Honey Bees - When we purchased Excelsior the orchard did not have it's own source of bees. The previous owners preferring to "rent" hives, that is, the practice where someone brings hives to the orchard for a period of time. In part because we are an organic orchard one of the projects Paul wanted to start was raising bees and harvesting honey. He has a long time friend, Rusty who has been a beekeeper (apiarist) for many years and could get him started. He began with three what are call "nucs"; a box that contains a queen, a small assortment of nurse bees, drones and worker bees. Rusty and Paul built the structure and enclosed them in a hot wire fence to ward off predators. That was 2004 a year where we had some very big bears causing havoc and destruction in our peaches, apples, pears and nectarines. Destroying dozens of trees and creating quite a financial loss. In the bears path of course were the new hives which must have been either an appetizer or dessert. (see photo). Well that did not deter Paul. Next year they built a small fortress to house the bees. Huge posts and wire including barb wire and a serious electric fence. There is corrugated steel on the ground outside the fence to assure the bear gets good conduction with the ground. We haven't had any bear pressure since. Each year Paul has tried different methods of generating hives. The "nucs" which are most expensive and sometimes hard to come by, purchasing queens and splitting hives, and growing a queen for a hive. And to date each method has worked but unfortunately the very small pests, mites, ants, yellow jackets have had their turns at killing off the hives. We also have had problems with very cold weather so Paul began feeding the bees in the winter and trying to minimize their heat loss. Last fall we had six pretty healthy hives which Paul fed the last time in February. Yesterday he checked on the hives and we had lost all three in the west side "fortress". That leaves us with three hives on the east for the whole orchard. The funny thing about honey bees that I didn't know is that they don't like bad weather. If it's below 50 deg and/or windy and wet .. they don't work. Funny huh. I keep saying we need to just get a bunch of bumble bees - they work in all weather because they don't have a nice cozy hive. I have several bee stories and some great photos I will cover in future blogs. An you will hear more about Lizzy.
In the meantime check out her Blog "Once Upon a Plate"
http://lizzy-onceuponaplate.blogspot.com/ and her some of her outstanding photographs of the orchard and its inhabitants at:
http://lizzy-onceuponaplate.blogspot.com/2009/11/orchard-pictorial.html
An Orchard Pictorial - November 5, 2009.
Lizzy came to us through the WWOOF program and we are really lucky that she will be back in May.
Today, the fruit buds are growing but still tucked away, it's cool, windy and cloudy - oh when will those blossoms come out?
I was raised on those orchards. I remember beehives and getting stung by those bees.
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