What's the Buzz?

Fear of nature is one of the side effects of our media-driven society. How many never fully enjoyed a sojourn into the ocean again after seeing "Jaws"? There are a whole host of "Killer Bee" Movies that have capitalized on spreading fear.....(although I don't believe much residual terror resulted from "The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes".1978.) Still, it's a shame how separate from nature many of us have become. 

Case in point: One of our hives swarmed over the winter, creating a beautiful , natural colony in a tree above the hive. It was gorgeous, many lobed, golden, and buzzing. They survived the unseasonable freezes of our Florida winter, pelting rain, strong winds....the bees prevailed and prospered.

But our neighbor was worried about weed wacking and tree trimming in the back corner of her yard closest to the swarm. We understand that! Not everybody shares our love of bees! We offered to do it for her. We explained that her flowers and trees were enjoying the pollination services of our bees and greater fruit yields would result....

Still, fear prevailed.... She wants us to move our hives as well. 

So to be compliant and a good neighbor we said we'd remove the swarm. Next day, Steve dropped by and when I went out to see him, I spotted him 30 feet high straddling the trunk of the tree. 

I asked if I should get a trash can and lid so that when he cuts down the swarm it could land in the trash can and then we could safely put them into any empty hive body.

No, he said, he just needs to destroy the colony....and before I could bat an eye he took out a can of spray from his pocket and began spraying those beautiful bees. I had to go inside....I really couldn't watch. The colony now sits, Splat! on the ground, empty and lifeless. Those bees were up so high they were never a threat to anyone....

And it's nobody's fault, really....It's just a basic fear factor and a species that gets bad press. (Snakes get the same bad rap. For the few poisonous varieties systemic societal fear results. Yet no one complains when the snakes clean up the local rat population, etc.)

I do wish for a day when media hype has less influence than practical education...when the facts are considered and balanced conclusions are reached. Real risks should be assessed and acted upon to avoid negative outcomes....but where no real risk exists, it's the fear that should be exterminated....

It had never happened before! We ran out of honey! 

The lovely winter we enjoyed was difficult for the bees. For the first time in forty years, temperatures plummeted near the freezing mark over and over again. Here in Miami this was unheard of! We had our air conditioning off for maybe three months. It was bliss!

However, it took its toll on honey production. On days that dip below 55 degrees, the bees don't fly, but stay cuddled up in the hive in a little ball, keeping their baby brood warm.

What I hadn't known was that when nighttime temperatures fell below 60, the trees and flowers kept their nectar and sap to themselves! You need to have 3 nights in a row where the lowest temperature was Above 60 in order for nectar to flow.

So on balmy days where the temps were above 55, the bees would fly, but the blossoms would be barren of nectar. Dry. Not juicy!

 Pollen, yes!  Nectar, no!

And so they started to consume their stores of honey, while unable to collect nectar to create more. When you would expect a bountiful harvest, the honeycombs were empty!

 At long last, seasonable temperatures have returned. The girls are busy! The aroma of ripening honey is in the air. And we have Tropical Wildflower honey once again. Orange Blossom is soon to follow! 

Let there be nectar! And there was nectar!  

Even though we're still experiencing Florida's version of Winter, the avocados are happily blooming, as are the mangos. Which is a good thing: Over he weekend we Sold Out of our popular Avocado Lychee honey. Sorry about that!

The bees are working tirelessly, and we expect to harvest some more Avocado Lychee honey in late Spring.

Meanwhile, we're expecting a fresh honeyflow of Orange Blossom in about two weeks.  

And if you need honey now, you can see us at the FIU Farmer's Market tomorrow from noon - 3:00 PM. 

FIU is hosting a Farmer's Market on Wednesday afternoons! Last week I was out of town, and so my reluctant FIU student/daughter was commanded to participate in the first market of the season. Well, after a bit of grumbling on her part, she went, honey in hand, ready to see what it was all about.

Not long after, a jubilant student called excitedly, "Mom, I made $50 in an hour and a half!" Boy, was she ever happy! And now....she's telling me...."we need a sign, time to bottle it up, have we got labels?" Nothing like a little success as a motivator.

Anyway, today I popped in for a couple of hours and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I wholeheartedly believe in and support the slow food movement, and being around all of these students, with their organic veggies, and vegan muffins, yummy smoothies, and incredible tofu with a peanut sauce, well, it was a lovely day.

Not only that, but the wonderful vendor beside us, who makes soap, had the yummiest White Chocolate body cream. It was all I could do to not nibble on my arms once I sampled it....And at the end of the day I traded him a pound of Tropical Wildflower honey in exchange for some... washberries.

