In the Dead of Winter?

Honeybee on Winter Hazel

Hazel catkins laden with pollen

Most of the plants in my garden are chosen not only for their beauty but for their use.  In a bee garden this would include for food and a place to live and raise the next generation.  For this reason, I try to have something blooming  in each season.

This warm autumn, I enjoyed the crazy yellow and fragrant blooms of my Witch Hazel.  It was covered with small bees and flies enjoying the nectar but not my honeybees.  It is winter- January- but the days have been relatively warm and my bees are occasionally out flying and foraging.  What is there to eat in January?

Although most trees are bare of leaves, there are those that are beginning to bloom now- oaks, some maples, though you will hardly see these blooms as they are very inconspicuous.  Various other flowering bushes and trees are more showy and fragrant- Winter Jasmine (jasmine nudiflorum) with its bright yellow flowers, Winter Hazel, Hammamelis Vernalis- a cousin of WitchHazel and WinterSweet (Chimonanthus praecox) are just a few.  Their bloom times will vary a bit according to the weather but the warmth needed for blooms will invite the bees out of their hives to look for food.  The flowering oaks and maples will primarily be producing pollen and the others a mixture of pollen and nectar.

These winter blooms really are not enough to feed a hive that is just beginning to come back to life, with the queen getting ready to start laying eggs for the spring bees.  It is a time when beekeepers must make sure to be feeding their hives.  Those warm days encourage the bees toward greater activity and more consumption of their dwindling winter stores making this a precarious time of year for them- starvation becomes a real possibility.

Still, as winter moves toward spring, the snow drops, crocuses and hyacinths start peeking their heads up.  My growing washes of Winter Aconite will become full of drops of nectar, attracting my bees and helping them to replenish their stores of honey.  I will help them by feeding them a nectar-like, light sugar syrup fortified with essential oils of lemongrass and spearmint until they let me know they do not need this, until the spring blossoms are in full bloom.

Honeybee on Winter Jasmine

Flowers- It's more than just looks!

Early Spring Crocus

I am planning  this years' bee garden, which also functions as a butterfly and other pollinator garden.  When making my choices of what to try, what to leave behind and what to plant more of there are many qualities to consider.

The shape of the flowers is primary for honeybees, as they cannot glean the nectar from anything that is too long and narrow- those are reserved for butterflies, hummingbirds, moths and larger bees with longer mouth-parts.

Color is important as honeybees do have preferences but are not exclusive- they particularly like blues, whites, purples and yellows.

How many plants of this variety will I need to catch the interest of my honeybees?  They prefer  a location with many of the same flowers and will frequently ignore a couple of plants.

Grecian Windflowers- Anemone blanda

Nectar producers are key in my choices and here is where the most difficult decisions and choices are.  Here is where there is difficulty in finding out how much and how consistently nectar is being produced by a particular species, variety, cultivar.  How will the climate and weather in my particular area affect nectar production?  Will I find differences in nectar production between species and hybrids that can limit their use in a bee garden and who has answers to these questions?

I search through seed catalogs during this season and try to make the best decisions but I find it to be mostly trial and error.  I like best those catalogs that point out butterfly and bird friendly plants as it tells me two important things- the plants have nectar; they are not sterile and will produce viable seed.  That means they will also have useful pollen- another important food for bees.  Another important bit of information is where a plant originally comes from- temperature zone and location.  Is the plant happiest with wet feet? Does it need a warm winter?  Does it need real cold for an extended time in order to produce flowers?  And finally, when does it bloom and for how long?

 Each year, I catalog the winners and losers from my researches.  I try reasonable ones in different areas of my garden to find the best micro-climate for the plant.  I experiment and try very hard to learn from my successes and failures.

There are those who are benefiting and maybe even depending on the choices I make in my Bee Garden.

Allium giganteum

Fall Aster-  Aster nova-anglia

Honey- How Whole a Food?

Honeybee collecting nectar and pollen from a Poppy flower

Recently I have been reading a few articles about honey that bother me in different ways.

