Pollen!

Spring is trying its best to invoke the sunlight. Rain, snow, clouds and wind have blown through March and April with little respite. Now, it seems, every morning the birds band togetherin their multilingual choirs to ask the sun to please, please come out.

I'm banking on tomorrow because it's my birthday weekend!

Yesterday, during a sunny patch of the afternoon, I went out to watch the bees. For 4 days they have been busy making comb and becoming familiar with nearby forage. I've walked from pear blossom to apple blossom,

lilac to rosemary, tulip to daffodil and not a single bee. Every day I checked the hive, but no bees came back carrying pollen. The wild bees living in wall of my house (yes there are two hive here) continued to land their plump little bodies down on the hive entrance, laden with yellow and orange flower dust, but nothing from my bees...until yesterday!

Wild bees making home in my wall last July.
They survived the winter in fine shape even though they were a late swarm.

Pollen is what bees need to feed the brood. They store it in comb and made something called "bee bread" for everyone to eat. Yesterday the new bees started bringing in pollen for the first time, which means some comb is built and bees are gearing up for reproduction!

Also....did you know pollen isn't just yellow? I watched bees return home with bundles of yellow, orange, purple, green and white! Oh how I wish I could crawl in there myself.

I will not be inspecting my bees regularly like most modern beekeepers do. Instead, I told them I am giving them freedom to live as they please, without their home being ripped apart by my curious hands every week or two. So for now, no peeking; just listening, humming and watching.

Catching the Heart Swarm

This is the footage of my first swarm. It was a cold, rainy Saturday in April, a day when bees typically would not swarm. Honeybees usually wait for a few warm days in a row (above 65) before they swarm. It is the bee's natural form of reproduction. When the colony feels healthy and large enough, they start building queen cells. Once a new queen is born and established (through feeding her royal jelly), the old queen takes about half the existing hive and flies optimistically into the warm spring air. They usually land on a nearby tree branch or post and wait while scout bees search the environs for a suitable home.

This is the time when bees are most docile and least likely to sting, especially if you talk to them and let them know your intentions. They can sense fear, unease and negative intent and will react defensively. However, if you approach them with love and respect, the whole event can be fairly effortless.
Someday I plan to do this without gloves or maybe even a veil.

Take a look at my first try!