Gosh, it's great to have bees on the flowers once more. Bees were getting pretty scarce before I started raising them this spring. The best news is I am going to get a honey crop this year. Sometimes, the bees don't make enough honey the first year, so I am pretty excited.
For years, these catnip plants have been growing in amongst the flowers, popping up until they became nuisances. The first time I took some of the leaves into the house to look them up in Missouri Wildflowers, one of the cats streaked across the room, snatched the sprig from my hands and wrestled it to the ground. Shortly thereafter, that feline picked a fight with one of the other cats and had to be put outside. Cats on drugs are not a pretty sight.
If the plant isn't cut, the cats don't notice it. Because it blooms at a time when pretty much nothing else is flowering, I generally let it get carried away, for the sake of the wild bees. Even the one that flops over the steps to my workshop is not cut back.
My hive of bees probably made a lot of honey from the basswood tree. The buzz was they were coming and going in that direction. They were nice and gentle when I opened the hive. That's to say they pretty much ignored me.
When I had bees about thirty years ago, I had a policy of not disturbing them too much. I felt they knew what they were doing and didn't want to mess up their work to satisfy my curiosity. I'm just the colony landlord, who comes to provide syrup in early spring and additional stories for honey storage. So far, I have added two supers. I'm the super with the supers. Like all landlords, I hope to be paid.
Catnip wasn't in the wildflowers book. The leaves are quite pungent. The flowers are teensy, with new blossoms opening each day. I have to admire the bees for their work on them, since the nectar they must get from each flower is minuscule.
The question is, will the honey be something I can only spread on toast when all the cats are out of the house?