These are a naturally occurring surfactant that you can use instead of laundry detergent. They're little brown things that you break in half and place in a small cotton drawstring bag (which came with the berries). You toss it in the laundry and there you go! Each set of berries is good for 4-5 loads.

Anyway, he was a fascinating young man who's wife just gave birth to their first baby. I urge you to check out his site at www.earthistry.com to learn more about these berries and his soaps.

I'll let you know how my laundry goes....

Meanwhile, I've got to get more honey jars in preparation for next week's market....we're about sold out.... 

Hope to see you there! 

Honeybees and mankind have had a symbiotic relationship for centuries. Of late, our friends the honeybees have been plagued by numerous perils and problems. Colony Collapse Disorder comes to mind. And Varroa mites. 

These little suckers are parasites that live out their lives on our friends the bees. When the adult bee emerges it is often already affected by mites that invaded it's brood cell back when it was a mere larvae. 

Varroa mites can weaken a hive in short order, and beekeepers have to keep a watchful and vigilant eye for signs of infestation.

One of the more natural approaches to mite control is the use of thyme oil. Yes, thyme, like you'd use in your holiday stuffing. The problem is....the thyme oil works great up north and in more temperate zones. But here in South Florida this oil burns the bees during hot weather.

We can use it at this time of year, when our temperatures are fairly cool. But not in the summer.

I found this rather graphic movie on YouTube depicting the Life Cycle of the Honeybee and the Varroa mite. You can find it at:http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7304562435786960616#

Beware! There's a nude scene of a mite being mated by her brother. Over 18 only, please.

Because the life cycle of our honeybees and varroa mites are so critically aligned, even a few hours makes a world of difference. There's an Asian bee who emerges from its brood cell just a few hours apart from the European honeybee. And because of these few hours, it's not a perfect fit and the mites do not hugely affect the Asian bees. However, these bees are more aggressive, and not so suitable to apiculture. 

We breed our bees to be gentle, for obvious reasons. And it may be that gentleness that prevents European honeybees from fighting off the mites as successfully as their more aggressive relatives. Or it may just be the time of maturation that does it. 

One of my goals is to experiment with other natural controls and find a natural mite control that works in subtropical areas like Miami. People have tried everything! I've even heard some say that icing sugar will do the trick. Sweet! 

Not long after our original beehives met an untoward end, our house was destroyed by Hurricane Andrew. In the ensuing aftermath and it's two years of chaos, I fell in love (dumb), got a divorce (smart), and entered a decade of single motherhood...bee-less.

It wasn't until I was made aware of the devastating effect that Colony Collapse Disorder was having on honeybees everywhere that I began to think about keeping bees again...

The more I learned about this problem, the more I wanted to welcome bees back into our garden.

I knew I would make an excellent foster mother.....we had the space, the blossoms, and a nice organic home environment. So I called the Miami-Dade Cooperative Extension, and they sent me a list of beekeepers in my area. As I went down the list, I was not met with enthusiasm by those I contacted. They were not interested, were worried about liability -- it was discouraging and I lost almost a year in the process.

Enter Steve, a wonderful Jamaican beekeeper who was happy to oblige. I carefully explained that I'd like to have maybe two hives to do my part for the insect community.

Two years later, I'm the proud mother of thirteen hives... approximately 650,000 buzzing little sisters. Steve comes every few weeks to check out the girls and add supers or perform other heavy management tasks.

Whenever I hear his truck I quickly don my beekeepers garb and eagerly trudge out to the hives for the next chapter in my beekeepers training. He is so patient with the bees, and with me. He wears only a veil and a short sleeved shirt. (Well, pants, too....I mean, he's not naked!) But no protection to speak of. I, on the other hand, am covered from head to foot and look ready to take a space walk.

My job is to smoke the bees while he lifts the cover and inspects the hives. And I am the honored guest in another world.

I get to see the fresh white honeycomb, a good sign, and whether the nectar has been transformed into honey by the unending efforts of bees fanning their wings upon it...Or does it need more time.

Every so often I get to see a queen, and I've even gotten a taste of fresh royal jelly. It may be good for you, but it's rather awful. Anyway, we leave it for the bees....the pollen, too. We just harvest the surplus honey, about three times a year.

Steve takes a little more than half, and I get the rest. Then I get to uncap the honeycomb, an art that I am hoping to master....and spin out the honey in an extractor. (Think: salad spinner....only vertical...and much, much larger). Then I strain out wax bits and any bees who may have flown in and drowned themselves in sweet and sticky bliss. Other than that, we don't process our honey at all, and I spend many happy hours bottling it up and putting labels on it.

