Food Deserts

-Posted by Isaac

Well, the rains came back, didn't they?

 Farmers are loving it. And so are the ducks.

But bees and beekeepers, not so much. The nectar flow has basically ended in our little corner of the world.

But that's ok... the three weeks previous have been fantastic. 

Remember the wonderfully uncomfortable first week of July? 95 degrees and bright sun? The bees were packing it in.

Some did better than others.

My favorite quarterly publication came yesterday.

Toward the back, I read an article where the author was calculating the unimaginable number of flowers it takes to produce a honey crop. And he also stated that after June, the Ohio honey flows were virtually over. That bees have nothing but the "food deserts" of corn and soybeans.

Hmmm...

We must have magic bees.

If you had already taken off the spring honey, you easily recognize that all this magic happened within a heat-soaked span of about three weeks- late June to mid July. Our little wizards were busy. 

Really busy.

Where did all this honey come from? Magic? Hmm...

It was a forgivable offense. Most wouldn't know. Not everyone harvests honey three times a year. One of which- the summer harvest- coming from a "food desert." 

If the conditions are right, soybeans can be awesome. And this year they were.

But maybe only for nectar? As far as pollen is concerned, the summer really is a food desert. And pollen is the most important part of the bees' diet. So we combat this problem with a little pollen substitute. I completed round one this week.

It's not an easy job. You have to lift all those supers off, split the brood boxes...

...and give the bees a nice dollop of protein right where they need it. But not too much... if you put much over two pounds, more than the bees can finish in a week or so, you are basically just feeding hive beetles with the remainder.

Then everything gets put back together, and it's on to the next hive. Everybody will get five or six pounds of protein between now and mid September when the goldenrod starts. It's hard work to combat a food desert.

But you pace yourself. I can knock out about five yards over a six hour day. That means every hive gets a shot of protein every two weeks. And not long weeks. Thirty hours of feeding bees leaves plenty of extra time for hiking. Or just sitting and thinking.

Maybe there really is some magic in beekeeping.

Speciality Honey, 2018

-Posted by Isaac

Just a little update on our efforts in the production of these two:

One was a success. So far, the other hasn't quite panned out.

So the good news first- the tulip poplar. For two years in a row, our bee yards in the hills have been a bright spot. And not only with honey production. I split these hives twice this spring before letting them do their thing. The second split came in early May with the tulip poplar bloom only a couple weeks away. I worried that maybe it was a mistake, that I'd taken their workforce. But it turned out just fine. They already had such momentum.

It's an hour drive to these girls, so I don't make it as often as I'd like. What a surprise when I returned in July! Honey! 

The girls did good.

About a thousand pounds of 2018 tulip poplar.

It almost makes me want to put in another bee yard down there. But I've learned... not every year pans out. In fact, most don't.

And on that note, let's talk about the buckwheat.

We had a decent stand this spring. The 14 acres we rented around our place came up and bloomed right on schedule. Sure, it was a little weedy...

...but every morning the bees were out there working hard. Weeds or no weeds, the honey should have been rolling in. There were plenty of flowers. But it wasn't to be. I pulled the supers from about thirty hives at the end of June, and it was minimal. We may have averaged 5-10 lbs per hive. (About like the rest of the spring crop.) And the honey wasn't even black like it should have been. It was more of a light brown, resembling our fall honey. The bees must have mixed that dark buckwheat nectar with a lot of the late April honeysuckle. 

Oh well, back to the drawing board.

I had my farmer along for the next round.

(Ok, maybe more than a little weedy...)

To the relief of my dad, and all the farmers who can't stand the sight of weeds, we tilled everything back under. The great thing about buckwheat is that you can get multiple blooms over the course of a season. From seed to flower, it only takes 6 weeks.

So things are now cleaned up...

...and we wait to see what the next generation will bring us.

Sun Worshipping

-Posted by Isaac

When the sun is bright and high, when the July heat is baking us, when the vast green fields of soybeans are a'bloom, when the summer feels like it ought, I like to check the bees. I like to do it alone, lost in my thoughts. And every now and then, I like to bring company and get lost in bee talk. It's hard to convince my kids to come along. The truth is, they're sick of bee talk. 

But sometimes it's just a matter of an easy bribe.

