Nature walk

Blackberries (dewberries?) are ripening. I picked about two pounds yesterday. For the thorns, I wore long pants, for the heat I wore a wet towel on my head. Blackberries don't all ripen at once.

Sand plums will be ready soon!

These are called sensitive mimosa or something.

Sumacs are starting to bloom. They are good nectar source for bees, then the berries make a yummy tea high in vitamin C.

And the cat tails that made it into our pond are blooming for the first time. These are one of the highest density edible foods ever!

Queens for everyone!

Click on the pictures to see them bigger. Checked the hives again today.

First: East hive

It's been one week since I added a frame of brood with eggs. That frame now had one queen cell with larva in it... sorry it's blurry. It's on the BOTTOM of the frame. This is looking at it upside down. So it looks like they are on their way to having a queen. They had some honey and still plenty of bees.

Second: Nucleus hive we got 3(?) weeks ago

They had brood, honey and had drawn out lots of the empty frames I'd put in last week.

Previous is capped honey :)

Third: The old big have that lost its foraging force in last weeks position swap:

They had so much honey and nectar, they have no need for foraging. There was a frame of drone brood and a frame of worker brood. Most the other cells were full of nectar.

Fourth: The split from the old have that got all the foragers:

The queen cell was no longer there, so I'm hoping she'll soon be laying. The second deep I added last week was getting packed with newly drawn comb and honey. They were so full of bees, I grabbed another deep and put it in the middle of the two they have. I alternated empty combs with combs from the bottom box.

Looking like a good season!

Picasa wouldn't upload the pictures properly so I had to copy/pasted the embed code from picasaweb. The pictures are cropped (haphazardly) here.. harumph. Changed them all to 400 and it's all better :)