Gratitude Lounge

The maple leaves are just beginning to come out of their buds here. I can hear a cardinal singing. The sun is out and it looks like spring, but it is also very cold. We had a hard frost last night and I am hoping our 2 new hives of bees have survived this cold. They haven’t been in their homes a week yet, and they have not been eating their sugar water. Crossed fingers! They might be balled up inside and dancing, to keep their queens warm. Nature is amazing!
A day or two more and it will be warm again. Nature and nature’s rhythms are endlessly fascinating. Even in the city, we see birds and wild plants, trees, and insects, going about their business as if we were barely here. Nature is here to fascinate and comfort us, if we but look. Here is a little frog I photographed in my garden two years ago… Have a lovely day, my friends!

This morning I am grateful for bees of all kinds, not just honeybees but also bumbles and other wild bees that do so much work for us and bring us so much joy in the form of flowers and food. They truly are amazing creatures!
We received the call to pick up our bees two days ago, but as some of you also experienced, we had two days of snow, and it was too cold to install them. We left them at the beekeeper’s shop where they could be warm and waited for yesterday when the sun was out to go pick them up. When we install, my husband Cameron has to suit up completely, because he is severely allergic to bees and has to be run to emergency if he is stung. Even still, he absolutely loves beekeeping! I do not have to suit up or even wear gloves. I used to, but now I know I only need something to cover my hair, like a bandana, so that if bees land on my head they won’t get tangled.

Something that made this experience a delight this year, was I told my neighbors about it. Our neighbors around the corner have two boys, and they have been homeschooling them since Covid. I thought they might enjoy coming to watch us install. So they came over, and Takeshi, who is 11, was particularly fascinated, and brave enough he could come very close to observe. He even had read up about honey bees before coming, so we had some lovely conversation!
One thing I brought up was how busy a queen must be laying eggs. A hive has between 40,000 and 80,000 bees in it, and most of them (the workers) only live for about six weeks. They need to be constantly replaced, and there is only one queen. So how many eggs must a queen lay in a day? How many seconds between laying two eggs?

It isn’t really a math question to solve, but you could hear the boy trying to work out the problem, and it does inspire awe of fascinating bees!

So yesterday we replaced the plugs in the queen boxes with fondant, so they can slowly eat their way through in the next few days and free themselves. Too early, and the workers will think this queen is an invader, and will kill her, so instead we time release so they can get used to each other. We tacked the queen box to a frame and placed her inside the hive, then opened up the container holding the bees and gently shook some of them out, and then placed their box still of worker bees inside the hives. Then we placed feeders into the front of the hives to get them started, until they know their new home and food sources. Today it is cold again and rainy, but I can see a few workers go in and out, exploring and getting a chance to use the toilet (they never go inside the hive unless they have dysentery). But tomorrow we will go back in the hives and take out the transport boxes and replace the space with frames so they can begin building “comb.”
In a couple more days, we will go back in and make sure that the queens are free and doing well, and a few days after that we want to be able to see the queens working and laying eggs and the workers building new comb.
Love to everyone! I hope you have a great day.