I made a quick mix of homemade pollen patties and in preparation for a warm day last week made a block of bee-candy. The sun was bright and wind was fairly calm, the bees made an appearance so I decided to risk a peek. I quickly opened all the hives and its official. Five hives are alive and 7 are dead. That is 60% loss for me this year. I put in a small pollen patty and added bee-candy where I could. I guess I got away easy last year so this makes up for it. I am getting 3 Russian packages with marked queens shipped and I am also getting 2 local NUCs from a guy near Utica. A little worried about getting bees shipped as not very confident that the USPS will get theme here in 2 days. I ordered early as an insurance policy. The packages will be here late May so if I can get them established I could get honey off the packages but it would be more work to build them up for winter. I paid $3 extra for marked queens as thought it would be fun for showing folks a working hive.
AUTHOR
Ward
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My bees are alive at least some of them! Difficult to tell if others have made it. I ran out of battery while filming
This is a guest post from my brother-in-law, Adam. He is a food connoisseur and Director of Training, Talent, and Community Partnership […]
Plants and insects have been evolving in unison for millions of years and have benefited from an elegant symbiotic relationship. This relationship has provided plants a willing host to convey pollen in trade for valuable high energy cocktail called nectar. Residual pollen is an added bonus protein source. A new dynamic is disrupting the alignment of this interaction. Climate change is affecting this coordinated inter species relationship by disrupting the flower blooming cycle. Plants have evolved a response to the spring warming cycle that starts the flowering process in most of the northern hemisphere.
The call came in at 8:16 while I was getting ready for work. A gentleman by the name of John called me and he had a swarm on his front porch.