If you're a beekeeper, a few things make you very happy. White wax would be one of them. When you pop a lid and see a fringe of white new wax lining the frames. This means the nectar is flowing!

I start happy, and my happiness grows with every yard. Driving around, talking about bee life and nectar and honey and heat and growth, stopping to walk the fields and ditches, checking for foraging, contemplating the beauty... awed by the wealth... breathing sweet and lucid air... taking it all in.

It's sublime.

I can't speak for all of us, but when I check bees, I live in an exhilarating virtual world- my head. It's intoxicating, almost addictive. It's selfish. Like the Robert Earl Keen song, 'I am guilty of a dreadful selfish crime.' I love to sneak away to my job. 

And even if I can't sneak away to the bees, if the sun is shining, it's a simple joy just to sneak into the light. And think. Sunlight- millions of years old, these photons. Born of nuclear fusion deep in the sun, struggling to the surface, released, traveling 92 million miles in eight minutes, striking my eye, warming my face, making me happy.

Truly sublime.

Truly.

Some things got done on the bee farm this week. A few big ones, many small. The biggest by far was the work of the bees. They're busy paying our bills.

But a second big happening was what we did yesterday- concrete. 34 yards. Wow! I actually had this big pad formed up and ready to go in March.

But as you may remember, March was miserable. Too cold, too wet. Then came April and we got busy with bees. And continued busy through May and June. Finally things have stabilized and the bees are busy doing their important work. Now we have time to spend the big bucks on our not-so-important projects. Keeping this economy juiced like the true American consumers we are. Buying things we don't really need. 

Funny, I felt strangely patriotic writing those checks. 

What a difference a day makes.

But not just any day. A July day. A sunny day. Huge difference! For two full weeks we've had the sun factor going for us, and it's been the most productive two weeks of the year. Not only from the bee standpoint. Not only from the project standpoint. The sun is the engine for so many important things. Fishing, swimming, boating, camping, etc...

The work never ends.

We jumped into all of it this week.

Not to mention eating. The sun drives it all. This week the sweetcorn came on.

So we had a party.

My brother, the sweetcorn grower, turned 41 on Tuesday. He gifted all us piggies with fire-cooked corn. Little Arlo showed us that sweetcorn is not an acquired taste. You love it from your first bite. 

We've been sweetcorn connoisseurs for generations. And this year is about the best ever. The dry planting, the rainy June, the hot hot July... all contributing to an awesome juicy bite. And what force drives them all? -The dry, the rain, the heat, the juice? -The Sun! 

Not everyone knows this. Even journalists get it wrong sometimes. Even supposedly educated people. Last week the Onion newspaper and their stupid scientists tried to pin it on some sort of astrological phenomenon.

But I was pleased to see that one astute fact-checker caught'm with their pants down.

I totally agree. Liberals never sees to amaze me either.

Looking for the rainbow

-Posted by Isaac

You've got to look for the rainbow in everything, right?  Isn't that what they say?

Here's our rainbow from a few days ago.

It was a nice little gesture from our good friend, Mother Nature. This was after the beatdown she served us just moments before.

We're still cleaning up the mess.

Let me try to take this rainbow analogy a bit further. If you've been following this blog for the last few months, you know that I'm an adept complainer. Aside from the stupidity of people and politics (and people in politics), aside from the many mechanical breakdowns and expenses, you know that my one never-ending complaint is the weather. The ridiculous weather. Too cold, too wet, too windy... I've been bleating about it all spring. 

The ridiculous weather. And we have a very minimal spring honey crop to show for it.

The last few supers were run through this week.

Grand tally: about one tenth of last year's crop.

It's gorgeous honey though. Light, floral and delicate- my favorite of the seasons. Thankfully we still have a decent reserve of the 2017 and 2016 spring honey.

But here's the rainbow: although it wasn't much of a spring for making honey, the hives were all split in April, most have new queens, and the bees are looking awesome. The girls are strong and the weather is starting to come around. The soybeans are blooming and the heat is upon us!

When it's sunny, mid nineties, mid Ohio, mid July, it's honey making time. Go out and shake a frame, see for yourself.

Nectar!

With strong bees, plentiful blooms, and perfect conditions, the boxes really start to fill.

We're going to have summer honey! 

How much is entirely dependent on how long these perfect conditions last.

