The Great Rain Event

Last night the soft rumble of thunder started around 9:30p. I could hear it once in a while as we sat in the living room. At first I thought I might have mistaken the sounds of a car rumbling by or something but I was hopeful since they did tell us there was an 80-90% chance of rain. They have, however, been known to be wrong. They being pretty much all the meteorologists. Anyway, they were right and we had a fantastic storm packed with flashes of lighting (some soft, some glaringly bright in the night), thunder that ranged from soft rumbles to startling claps, a touch of wind (much more than a touch west of us in San Antonio), and several inches of precious rain. Our rain gauge showed a little more than two inches as I posted over on the Seguin blog. Other parts of the area reported a range from one to five inches. We are all happy to have the rain and it was exciting to drive to work this morning and see the gushing waters here and there. Awesome.

You Know what else is awesome? The pollen the bees are carrying into the hives in the backyard. We have been seeing more and more brought in but besides the mustard growing wild, I’m not sure what else the bees are working right now. Over the weekend, we saw different colors of pollen, from red and yellow to bright red. It was so nice. These first two shots are from Mark when he checked on the teaching hives we have here at the house. Things dried up nicely throughout the day and the sun peeked out here and there. It warmed up enough for the girls to get out and do their foraging thing. I love the shot he caught of one of the bees on his hand. I am always still fascinated by the pouches of pollen they carry on their little legs. What’s more amazing to see is when they deposit the pollen into a cell on the frame. It hits me how small an amount each pouch is and how many pouches it may take to fill up each cell. Then multiply that cell by how ever many are on one side of a frame. Then double that for the other side of the frame. Then multiply that by nine frames per box. Is it just me or do you also find that a bit staggering to think these tiny little bees work themselves to death literally, to accomplish this? Sometimes this sort of thing drifts through my thoughts as I watch them at work or look at pictures Mark has shared with me since I couldn’t be there with him and his girls.

Here’s a shot of the bees this morning. I snapped some shots of them as Smokey and I checked out how much water was still standing on our lawn out back. I thought it looked so pretty. Everything is so green right now and this is so different from last year for sure. We haven’t seen puddles like this in two years I dare say. Yay for us and yay for the bees. Not to mention the wildflowers to come soon! Can’t wait to see how the rain will impact the blooming season and then the honey harvest.

Class Kickoff for 2012

This weekend we had our first Intro to Beekeeping class for the new year and we had a blast. It felt like forever since we had taught our last class (it was actually just last month!) and we felt a little rusty setting up the night before but we got everything together. Even Smokey kicked it into high gear as students mingled in the yard before and after class. Here we are on the back deck by the bamboo and the gate. He knows that’s where the students enter the yard and you can find him around that area most Saturday mornings if we are out there. He does this hilarious though weird dash through the crowd at least once each class. I call it the Psycho Monkey Run and it cracks me up. See the fun we have during class? No wonder we love having folks over to the Bee Ranch.

We had fifteen students this round, including two kids who did great. They were already over by the hives within inches, not suited up, before we started class! Fearless I tell you. It was a gorgeous day, slightly chilly but luckily it warmed up enough to go into the hives for a while. Everyone had a chance to hold a frame of bees, we spotted the queen and we think everyone had a good time and learned some things along the way. We had a treat this class – a couple of the students make mead and they brought samples for everyone AND they also let us sample Cranberry and Saw Palmetto honeys from their personal stash. What a nice treat! It was super fun and now we can’t wait for our next class on February 4.

We have a full set of pictures at Flickr if you would like to check out
what the class did January 21.

By the way – tomorrow is Lunar New Year, also known as Tết to Vietnamese people or Chinese New Year to other people. Year of the Dragon this time. Here’s to a prosperous, fun and happiness-filled, healthy year for all of us and all the bees! Chúc mừng năm mới!!

An Evening with the Master

Master Gardeners, that is. This evening we carried some technology as well as honey and candles over to the Agrilife Extension Office here in the downtown area of Seguin and spent about an hour with the group. We totally enjoyed it because, as always, talking about the bees, honey and candles is a lot of fun. It’s all a lot of work but when we interact in this way with people, we forget how tiring it all can be. And when it’s over, we can’t wait to do another event. Crazy, isn’t it?

