The maples are in bloom and have opened up yesterday and I am congestion and sneezing. No sign of the basswoods blooming but still a bit early for them. The wild bees are very aggressive and Amy got stung Sunday. The Carolinian and Russians are surprisingly docile compared to the wild “American” bees. I removed the queen excluders off a few of the hives as the bees were not going up into the supers. I will suit up this weekend and check things and perhaps add another super to the power hives. The weather seems like it’s going to cooperate for at least this week.
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It was chilly overcast spring morning when we started. I wanted to get them installed as early in spring as possible to get a full season of sunlight. The next day the sky had cleared and the sun was shining bright on a crisp blue background. I threw the switch on the inverter and powered up the system and the capacitors started to hum.
Anyone can create a welcoming garden for pollinators. Turning your own yard or other property such as a schoolyard, work landscape, or roadside green space into a pollinator habitat is fun, easy and can make a difference for birds also. Planting a few flowers for your honey bees is like adding a few gallons of water to the ocean. Honeybees need on average about a square mile of good cover to forage on. However, adding a diverse mix of flowering plants to your garden will also attract butterflies, moths, hummingbirds, along with native bee species and the occasional wasps. These insects are essential to our survival and need to be welcomed into at the least a corner of our backyards. Besides providing a food source for pollinators flowers provide cover for other wildlife such as birds and also reduce neighborhood mowing area.
Cooking for a group in an NYC kitchen is challenging however it didn’t me stop me from going all out! While the main dishes are an important element and required careful planning to cover myriad modern dietary restrictions
Worked another extraction this weekend for a local building management company and every time I am on one I learn to be a bit more efficient and wanted to share my list. If there is the opportunity to make a small hole first when starting and extraction this is ideal. So the trick is to annoy the aggressive bees and get them out a small hole and grab them with the vacuum right away. This time around I broke through the drywall with a small hole and kept banging on the ceiling to annoy them. I then opened a hole about 6 inches square. This really helped as the aggressive bees rushed the opening and right into the vacuum. I did get stung on the finger once but was when lifting out some comb and I pinned the bee between my finger and some comb.