There's still a debate among Ohio beekeepers about the source of this summer honey. To my mind, it's obvious- the soybeans. That's what's out there in plenty, that's what's blooming. But some still say it comes from clover. Last week I got a text from fellow beekeeper, Dan Williams. He was excited about the sudden nectar flow and heavy shakes. Just a week previous, the frames had been bone dry. He said he found bees working the soybeans, but also working the dutch clover pretty hard. That struck me as strange. I had thought that the bees mostly ignored the clover once the soybeans came on. The next day I was in a bee yard, and nearby was a perfect situation to observe the relative attractiveness. Soybeans vs. clover:

And guess what I found- Dan wasn't lying. They were all over that clover. But you'd walk a few yards into the soybeans, and find bees all over those blooms too. They were working both.

So maybe there is a little Ohio honey to be had from clover. Maybe I need to cool it with my insistence that it's all the soybeans. I don't know. But I do know what there's more of...

In terms of quantity, soybeans beat clover by at least an order of magnitude. It wasn't always like this. In the good old days there was not only clover in the ditches and fence rows, we had something else littering our farm fields. They were called weeds. Weeds! Bane to grain farmers, banquet for bees. 

 So if you're a honeybee in July, your diet isn't necessarily diverse, but at least there's nectar to be had. Plenty of it when the conditions are right. Some of us beekeepers are trying to get to the bottom of what exactly those conditions are. It seems to me, hot, dry and sunny make a winning combination. Sunny being the most important variable of the three.

One other side debate that comes up from time to time is what variety of soybean the bees go to. Beans bloom out in two colors- purple and white. Usually it's an entire field planted in one or the other. In our area, purple seems to be more prevalent. A few beekeepers are adamant about knowing which the bees like best. I distinctly remember one old fella telling me that you'll never see a honeybee on a white soybean bloom. 

I like to keep that conversation in mind when I walk the soybeans. Last Sunday Eden and I took a little inspection trip. It was around 85 degrees and the bees were hard at it. You could hear them everywhere. Sorry I don't have a good photo... they move so fast from bloom to bloom and it's under the canopy where it's hard to snap a picture. But trust me, they were making honey that day. We chased the buzzing for five minutes or so. It was fun. And guess what color of bloom those bees were wild about:

Another myth debunked.

I guess I already knew this one wasn't true. I had seen bees work the whites before. But never this hard. Maybe the old fella needed to do more soybean walking.

Or maybe he just forgot his good luck Batgirl.

The important work of the world

-Posted by Isaac

I've had the pleasure of working the Worthington Market for two weeks in a row. And that hasn't happened in a few years-- five market hours for two consecutive weeks! I'm pleased to report that there were zero fights with customers, zero bee knowledge discrepancies, and only one small disagreement (fight) over something with our set-up. It was with my lovely wife. My love and my light.

And it wasn't even a big one. A trifling little discord, paling in comparison to some of our blowups in years past. Are we mellowing?

One of the benefits of Jayne being there is that the second-stringers can wander and slack. Maizy spends many of her market hours chasing sugar of one form or another, and I spend a fair amount of time people watching and lost in my thoughts. Sometimes I make it out to talk to old friends. But in the last two weeks I've really gotten to know a new friend. And for this post I want to tell you about him.

He comes every week and sets up beside us, taking on sort of a management role. Yesterday he even napped for the first two hours, because, lets face it, anyone can sell lettuce.

If you've been to the Worthington Market, you know it's pretty intense. But through it all, he's calm, he's collected. He knows when to lend a guiding hand, when to back off and let others figure it out.

He talks of life.

Of the important work that got done that week.

He takes care of himself. Eats right.

Is highly intelligent.

Carries himself with a certain stateliness.

Has multiple interests.

There is a distinct light in his eyes, unclouded by today's cynicism.

Which is good.

I suspect he'll live longer than most of us.

Which is good.

We're handing him a slightly problematic world- from acidifying oceans to nuclear missiles in the hands of lunatics. 

I'm sure he'll figure it out.

Find that funny, do you? Ye of little faith.

I mean it. He'll figure it out. He's young, but he's got broad shoulders.

My little friend will carry the load.

Just exactly as I have observed in the last two weeks.

While the rest of us are busy selling stuff, he handles the important work of the world.

And he makes it look easy.