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Tulip poplar blooms

Our honey flow has started here in the mountains of western North Carolina … about a month early. Blackberry bushes, tulip poplar trees and black locust are throwing out blooms like there is no tomorrow, offering up the best of their best in this wildly vibrant spring. An old timey bee guy I know who has lived here all his life, told me he has never ever seen a spring like this. My bee yard looks and sounds like rush hour in L.A. Bees are coming and going from the hives in an explosion of winged traffic; Sam Comfort calls this flying with purpose. It is astonishing to sit and watch. I have been in the yard, on and off, throughout these past weeks, reveling in the divine revelation of it all.

New queens were born in Fern, Muriel, Sacre Coeur, Rinpoche and Guadalupe nucs (short for nucleus or small starter colonies). These precious souls join Crow, Ganesha, Hanson, Madonna, Never Forgets, and Milagro hives. What a family, eh? And, wonder of wonders, I saw the virgin queen from one hive step out and take her mating flight. Virgin queens have no hips, but all being well they soon become voluptuous (and I’ll confirm that soon when I go in and check for eggs).

Blackberry blossoms

I’m in a bee delirium. I go to the apiary each morning and I can hear it even before I enter it; the bees have gone utterly Dionysian with their precious spring-imbibing selves. It is so full of life here! I put my ear to the hives and the Milagro and Ganesha colonies roar like honeybee-powered engines. The bees are bursting out of their britches. And some plants and trees that normally bloom in succession, are blooming at the same time (which really is odd as socks). I can’t think why a single human being in western North Carolina could be anything but happy right now. All our sap is rising …

Pollinator couple on the Pieris bush.

There are four Pieris (Lily of the Valley) bushes outside my home office; one is by my window at eye level. We have 4,500 pollinators in our area and I swear that most of them were on that bush this spring; it is a pollinator orgy over here and every winged one of them is in a good mood. It was like the Star Wars bar scene every day … and the most interesting sighting was a very odd-couple pairing of a large bee with a much smaller “hitchhiker” bee on its back. I apologize for the picture quality (it’s blurry), but it was the best I could do in that moment.

For days, I saw this duo on those bushes. The smaller bee looks like a honeybee, but with my glasses on (!) I realized it was too small for a honeybee. I posted this on my Facebook page and other circles and it sparked conversation and interest from here to Australia. I have been in touch with various entomologists from around the U.S. and the consensus is that the pair is either southeast blueberry bees or carpenter bees, but no one is absolutely sure because while some solitary bees (which these are) have smaller mates that can do that on-the-back thing, everyone needs to see a clearer photo to be sure of who’s who. I tried to get a better picture for days but “dating season” was over, even when I looked around on other blooming plants. This is a next-year thing. The rhythm and calendar of my life is now marked by bee-ish events and that fills my heart with gladness.

What else? At this time of year, I am constantly (and happily) answering bee-ish questions by phone and email. I field other calls like an air traffic controller, connecting people spotting swarms with friends who want to catch them. I visit some yards and do post-mortem sleuthing. I’m volunteering for a research project for The Center for Honeybee Research that has two yards of hives at the WNC Nature Center (some overlooking the red wolves and the others, the bears). And I continue to do remote teaching for the College of the Melissae: Center for Sacred Beekeeping that is growing at the pace of its own frenzied spring … they are a wonderful community to bee-hold.

New colonies delivered to Start's farm.

This week marks the third and last occasion of helping some friends with 600 nucs that are delivered to a farm. A small bee-sotted team of us join Stuart, Jon and Carl (the nuc biz guys) to check each colony to be sure it is whole, hearty, queen-right, and all-ways-right before being picked up by the bee stewards who paid for them. We are knee deep in bajillions of bees … for hours of humming hours. The nucs are chemical-free, full to bursting, healthy new daughter colonies that take the pollen for great queen / genetic lineages. Doing the “bee math” and estimating about 10,000 bees per colony, I will have personally met around 1,200,000 more bees by the end of this adventure … I am a wealthy woman.

New daughter colony bursting with bees.

I am in such an altered state after this happy work each year that it feeds my soul like a fine time-released feast. I think, talk and dream about bees, smell like bees, am stained with propolis, have farmer girl’s nails, my favorite bee yard clothes are turning into comfy “blankies”, and I have constant hat hair.  What more could a girl want?

