I’m Keeping My Fingers Crossed Losing all six hives last winter took the wind out of my sails. I set up three new hives in spring but the weather has been uneven through the whole season. The cold weather had lasted much longer than usual and the temperature has been seesawing from spring into autumn. Some days we had 40°F in summer and 70°F in … Continue reading Beekeeping In The Age Of Climate Change
Feeding Honey Bees In Mid-December Sunday was a record breaker for high temperatures in New York. With 67º F in Central Park, it breaks a high temperature record set back in 1923. Where we live the temperature was only slightly over 60º F and it was warm enough for the honeybees to come out of their hives, cleaning themselves and looking for food. Daytime temperatures will stay above 50º … Continue reading Very Warm Autumn
Ode to a Honeybee In Late Autumn We are having a warm autumn this year. The daytime temperature is still hovering above 50° F on most days but drops back to slightly above 30° F at night. We had frost for a couple of days early on in the season which killed off most of the garden. So there is not much left for the bees. Honeybees … Continue reading Last Resource
Experimental Feeding Our honeybees are resting in the comfort of their hives now. The recent weather is good for staying inside since it either rains or is very cold and windy. We fed them early on using the inner hive feeder but we removed the feeders before we sealed off the hives. There were some warm days in between which we decided to experiment with … Continue reading Honeybees in Autumn
Finally, A Good Sleep I didn’t realize that keeping bees could give me nightmares. It was fine in the first two years, we fenced in the two hives we had. Though in the second year skunks had taken some bees from the third (un-fenced) hive as snacks in early spring but the hive still survived. Two out of the three hives survived last winter and one … Continue reading Beekeeper’s Nightmare
Petals and Wings 