We went through our usual bits – who we are, why and when Mark took this on full time, how Mark likens my bravery in being close to bees despite the fact I’m allergic to the bravery I showed in Viet Nam when my mom took me into the war zone to see my dad over night during the height of the war. What?! That was a new tidbit of information he shared! Made me laugh and think, “How’d I get so lucky to find him??” Really, that war bit did happen but I wasn’t really brave. I was just a baby and my dad missed me and wanted to see me so my mom brought me out there. And I didn’t even know that story until recently when Dad told Mark about it. I just love it. See? You just never know what you’ll learn attending one of our presentations. Or taking one of our classes. Or reading our blog. By the way, thank you for doing one or all of those things.

Speaking of my dad, last week he referred a friend to us. I spent about twenty minutes on the phone, fighting morning grogginess (actually slept in that day!), with Dad’s friend who had received a jar of our honey as a gift. He was so fascinated with what we were doing and with beekeeping in general – he had so many wonderful questions and I did my best to answer them in my not-so-great Vietnamese. I was sort of drained but I thoroughly enjoyed the exercise. I wish I had a Viet tutor!

A Glove Full of Stingers

So the other day I came in after work and I saw Mark’s gloves…covered in little bee stingers!!! I think I might have screamed. And then I ran for the camera, of course. It was such a neat sight, I really wanted to capture it and share it with my family and friends. And tonight I thought some of you might also like to seen why we have the gear we do here in Texas. It’s obvious I have the gear because I’m allergic to the venom but the most stingers I’ve ever seen on my gloves is maybe TWO. And that’s because as soon as Mark tells me to go to the truck or watch out…I’m in the truck. Fully suited. Most of the time. I gingerly moved these gloves under my desk lamp for a good shot and I didn’t even dare touch them with my bare hands. Even though Mark said I needn’t worry, I didn’t want to take any chances I’d somehow get venom in me – I’m just lucky that way. If there’s a way for some detached stingers to inject venom to an unsuspecting photo-happy nut, then it’d happen to me.

Now, we do have gentle bees but since we are in Texas we can’t help but get some Africanization (is that a word? The beekeeper’s not here to tell me so I’m going with it.) of the hives. Mark told me that a particular hive he has was tending to be aggressive so he was in the process of requeening it. He knew to take precautions such as suiting up properly and we are both very glad he did. I didn’t count how many stingers are in the gloves but I kept staring at it in fascination. That’s a lot of dead bees! Luckily, my honey bee only got one sting on his chin and he said that was because he brushed his veil up against his chin at one point. And THAT’S why we tell you in class not to push your veils up against your face – no matter how much better you see.

Strong Winter Hive

I caught these bees on their “first flight” out of one of our strongest hives at Deadman Creek. This hive remained consistently strong through the drought and now through the winter, albeit a warmer than usual winter so far. All hives continue to collect pollen (the first real protein they’ve had since July) and they are all finally starting to grow a bit. The rain and the state of the hives makes me optimistic for our bees and their honey production this spring. The queen from this hive came from Wilbanks Apiary in Georgia and it is one of only three Wilbanks queens that I have. I’m certainly thinking about buying more Wilbanks queens when it comes time to re-queen this year.

Lessons in Candle Making

Last week Mark had a special one-on-one lesson with Melanie, who had previously given him some valuable advice that made the pillar look better than they had been and helped Mark be more efficient with production. Not to mention that he didn’t have to closely monitor the cooling process. Wow, he sure has been cranking out the candles now! Melanie brought her molds, wicks, notes, canisters, experiences and knowledge and they spent two and a half hours in the honey house. Pouring and talking and pouring some more. I wish I could have been there to take more pictures but at least I got to say hi to them both on my lunch break and snapped a few pictures.

After the lesson, Mark poured more candles with different wick styles and sizes and then we did our burn test this weekend. We haven’t done tea lights before but Mark is experimenting with them now. Looks like we are okay with the wicks he had been using on the pillar. The pine cone may be okay also. The wick we used in the candle below was too big, creating a flame that was too high, causing fast pooling which resulted in spill-over. It’s been fun to learn, as always, and we hope to continue improving on our production of candles.

One Hive, Two Queens

How many queens are in a hive? is a frequent question in beekeeping class.  The easy and usual answer is “only one.” But nature is never easy or usual. I’ve seen many hives with double queens, usually a mother, daughter combination where the mother is still laying eggs and the daughter has not yet mated. This is a short-term situation and the hive will either kill the less desirable queen, or part of the hive will swarm with one of the queens, restoring the hive to its proper one-queen condition.

