Bats and Beehives

The extra cold weather caused the Little Brown Bats in the fruit cellar to move south without leaving a forwarding address. Not even a postcard from them.

Meanwhile, the hive bodies are going together in the warm house. This will be a single beehive, with plenty of room upstairs and downstairs for a large colony of bees.

Although I wear ear protectors as I pound in nails, the cats and dog are napping nearby, oblivious of the noise. They are in whatever room I am in, due to my enormous personal magnetism.

At the beginning beekeepers' meeting I attended, Beekeeping for Dummies was recommended. Since it's been so long since I kept bees, I'm finding the information quite useful. My bee smoker has arrived and the bee suit, veil and gloves are on the way. One of  the veteran beekeepers said he usually was stung thirty times while working with the bees. I, on the other hand, am a woman and don't have to be so brave or foolhardy.

As soon as I complete the two shallow honey supers, the hive exteriors will be primed for painting. I'm already primed for the bee experience.

                   Kindly leave comments at jodeesblog@gmail.com

Lazy Sun

Part of me knows that it's the earth that is at fault. But while I wait for it to wobble around toward the Sun, it's easy to blame our star.

It seems that the Sun is merely indolent at this time of year, getting up late and then never reaching its full potential. Not as bad in the Midwest as it was in Fairbanks, Alaska, where the sun rose languidly at ten and set at two.

Case in point: the ditch across the road, a spot where the Sun don't shine, as they say. There is still snow there, despite some days that have been in the fifties. Sorry about the dullness of the image, but it's my view out the front windows. It's like the ice cap on Mars or ice on the moon. There are plenty of those shady spots that are still full of icy snow. The back of my house, on the north side, is one big slab of slippery stuff.

This is the time of year that my steep hills are most hazardous.  I have ordered some crimpons, but due to the Polar Vortex, they are out of stock.

Speaking of the Polar Vortex, Lissa and I must protest this alarming naming of ordinary winter fare. It did get rather cold here in December. It was minus twenty-one degrees. We had some colder weather in the 'eighties, but no one thought to give them scary names. A few days ago, the weather warmed a bit, but now we are in another cold snap. I've named this one the Extreme Polar Bear Vortex. I believe it was intense enough to actually sweep polar bears down all the way into northern Minnesota.

     Kindly leave comments at jodeesblog@gmail.com.

The Bee Adventure Begins

It's been many moons since I was a beekeeper; around three hundred, actually.

In early December, I suddenly decided to start over with bees, to benefit my apple trees. The start-up costs are like my hills: steep. Fortunately, I happened to pick a week when the shipping was free on the heavy wooden hive parts. Throwing caution to the winds, I jumped back into beekeeping.

Inspiring me was my sixteen-year-old granddaughter, Carolyn. She got a beekeeper scholarship a couple of years ago, which included tutoring and all the supplies.

For Christmas, she brought me this glorious pint of comb honey.

Thinking I was really ahead of the season, I contacted some beekeepers to the north last Friday. Gasp! The deadline for ordering bees was the following day. I left here at 11:45 and was still a little late for the 2 o'clock meeting.

At the meeting, I learned that ordering a nuc was really worth the extra money. There are two ways to go for bees. Three, if you count just putting a hive out and hoping some wild bees move in. That rarely happens. The package of bees is about 3 pounds of bees, which I don't believe the supplier weighs individually. They are in a screened cage with some sugar syrup to sustain them on their journey from a warmer spot. Included in the package is a queen in a tiny cage. I believe she has been carefully chaperoned by her duenna and prohibited from buzzing around with members of the Drones Club.

The nuc, short for nucleus, I think, consists of several frames of bees that are already busy making the colony. The queen has already made her mating flight and is laying eggs at quite a clip.

Earlier, I thought the nucs were sort of the sissy way to go, but it turns out the success rate for getting any honey this year is much better with the nuc, so that's what I ordered. It will arrive in April.


                                                              The Basswood

There is this wonderful, enormous basswood tree here on the way down to the river. In springtime, the blossoms are exquisitely fragrant. Bees come from miles around. Unfortunately, they make their basswood honey in some distant bee trees, the locations of which they refused to divulge to me.

Last year, I left word at a beekeeping organization to the south, inviting any of them to put a hive nearby. Receiving no response from those folks, I decided to get the honey for myself.

The first step is to assemble the hives and frames. My workshop is unheated, so I made a spot in the house for this fun project.

These are the hive body frame pieces.

This is one of two hive bodies.


So far, I've picked out several places to put the beehive, and no doubt will keep changing my mind daily until I finally do park it somewhere.





The location should have morning sun and afternoon shade, be close to the house for working with the bees, but not in the way of foot traffic.

My goal isn't to have more and more and more hives, nor is it to live off my honey sales. Foremost for me is to get to be a really good beekeeper. I love honey and I love the bees.

One hot summer day, I was in the parking lot of a grocery store, getting ready to get in my car. A bee landed on my thumb. I held it up by my face and said, "Hello, you must need to rest a bit." A person in the car next to mine rolled up their window, whether to protect themselves from the bee or me, I couldn't tell.