First was an article that comes from Europe, about EEC requirements that honey must meet in order to be called honey. Namely, a honey producer, large or small must prove that their honey has such and such a percentage of pollen. If it doesn't meet that requirement, it is not salable- it is not honey. (Will this encourage honey producers to add pollen to honey that might not meet this standard? Pollen that has no relationship to the bees or locale in which the honey was produced?  If so, that would create a wholly different set of problems for honey consumers.)

Second was an article (http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/11/tests-show-most-store-honey-isnt-honey/) about the lack of pollen in the bulk of average, store-bought honey from major producers, and questioning whether this should be called honey at all as it is missing a major component.

 As a beekeeper who has exhibited my honey in local agricultural fairs and sold my honey privately, I realize that there are numerous standards by which honey may be judged.  Most supermarket honey has been heated to a temperature high enough to dissolve any crystals forming therein and filtered finely enough to remove pollen particles that might look like bits of dirt to the many that do not have any experience with the true nature of honey.  The average consumer believes that honey that has crystallized has gone bad.  They do not know that honey is made from nectar, processed by honeybees and that it is by nature, sugars.  Sugars will crystallize- that is their nature and that is what we depend on when using sugars to make candy such as Rock-candy.  Until recently, most beekeepers and honey producers have tried to adapt honey to the perceived desires of the public, which means heating and filtering.  The end product is still honey but perhaps not as nutritious as it is coming in its natural state directly from the hive.

Educating the public about honey- what it is and what it contains and why, can solve the problems without making laws that will in the end, confuse and not enlighten- will not increase the appreciation and understanding of the true gift that honey is both to us and to whom it is the staff of life- the honeybees themselves.  It is a pure and whole food that completely nourishes the bees!

A Warm and Green December

Today is a misty and warm day in December.  We have been enjoying many warm days- warm enough to complete gardening tasks I wouldn't have begun until March.  In fact, it has been so warm that I keep thinking of trying out some cold weather vegetables.  I stop myself as I know that here in the Mid-Atlantic we don't really get our coldest days until January, February and March. The time is approaching, though, for starting seeds- planning this seasons gardens and dreaming, envisioning the great plan for my Bee Garden in the city. 

This year I have a few new opportunities as the trees and bushes in my garden have been growing tall enough to begin creating a shaded forest garden area for woodland herbs and plants.    In another area I have been observing, I see that there is shade almost until noon in all seasons and the larger Vitex bushes I have planted there next to my Witch-hazel, have grown in and give the area  bulk and depth.  I now think that some low-growing bushes are what is needed there.  As I plan, my thoughts are directed toward plants with many flowers available for honeybees, plants with herbal/medicinal uses and plants that flower across different seasons.  These are my three priorities- my guidelines as I search for the perfect plants for my garden which is small but has numerous micro-climates.

These areas in my garden are for more permanent plantings and contain trees, bushes, perennial wildflowers and some bulbs.  I try to find plants native to my area and useful to me as well as to the birds and insects living around here.  I am keeping in my mind a vision of a magical place that nurtures the senses, the spirits and the bodies of whoever visits.  A place that contains something green in every season; something useful or edible any time of year; a place that inspires any time of day or night.

Thanksgiving in the Bee Garden

Chickens rotating on string while roasting by the fire near the coals

This year we decided to make Thanksgiving more than just dinner.  We decided to make the preparations for dinner into a reminder of the first Thanksgiving by cooking our dinner out by the garden.

As a part of the Mint Wars, clearing out one of the garden beds, I reclaimed a fire pit I had built in there many years ago. I dug out all of the bricks and rocks buried there and re-stacked them into a new fire pit- a three sided one to create a wind block.  We drove iron posts into the ground on either side of the pit and put a third post through them as a place from which to suspend chickens cooking next to our fire.

We planned to start our feast with salmon.  This we prepared by taking a cedar plank and soaking it well.  Then we greased the skin of the salmon and nailed it to the plank with square cement nails.  The salmon was well spiced and oiled and set to leaning near the fire- close enough to cook and smoke it but not close enough to burn.  I had seen this technique at a historical re-enactment site and wanted to try it out.

