the entrance. I've been reading the fascinating Hive Management: A Seasonal Guide. Author Richard Bonney says that when baby bees are grown enough to become foragers, they make triangulation flights at first, flying out a few feet, facing the hive, and hovering. Later, they'll go out a bit further and hover, before taking on foraging responsibilities.
So exciting: here were hundreds of baby bees, born in 2012, making their inaugural flight while I stood there and watched! I was mesmerized by the hum, the newness: it was the first touch of sun for hundreds of bees, and I was there to share it.
By the time I got the camera, the flurry was about done, with only a few dozen bees hovering, hard to see against the brushy backdrop.
A year ago right now, I had no bees, only two packages that wouldn't arrive for a couple of months. It feels so right to have the bees here already, gathering dandelion pollen, on site for the daffodil surge that will come soon.
***
After my frustrating minor pruning on Tuesday, Phil and I talked about whether we wanted to prune more. Several permaculture teachers we respect plant thousands of trees on their land, and then don't do much to manage them, thankful for the fruit they produce. If you have no input costs, any output is a bonus. Last year, in the midst of our market garden chaos, the idea of one less task to learn and execute was very appealing. "Why prune?" sounded like a decent motto, and we left it at that.
This year, as I trimmed my way through the most egregious of branches, I realized that I'm not a big fan of untrimmed trees, especially trees that were initially supposed to be our main source of income, and that border the road. While a few of the trees naturally developed a beautiful central leader with radiating branches, most grew unevenly, gangly, forked. I could imagine these poor trees with fruit, breaking from their overextended branches. Horrible.
So Phil started to research how to prune, and after a few hours, came away with a good understanding of both pruning and training.
He spent part of the morning cutting little wood blocks for training the branches to the angles we want, but the sap is not rising enough to insert them easily; after a few attempts, he gave up.
The pruning part makes a lot of sense, really. About four feet off the ground, the tree puts out the first layer of radials. Ideally, these three or four main branches are evenly spaced around the tree, a few inches apart vertically. (The ideal is very rare. We got as close as we could.) The center of the tree continues to grow up, and one or two feet above the top radial, you let a second set of radials grow.
In pruning apple trees, then, you first figure out which vertical is the central leader. If there are two competing, cut the smaller one off (usually). Try to get the radials spaced evenly, pruning off any with too small an angle to the trunk, or that crowd. Then cut off about a quarter or so of each branch and the central leader, which makes the trees proportionate.
It also makes them smaller. The eighty we did today went from spindle-shanked ...
to compact.
I love it.
Happily, too, I was able to quickly go through the piles of debris and cut off the new growth I thought might be large enough for grafting. The large piles of brush yielded a fair number of possible grafting branches.
Of those, a good many were still too small (though not by much), and two of the larger bundles ended up being plant patent protected, but I have about 40 scions that will hopefully be good, and legal, for grafting.
***
And while I was cutting scions, Phil watered the cows, and then we both went to watch them. The little calves were adorable. They were butting each other and jumping through trees. Charlemagne squared off with Fern, his mother (whose horns are a good foot longer than his). Then five little calves would run together to the other side of the paddock, then turn and run back. Sometimes they would kick off their back feet. It was so joyous and, well, spring!
When Snowman got in with the cows a bit early last May, I wrote that we suspected he had bred one of the two-year-olds. The due date would be tomorrow, and we've been watching both two-year-olds all week. This evening, Babe's backend was floppy, and she was standing more still than usual.
Since we've had no snow all winter, and four inches or so are predicted for tomorrow, I can't say I'm surprised. That's how it happens sometimes.
May Babe the heifer have an uneventful birth and a healthy baby.
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