Let me start off with the good. Look at the lovely Chinaberry blooming out back, just above the backyard hives we have set up here at the little Bee Ranch. Lovely. I first noticed they were beginning to bud out during the March bee class and I made a note to check again. Love looking at them. As we drove to market this morning in SA, I noticed that more of these had bloomed all along Highway 281; so pretty! I also enjoyed seeing the spreads of Bluebonnets, Primroses, Indian Blankets, Horsemint (yay!), and several other flowers I didn’t know names of this morning. I love this time of year. Weather’s still enjoyable and cool-ish. 🙂 No 3-digit oven temps just yet.
And now for something a little less good. 😦 I just want to share these things with everyone so that our new beekeepers (who are hopefully reading our blog posts as we suggested or joined up with a local bee club) will also be on the alert.
So you know what that is? We looked at many pictures to confirm it…brown recluse. Yuck. And what’s that you see under her? Egg sack perhaps!? Double yuck. I sure was not happy when Mark showed me that picture. This little beauty was actually ON our observation hive that we pulled out of the garage for the first time this year. It’s been in there since the weather turned cold and we stopped taking our bees to markets. If he hadn’t gotten the box out for display, that means more than likely that sack of tiny, terrible babies would be all over our garage! 😦 Thank God things happen they way they did. He killed the spider and got rid of the sack as well. Between the rattlesnake den and the brown recluse plus sack and all the crawling, long, fuzzy black caterpillars…it’s amazing Smokey’s not been carried off somewhere. We’re going to have to really watch ourselves (minus caterpillar danger) and you should also.
For new beekeepers, please keep in mind that things crawl in and out of our bee boxes all the time so take precautions when you are checking your hives. Which you should be doing now. If you don’t recall, last year during harvest, we ran across black widows under the lids on some hives. Danger! Just be careful out there.
Gretchen Bee Ranch 
Eek! Didn’t know you had black widows in Texas. The spiders in British hives are scary but not deadly.