I am so grateful to have bees back in my life, and my trees and flowers feel the same... 

I don't know how it all began, really....this connection to the bees. I remember being a toddler in West Hempstead, NY and my best (and only friend) Eddy McGrath and I ran around my yard with little baggies playing Jungle Boy and Jungle Girl....trying to catch "bees" in our baggies. I know we caught something. Were they really bees? Eddy, are you out there? Do you know?

We had lots of big, furry bumblebees in our yard....something I miss greatly here in South Florida. They're so comforting to see when I travel....a link to times gone by.

But honeybees? I'd have to thank my ex-father-in-law, Wesley Sherwood Bessell. He kept bees when my husband was a boy. And so, when we had our own young family, Michael, my husband, got us a couple of beehives from an old beekeeper named Clyde. 

We harvested twice a year, I think, and it was always on the hottest of days when the backbreaking labor was hard to take... but the honey was sweet enough to make it all worthwhile.  We jarred it up and sold it to a couple of local supermarkets. And I remember putting cinnamon sticks into a couple of jars to make a spiced honey.

The bees were symbolic of our idyllic, pastoral, pure and perfect post-hippie lifestyle. Babies, bees, a garden and chickens. We had no idea how innocent we were.

But it was all to change....

Being State registered beekeepers, we had inspections. And....we had mites. We were directed, commanded really....to treat the mites with a pesticide that had been hurriedly approved by the EPA in order to address the sudden onslaught of mite infestations that were destroying bee colonies throughout the US in a rapid fashion.

Our world was so pure. So was our honey.Harvesting honey was such hard work, It seemed ludicrous to do all of that work and risk the possibility of pesticide contamination. At that time quite a lot of honey showed up with unsafe amounts of chemical residues from the pesticide in question.

Yet, if we did not treat the bees, we would be required to destroy the hives.

As far as I knew, we were still wondering what to do.....

And then, one day as I finished the dishes, I looked out in horror to see my ex-husband all suited up, pouring gasoline on the hives, and before I could even interpret the scene, it all went up in flames.

Such is the price of being street legal and wanting to be pure. Thus ended our first chapter of beekeeping. And my ex.....he was never the same. He loved those bees. 

Snow? Did somebody say "snow" ? I didn't see any, but the news reported that right in my neighborhood a few flurries fell yesterday. First time since 1977. Wish some fell on me.....I LOVE snow....

It's positively frosty this morning. I woke up before seven and ran out to turn the sprinkler on in the vegetable garden. The collards will be fine, but I want to save those cherry tomatoes!

I hurriedly picked three grapefruits and a lime, hoping to save them before those juicy little sacs inside froze and ruptured. I thanked the trees, as always, for their efforts, and then ran to the front to check on the flowers. Our impatiens have been glorious this season, but they weren't looking too happy. I watered the three beds and spoke kindly to them, hoping for the best. As I stood there watering, in my jammies and socks, I felt an unfamiliar sensation in my feet and hands. They were so cold they were...burning??? Wow!

Wind chill placed the temperature somewhere in the 20's early this morning. The magic number for the citrus is 28 degrees....which is apparently when the damage takes place, and the more hours spent at that temperature or below, the worse the damage will be.  

On the news, they were suggesting that you run out and buy orange juice before the price skyrockets.....

Here in Miami we don't have much in the way of commercial citrus groves...that's more up in the Central part of the state...I can't even imagine the effort and anxiety that's going on up there this weekend.  

Meanwhile, it's time to make something cozy; cocoa, hot tea, something. And I expect that my several million buzzing sisters won't be flying today. They'll be cuddling up and cleaning house and hive, waiting for later this week when nectar collecting will be an attractive option once more...

It's an unusually chilly day here in South Florida. We're all huddled up trying to keep warm! And our bees do the same. When the temperature drops, the bees ball up inside the hives and keep each other warm. They are especially focused on keeping the brood chamber, where the baby bees are growing, nice and cozy. 

It's been so cold at night that I've brought our buckets of honey into the house, since honey can begin to crystallize in cooler temperatures. It's never happened to us, and we want to make sure it never does!

Bottling is a slow process, too, on a day like today! The honey flows slowly out of the bucket, sort of in geological time, lazily making it's way into the jar.

But it's a great day for hot tea.....(with plenty of honey, of course! Where else do I get my energy from!?)  I think I'll go make some now.....