I was feeding hives at Elm Creek and noticed this unusual site – two queens that were both laying eggs, and very near one another on the same frame. The queen with the white dot is a queen that I introduced into the hive over the summer. The other queen (see her to the left of the white-dotted queen?) was created by the hive, probably during a queen-less period before the new queen was introduced. I’ve never witnessed two queens working, almost in tandem, to lay eggs and produce new brood. Some cells even had two eggs, perhaps one from each queen. I’ve always wondered why the hive should be limited to only one queen when two would seem better to ensure its survivability. Not sure what to make of it – I’ll have to check with some old-time beekeepers who seem to have good and ready answers for every mystery.

Welcoming 2012 with a Visit to Pizza Yard

Today we ushered in the new year with a gorgeous day – full of warm sun but with a slightly nippy wind, especially out in the countryside. We took a drive out to the Pizza bee yard in Gonzales and feed the bees. They look pretty decent and one hive in particular was fantastically robust, literally filled to the brim with beautiful golden bees. Mark said he wished he could get them all to be like that.

I didn’t take a ton of photos, believe it or not, but I did manage to snap one close-up of the robust hive. I was struck by their light golden coloring. When Mark opened the hive up…we both were astounded by the sheer thickness of bees in there. Good job, girls!

Ringing in the New Year at the Bee Ranch

Hi everyone! After a lovely week in Florida with my side of the family, we are back home just in time to wrap up 2011 and to ring in the new year ahead of us. Today was a lovely day to come back to – perfect warmth with a slight nip in the air. Lots of sun, which means the bees in the back yard were flying pretty well when we checked on them. Mark said they were even bringing in some pollen. That’s always nice to see. We missed them during our short week away.

We had a few calls, a few emails and a few online orders this week. Can’t beat that. Running our business is hard but it’s also nice when you can take a bit of a break and still manage to do some business on the road. Technology is great for that. Back to the Bee Ranch today – those emails we received were from people wanting to stop by for honey and/or candles so we opened up the honey house as soon as we got home so that we can air it out a bit. Cranked up the wax melter and by tomorrow we should be pouring some more beeswax products. Got an order for 80 1-oz bars while we were gone so we are excited to get that filled. Some friends also stopped by to visit and pick up some honey. It’s always great to see our friends, especially from a distance away. We love to show them what we’re doing and how things work in the honey house. And we’re always happy when they have great questions and want to know more about beekeeping. Neither Mark nor I ever seem to tire of talking with people about these things.

Of course, Smokey welcomed us back and seemed right at home with our visitors, as usual. It’s nice when things are as they always are sometimes. As we look forward to the new year ahead, we were thinking back to all the wonderful adventures and beginnings we’ve had with our business in 2011. We sure couldn’t have done it without all the support of you, our friends and family. Our little business really took some big steps this year – getting products into new retail outlets, growing the number of hives we have, increasing awareness about bees through educational presentations and talks and our beekeeping class, increasing the number of events we attend, getting better organized in the honey house, getting the website up and running, getting more media coverage in print, online and on tv, getting our finances in order with formal assistance so we can better assess cost versus revenue…and more! And here’s to even more of “and more” in 2012.

Here are some of the things we resolve for 2012:

• Be better caretakers of the bees and share that knowledge with others
• Increase the quantity and quality of our hives
• Find new opportunities for the bees to pollinate and produce food for people
• Mark said he resolves to live in more harmony with Smokey (I cleaned that up to keep this positive! )
• I resolve to blog on all my blogs more regularly!

Hungry Bees

Today was finally warm and dry enough to get out to the Farm bee yard in order to check on and feed the new hives we picked up this fall. We’ve had several nice rainfalls lately so you have to think about how muddy the yards are and whether or not you can maneuver a truck in and out without getting stuck. The Farm yard is a good one as it is pretty easy to get in and out without much worry in the upper areas. We have several hives set up in a lower section of the grounds and that may be a different story. It’s great seeing all the pollen the bees are bringing in – a nice change from the pollen-less summer. This bee was carrying some of the brightest pollen I’ve seen this fall – not sure what flower it’s from.

We continue to feed these new hives that we purchased and placed at the Farm Yard in late October. They were short on stores for the winter, so we’ve scrambled to get them some food so they can keep themselves warm. Our challenge is to bring them through the winter alive, because if we do, they are going to have a field day with all of the spring wildflowers that are already starting to sprout from our abundant fall rains. The good news is that the hives are putting on some much-needed weight from our sugar syrup feedings — and, there is more rain in our forecast!