September 17 2022
As I am walking over to the beeyard, I see that all the native plants along the road are turning autumn shades of yellow and orange. You can now hear the leaves crunch under your feet. I love this time of year. I love the smells and the sounds of everything changing around you. I love the thought of curling up under a blanket watching the snow fall, holding a steaming cup of hot chocolate.
We have been feeding our bees for the past couple weeks now and I will continue til the end of the month. They are still bringing in a little pollen from here and there.
During the summer a friend gave me a big dahlia in a pot which I put at our front porch. For the past week, we have been watching the bumble bees, honey bees and a few different pollinators visit the flowers and collect pollen. Overnight the bumble bees curl up and sleep in the flowers, sometimes two or three different kinds in one flower head and I found myself hurrying out each morning to see who had slept over.
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Dahlia with two different types of bumblebees sleeping in it.
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October 15
Here it is mid October and we finally had a good frost last week. But it is still unseasonably warm though. The bees are still flying, so I have continued to feed them syrup and fondant. But this will be coming to an end by later next week.
Tomorrow we will be going over to the beeyard and start to get them ready for winter. I won’t be wrapping yet, but I will be putting the insulation in their attic box. Next week I hope to start making candy boards, then I can get them put in. Each hive this year, will be getting a 8 pound candy board.
October 17
I got the candy boards made and they are downstairs drying. I had two packages of fondant left so I added them to the four boards.
October 19
It’s really cooled down. There is snow on the mountains finally. It seemed strange not seeing any snow up there. I decided to slip in the candy boards and get them one step closer to getting them all done for winter. I keep telling everyone how calm my bees are. But today they were a tad feisty. I got my first sting of the year while reaching in their hive to remove the bottle feeder. Ouch.
I managed to get the first three done but started to have second thoughts about doing Hive 1. Hive 1 is a huge hive and most time when I go in the hive I can hardly find the bottle feeder for bees. Was I actually going to have to put gloves on…? I opted for smoke instead. To my surprise they were pretty laid back and I was able to get the board in and put back together without any problems.
I still have to screen off the inside cover and insulate their attic boxes and I will be all done inside. It looks like tomorrow will be good enough to do that.
October 26
So lots went on over the last month but I finally got the girls wrapped and tucked away for the winter. It’s all up to them now. I have done everything I could.
I think I miss them already
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| Wrapped and ready for winter |
Next blog I will talk about my honey harvest….as usual I was late extracting it. But I got it done. More on that next time.
Happy Fall everyone.
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| Quiet time |
