Around the Place
Tonight we “installed” the new swarm. It’s even bigger than the last one, clearly the biggest by far we’ve gotten of all four wild swarms we have living here. The install wasn’t nearly as big a fail...
View ArticleMy New Favorite Swarm
Okay, so never mind about having to coax the bees into their new home. I think they’re my new favorite swarm (don’t tell the others!) They are industrious, and had built about 3″ of comb in 36 hours...
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The Smart Swarm
My parents sent me a photo of the swarm I captured in their back yard a few weeks ago. Big glob o’ bees! This is what a swarm looks like, in case anyone wondered. Went out to check the hives today,...
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Swarm in July, Worth More Than a Fly?
There’s an old saying… A swarm in May is worth a load of hay; a swarm in June is worth a silver spoon; but a swarm in July is not worth a fly. Well, it’s July 6th, and the bees, they are a-swarmin’....
View ArticleBee Update
Lots going on with the bees around the place! A week or 10 days ago, I noticed that my first Top Bar hive (Laure, for lack of a better name) was surprisingly quiet. That was the hive that swarmed...
View ArticleBees in October
We’ve had a beautiful stretch of weather here in Battle Ground this October. Since I was sick for the last stretch of decent weather, I hadn’t really had a chance to do the final fall check of the...
View ArticleJanuary Warm Ups
Last week we had some very cold weather, with the chance of snow. Snowpocalypse, if you listened to the news. Right. We never saw any snow where I live, but it did get down considerably cold for a...
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Bee Hive Post Mortem
Today was the first decent-ish weather we’ve had in some time. No rain, and it got up to near 70 degrees. It was overcast (like always), but it was the first spring day of working in the garden in...
View ArticleHappy Solstice, Hive Style
Today was the Solstice, and coincidentally it was warm enough to declare it Hive Day. The bad news is, I woke up with a screaming migraine. The good news is, I took a few painkillers, got an ice pack...
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Book Review – A Book of Bees, by Sue Hubbell
I’ve really enjoyed several of the books I’ve read by Sue Hubbell. She’s a writer now in her 70′s, who was a librarian at Brown University until 1972, when she and her husband moved to the Ozarks to...
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