The chickens would be the longest cooking of the foods we were preparing and required a great amount of coals so we had the fire going at least an hour before we started cooking  to build up the coals we needed.  We used wild cherry and mulberry wood from trees that came down on our property a few years ago.  They made a fine long-lasting bed of coals!  I found the idea for cooking the chickens at a website that specializes in teaching about and selling all manner of grills and grilling techniques. (  http://www.firepit-and-grilling-guru.com/roast-chicken-recipe.html  )   They are a wonderful resource .  We decided to build the fire away from the back wall of the fire pit and use that wall as both a wind block and a reflective surface to increase the heat for cooking the chicken.  We trussed and suspended the chickens from strong, heavy, cotton twine after first having a bit of a disaster with the jute cord I sometimes use for fuel in my beehive smoker.  While the chickens were suspended, we spun them on their strings and they were slowly rotating for about and hour and a half before they were done.  I had marinaded the chickens first and rubbed them with oils and herbs, basting them repeatedly during the cooking. We kept wetting down the string as we went along so it would not burn and break.

The salmon cooked on the other side of the fire and took only about one-half hour.  As that was cooking, we set up a grill over the coals and sauteed kale with hard salami adding wine vinegar and some herbs and spices.  We also had a dish of green beans with onions and mushrooms going in a cast iron pan at the same time.

The feast was delicious as we had earlier prepared a cranberry relish and a pumpkin pie- with Cinderella pumpkin harvested out of our garden.

The day was lovely and brisk- a bit too cold for my bees nearby (who remained in their hive).  There is not too much else as relaxing as cooking by an open fire, drinking apple cider with my honey and sharing a delicious feast afterward.

Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Mint

Mint- A hardy , fragrant and very useful plant to have in a bee garden (or any other garden).  Mint is also in that category of invasive plants and will make itself very comfortable and reach its fibrous roots to all corners or your garden.

At this time, I am at the beginning of the Mint Wars.  Mint has taken over one bed of my garden. Peppermint, spearmint and chocolate peppermint. 

I originally planted it in large clay pots and sunk them into the bed.  I thought this would keep it from spreading uncontrollably.  I did not know that it would reach and stretch its lovely stems and put down new roots wherever it touched the earth!  It  has crept and burrowed and filled the space to its very corners and walls.  Harvesting it has only helped a little!  My honeybees enjoying the nectar of its flowers has probably increased the fertile seed which will fall to earth starting new mint plants for the coming season!

Truthfully, this did not happen in one season.  I must admit to negligence in working my garden for the last two years, except minimally.  A back injury and a massive increase in mosquitoes have made things more difficult for me.  But I am back and hopefully stronger and smarter.  I am ready to do war against the mint! 

I realized that I would have to dig out and sift all of the soil in this bed and so I have begun.  I have a large screen- a wooden frame with a hardware cloth screen.  This is set over my wheelbarrow.  I dig up a narrow strip about 10 inches deep at a time and gently rub the soil against the screen, sending the good earth through and leaving all of the roots and rocks (and other surprises) behind.  When I have filled the wheelbarrow with soil and my trash bag with roots (I do not put perennial roots into my compost-you can guess why!) I dump the soil carefully back into its bed. 

I am taking some of the mint to replant into its original pots but will not reset them into the bed.  Instead there will be large, beautiful containers of mint alongside my garden attracting my honeybees this coming season. There will  be fragrant and delicious mint teas to sip while sitting and enjoying my Bee Garden.

Primary Role for the New Season

New Year for the world. One thing I try to do now is to reevaluate my role and my goals for the upcoming year. Near at hand is the fact that I will be feeding all of my bees frequently over the coming seasons. My hive in the city has by far the most stored food. The hives on two different farms are woefully short supplied. I am thinking that I should consider not only feeding the bees with the usual sugar syrup but also adding something that contains vitamins and minerals, as they will not be eating honey much over the winter. Cane sugar syrup is pure carbohydrate and will be completely utilized by the bees for energy . This is easier on their digestive systems because there is no waste to be stored in their digestive tracts. That means a reduction in gut waste and bacteria and the diseases to which that exposes the bees. The question is will the length of time only eating sugar syrup substantially weaken bees who must survive and work to rebuild their colony for the Spring and how can I balance the exposure to waste derived illness from added nutrients stored in the bees digestive systems with the sugar syrup diet. I must pursue answers to these questions- that is my primary role as a beekeeper for this season.