Comfy bee clothes slowly turning into "blankies" ...

So, my friends, Caveat Bee-ster (made-up Latin for bee-lover beware): This kind of great good fortune could happen to you. If I am incoherent the next time I see you … if I am just staring at you blissfully and wordlessly, just know that I have continued to have the most amazing bee spring ever and that somehow you’ll be able to receive darshan from the bees through me, one way or another. I remain at the feet of the Sri Sri bee-jis (all six of them). This surely is a path to enlightenment.

Til next time beeloveds … Carpe bee-um

Blessed be. Blessed bees.
Debra

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You and Grandma Ruth have been on my mind. I’m in my 60th year and a beekeeper now, married to a man named Joe that you both would have liked a lot. We have 15 acres north of Asheville, NC, in the southern Appalachians. I am in my bee yard daily, watching the bees … and I often think of you both.

Roy Bateman in his soybeans. (Illinois, 1952)

Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, your farm (always “The Farm” in my remembering) was a magical destination for me … a whole world I was free to roam and the first place I traveled to, by myself, as a child. Dad put me on the train in Chicago, along with chewing gum and abundant magazines, and off I went (to you) like the queen of the cosmos. I adored the farm and I adored you both. I ranged and rambled like a free-range chicken … and everywhere felt safe.

I know you weren’t a beekeeper but you farmed all your life, your land tucked between Farmer City and Mahomet … corn, soybeans, cattle, chickens, and some pigs being the mainstay of your life. Mom told me that you pretty much never left home except for when a war borrowed you for a few years. You loved that land and I believe it loved you.

I found a photo of you in your soybeans, flowering like a sturdy plant in your own fields. I particularly love it and have a copy in my study. Cousin Nancy and Aunt Amy discovered this caption on that same photo: Pop wanted to show how high the corn and beans got in the Summer of ‘52. That, apparently, was a summer of epic growth (and since I was conceived and born that year, something must have been in the air).

Back in the day, in a sea of many cousins, I feel like I was probably one of the least likely to take up beekeeping … everyone else seemed to have far better (what I would call) earth skills, which I so admired. But the bees got me and when they did, I started thinking even more about you and Grandma Ruth. And just so you know, after getting my undergraduate degree in college, I never did get my Ph.D. In 1974, I went to Europe for three months and stayed 11 years (I was in England). Life had better plans for me than the ones I was making … and my Ph.D. became a BEEh.D.

The honeybees have been struggling. They are up against a mite called Varroa destructor, a phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder, and a whole host of effects from modern pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and (in my opinion) other poor human choices. I am trying to help. As an educator, speaker and writer (and an everyday, devoted beekeeper), I have brushed up against some amazing bee-ish movers and shakers … the Bee Illuminati (as I call them). I want to introduce you to them through this series of ongoing articles; they offer great insight on important territory and talk about things I don’t hear enough about (or even at all). [click to continue…]

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Love, it is said, is a many splendored thing. And I believe that love expressed is a wildly potent thing – percolating out into the wider world in its organic exponential fashion, pollinating in the oddest places and spaces. In this holydays season, let me share a Tale of True Love …

Laurie and Brian's bee yard.

2011’s amazing bee-ish tide brought Laurie and Brian, two new beekeepers, to my shores. They jumped into beekeeping with gusto. It was a joy to help them in their bee yard and to witness their devotion to becoming good honeybee stewards of two precious hives. By fall, these hives were brimming with vitality and ready for winter in every way.

Laurie and Brian and the bears' bee yard ... after the bears had Thanksgiving.

By Thanksgiving, there was much to give thanks for. And by the end of Thanksgiving, when Brian and Laurie were out of town, a family of bears had also celebrated. They tore up the hives, flinging boxes, frames and (of course) the bees around like confetti. What was bliss for them was deeply heartbreaking for Laurie and Brian … and life threatening for the bees.

Bears are not the bad guys here. They are somebody’s children, too. And like the bees, they have to forage for food. It is natural that brood-and-honey-filled hives would appeal. And it is unnatural that bears should choose to be in such close proximity to humans. Who would think that a bear fence would be needed so close to downtown Asheville, NC? But like many species these days, their habitat has been encroached. This was also a very droughty year, affecting both bees and bears in many parts of the country. So the bears came, they smelled, they conquered … and feasted. [click to continue…]

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