Early Swarm

On Sunday (April 11) J and I were just about to do a hive check. I'd just finished lunch and my partner said, "Honey, look out the window, something's happening with the bees." Sure enough, the yard was full of a cloud of bees getting into swarming mode. Thank goodness we were home. I got into my beekeeping suit, my heart thumping away as the adrenaline started to pump into my body. A neighbor across the way started yelling at me to do something. I followed the bees into another neighbor's yard two doors down from mine, but then wouldn't you know it, the bees chose to land in a tree in the irate neighbor's yard. I grabbed a banker's box and a pair of scissors and knocked on his door. I heard vicious barking. My adrenaline went up a notch. I apologized he told me he was allergic to bees. I assured him they were not in stinging mode and I would get them down as soon as possible.

Fortunately his neighbors were helpful and friendly. Fortunately they had a ladder that would reach up to the garage roof I needed to climb up on to get to the bees. Fortunately the adrenaline rush meant that in spite of my fear of heights I got up on that roof and started scooping bees into the box. The Nasanov reflex kicked in immediately and the other bees followed the scented trail. All along the edge of the box, bees had their butts in the air fanning their wings. It was a beautiful sunny day and my hands were shaking. All I could do was wait. I might as well enjoy this, I thought. So I took a deep breath and tried to calm my body in by breathing in the scent of the spruce tree and rest my eyes on the intensely blue sky. There were a hell of a lot of bees. The majority of the hive had swarmed.

Of course all the while I was kicking myself for not opening the hive sooner and adding more space. The weather had been so crappy that it didn't give me much of a window to open the hive. It was almost as if a giant batch of bees matured at the same time--a real surge in the population. As the box began to fill I realized I would need help getting it down from the roof and also I needed I bigger box! I shouted over to P to get J and a big box with a lid. We ended up using a large Rubbermaid tub. I put the cardboard box into that tub, then I used J's secateurs to cut off the spruce branch the bees had landed in. Sometimes the smell of the queen's pheramones rubs off on the branch so I wanted to keep it in the hive just in case.

Luckily we had a couple of extra hive boxes, a bottom and a lid so we could house the swarm. Once they'd settled down we put in a layer of frames. It actually took them a couple of days to settle down. Yesterday we flipped the boxes so the frames are now at the bottom and today I removed the pine branch and put in a pollen patty and a jar of sugar water to boost their wax production. They're all settled at the bottom of the hive now, busy building comb.

In the photos above you can see there is a hole in the front of the brown box. I find it fascinating that that is by far the favorite of the three entrances available to the bees.

Yesterday we did a check of the original hive and knocked off the queen cells. I'll go into more detail about that in another post. For now, enjoy the lovely bumble bee I found resting inside one of my sunny yellow tulips!

First Day of the Beekeeping Year

Happy New Year! This year the beginning of the beekeeper's calendar coincided with the Chinese Lunar New Year and Valentine's Day. Furthermore, it was a sunny 15 Degrees Celsius in Vancouver. Time to clean up the back porch to get ready to grow seedlings!

We opened up the hive and found some mold had formed on the top, so we scraped it off and took out one frame all together and replaced it with another. We put on a pollen patty I had just defrosted and a jar of sugar water. The bees were very curious--landing on us and flying into the house as soon as I opened the door. I had to perform three rescue missions. You can see where they landed on J's beekeeping suit below. There were young bees practicing their orientation flights in front of their hives and others bringing in bright yellow crocus pollen and white/light yellow pollen from cherry blossoms.

Behold, the happy beekeeper!

Spring Ridge Common

When I was in Victoria last week I visited a unique garden in Fernwood called Spring Ridge Common. It has an interesting mix of herbs and plants that can be used for materials such as willow and bamboo. According to the LifeCycles website:

Springridge Commons is a productive food forest designed with permaculture principles and open to everyone. The site was formerly a gravel lot, and now, thanks to sheet mulching, is flourishing with mulberries, cherry, plum and fig trees, gumi and logan-berry bushes, sage, oregano, mugwort, milk thistle currants, rose bushes and other medicinal, edible, mostly native plants to nourish the community and the soil.

Someone has decorated the arch with this cute homemade heart.

This willow has been harvested, which keeps its size manageable. It's a wonderful renewable resource.

This rosemary is actually from another community garden, but I was amazed to see it in bloom at this time of the year. Apparently it has been so mild that the banana tree in Beacon Hill Park has produced fruit this year.

This is what I was really curious to see--black bamboo. It's really lovely and I think we should plant some at the MOP garden.

Early Spring Weeding

It's time to clear out this carpet of chickweed invading the lavender in the MOP bee garden! Another woman will be taking over the bed this year and growing paper plants. I'm so pleased that the garden will be put to good use by an ecologically minded artist.

First we raked the oak leaves off the bed and pitched them into the compost, then we got out the serious hand tools and tackled the dandelions. We saved some of the larger roots to dry for tea.

I think we'll move this culinary sage into the herb bed.

We found this beautiful beetle hiding in the soil under the lavender. I'll have to look it up in my bug books.

While we were just finishing up, the sun came up and there was a very odd little warm, misty shower at the same time. It was uncanny, but it made us both smile. It feels like such a relief to get back into the soil after the winter.

I'm happy to report I saw a honeybee gathering pollen in a crocus last Thursday. I love an early spring!

Harvesting Willow with Angels

The sunflower stalks are dry and the seed heads are spent. It is the time of year to clear out some of the dead growth to make way for new shoots. Last Friday I carefully broke up the sunflower stalks and put them on a compost pile where the insects inside the stems can continue hibernating until the weather warms up. It is unseasonably warm right now. We are at least three weeks ahead of where we were last year.

I came to the Means of Production garden to harvest the willow with the EYA and Ruth and her group of mentally challenged adults she cares for in North Vancouver. Gardening is a big part of their life and they do really good work. Most of the group is (frankly) more focused and productive than I am. I'm out of practice from having the winter off and I spend time dilly-dallying about and enjoying the weather. I give some sunflower stalks to one of the guys to break up and he keeps coming and putting his forehead really close to mine in for a unique greeting. He makes me smile.

Ruth is Swiss, with intensely beautiful blue eyes. She is a biodynamic farmer and a eurythmy instructor. Eurythmy is a movement system that incorporates phonetics with movement. One of the men with Downs does a demonstration for me with fluid, graceful gestures. Ruth talks about the people in her care with reverence, as if they have a special relationship to the Divine, and she really believes that gardening is the best way for them to become a creative community. She talks passionately about the way that the energy of a garden can be a healing influence on a local and global scale.

So why should Ruth's program get funding cuts? Who would have the shortsightedness to fail to acknowledge the work of someone who is one of our society's treasures? Bloody hell, what can I say? These cuts are driving me mad.

These are the stumps of the yellow willow after they've been harvested. The green willow and the black willow are preferable because they grow nice long straight poles that don't need to have the little branches clipped off. Ruth says the black and green willow have more uses and the yellow willow is more for decorative work.

New growth comes at the base of the sedum in the bee garden. Crocuses are blooming too!

The tea plant is looking very healthy.

Those willow poles are huge!

Here's another shot to show you the scale of the willow.

This brings us to a full circle in the Beespeaker saijiki blog. We can look back to see photos of the willow harvest from last year and the pictures of the big snowstorm during the Christmas of 2008. It's humbling and inspiring to see that nature happens when we make other plans. That's a good thing to remember as we look ahead to another year of programming in the Means of Production Garden.

Bare Fennel

The Natural Gardener by Val Bourne is one of my favorite gardening books. She says you should leave some of your dry fennel stalks standing over the winter because they will house insect larva through the winter. I looked at the pith in one of the stalks and saw that it had been burrowed into by two tiny insects, perhaps native been. In the meantime, the new fennel fronds are starting to grow.

After the crazy storm last night, the afternoon turned unseasonable warm and there were a couple of healthy looking bees flying in and out of the hive. If they're strong enough they could find some hazel catkins or winter-blossoming jasmine. I cleared some of the dead bodies from the entrance to the hive. There were a couple of bees barely clinging to life on the cinder blocks. Temperatures fall towards evening and they will no longer be able to move back into the warmth of the hive. This will be their last day.

The rains have washed the mud from the sunflower roots and left their delicate tracery for us to admire. I feel like a stranger in my own garden because it's been so long since I've been back there to take a look. It feels bare and exposed. I am embarrassed that the back corner is so overgrown with ivy and the evil invasive "money plant" or Lamium. The stones and shells I've placed here and there are like buried treasure that has been revealed by the rain. Soon the forsythia will bloom and the roses will need to be pruned and then spring will be well on its way.

Long Night's Moon

There are two full moons this month. The first was early in the month and the Algonquin call it The Cold Moon and the second moon in December is called The Long Night's Moon. The moon names of this month refer to the wintry surface of the earth, blanketed by snow and patterned by frost, but also to the secret life unfolding underneath the surface of the season. The Sioux know that Deer are shedding their horns while the trees pop with hoar frost, but also the buffalo's fetus is growing large in her uterus. The Cheyenne note the month as the one when the wolves run together in packs. The Wishram move to their winter houses and the Tlingit know that the unborn seals are getting their hair. Such close attention to the details of seasonal markers makes the indigenous people keen observers of global warming. The Haidi in Alaska see the white ptarmigan feasting on ripe red berries in the snow, and the Passamaquoddy know where the fish run under the ice.

Here in Vancouver we have only had one snowfall this year, and now we are back to rain. I took a photo of the bees last week and every time I look at it I wish I could see inside the hive and know their secrets. What do you see under the surface of December? Soon it will be solstice, the longest night of the year, and then this New Year's Eve will be a Blue Moon. I wonder how often that happens? I think it's probably very special. Happy Solstice to all of you and have a peaceful and joyful holiday season.



Abenaki: Winter Maker Moon
Algonquin: Cold Moon, Long Night's Moon
Anishnaabe, Chippewa, Ojibwe: Small Spirits Moon
Northern Arapaho: Popping Trees Moon
Assiniboine: Center Moon's Younger Brother
Cherokee: Snow Moon
Eastern Cherokee: Moon When the First Snows Fall in the Mountains
Cheyenne: Moon When the Wolves Run Together
Eastern Comanchee: Big Cold Moon, Evergreen Moon, 13th Moon-Year Moon
Cree: When the Young Fellow Spreads the Brush
Cree: 13 Moon version--Frozen Over Moon, Scattering Moon
Creek: Big Winter Moon
Haidi: Ripe Berries Moon
Hopi: Month of Respect
Kalapuya: Not Bad Weather
Kiowa: Real Goose Moon
Lakota: Moon When the Deer Shed their Antlers.
Passamaquoddy: Frost Fish Moon
San Juan: Ashes Fire Moon
Shawnee: Eccentric Moon
Sioux: Moon of Popping Trees/When Deer Shed their Horns, Buffalo Cow's Fetus is Getting Large
Tlingit: Unborn Seals are Getting Hair
Winnebago: Big Bear's Moon
Wishram: Her Winter Houses Moon
Zuni: Turning Moon or The Sun has Traveled South to his Home to Rest Before he Starts Back on his Journey North