(http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/7088/nn01175720.th.jpg) (http://img38.imageshack.us/i/nn01175720.jpg/)
Immediately after I came home from work a few days ago, I inspected a new hive I started the third week in May, which is located at a friends house about 4 miles north of where I live in Bristol, Indiana. The bees are close to needing another super on top of the two already there. I'm very excited. They seem to be doing very well. I may try to get a bit of honey from the next box that I add.
On my way back home I stopped at Pipewort Pond (41.744844n 85.827825w). a little nature preserve north of Bristol. Above I gave the coordinates if you are interested in looking it up on Google maps or Google Earth. You can just copy and past the numbers into the address line or if you have a GPS unit to plug the longitude/latitude into.
Those coordinates are for the end of the pier where I took the attached picture. . . .the picture is of a honey bee gathering nectar on a button bush blossom. . .Pipewort pond is ringed by many many button bush plants. My one hive, kept at my friends house, is less a little more than half a mile (to the northwest) from this floating pier. I've been going to this nature preserve for four years now and always, because of my past beekeeping, being especially aware of honeybees, I have seen very very few honey bees on flowers in the Pipewort Pond nature preserve.
It came to me with a sudden rush that this was one of my bees that I was looking at. I mean in previous years, you could find honeybees if you really searched for them, but this year the button bushes are thick with honeybees. I am certain with about 90% confidence (from the appearance also) that the bee in the picture, is a bee from my hive. . . I am so thrilled. I'm looking to make my own labels for my honey and this picture may well be part of the label for my honey jars. . .
In a way beekeeping is only a hobby for me, but on another level it more than that it is also a passion. I love keeping bees. It is one of the most enjoyable and fascinating things I have ever done in my life. I'm just getting into it again with two hives after a 25 year absence from the hobby and now to think, that with the decimation of the feral honey bee population, that my bee hive is helping to increase the setting of seed in this wetlands area through their pollinating and their gathering nectar. . .
It really touches me. It's not just about honey. You all know this, but the pollination that the bees do is so very important. We tend to think about it for cultivated crops. I've read where without honeybees, with just natural pollinators and wind, an acre of almond trees will produce somewhere around 150 lbs of almonds. . . with honeybees the yield can be more than 1500 lbs per acre. That is the importance of honeybees. It's not just planted crops that our bees impact. It's all the plants in the area surrounding our hives. If you've ever picked and eaten wild blackberries and seen fruit with bare spots on the berry where fruit should be? That is from a lack of pollination. Fewer and smaller blackberries impact lots of wild creatures.
Many ducks and other critters enjoy eating the seed heads of the button bush plant. Maybe just maybe over the coming winter months a duck or some other wild creature may have seeds to eat this year that they might not otherwise have had without the pollination of my bees . .
I so enjoyed that evening. Solomon, my best buddy (my golden retriever) and I sat on that pier in the honeyed evening sun, listening and watching. . . taking pictures of the wonder of it all. . .
:)
Yes, it is a passion for me as well and the way you described your experience at the pier, well it could have been me. Nothing makes me happier than to watch and listen to my bees forgaging on flowers. I spend lots of time watching where they are going to. Always with a smile on my face.
I feel that I have entered a secret world that only another beekeeper could understand.
Thanks for sharing your secret moment David
Sincerely
Annette
That was really beautiful. Thanks for sharing it with us.
ziffa
That's wonderful! The picture would make a beautiful label for your honey. It's neat to hear you express the exact feelings I have felt about having bees. When on a walk, occasionally we will get the chance to shout, "There's one of our girls!!" on a wildflower. Isn't this a great hobby with extra perks? In fact, with basically no honey yet this year, those "extras" are my only perks for now :)
:)Oh I so feel the same way. Had an elderly man tell me one time about his beekeeping that "I'm not raising honey bees I'm getting honey" ....well that seemed a little distant to me for without the beesyou aren't going to get that honey....When we open the hives i talk to them, i go down to watch them in the lot and just enjoy the sound and smell of the hive overall, i consider them my pets per say....i love the bees and the flurry of activity they are always engaged in. They are FASCINATING creatures and appreciation of them I PERSONALLY believe goes a long way, if you love them and love to be around them and watch them....then they get embedded in your heart and psyche and you just feel relaxed and at ease...kinda like you hear of others watching fish in an aquarium. Just so glad to hear that I'm not a freak!! tehee...so many have told me otherwise that i began to think i was losing it tehee....THANK YOU FOR THIS POST! IT makes me realize that others too also just love the bees themselves and the entertainment and relaxation they can bring. OF course there is also the work that goes with them, but the love of them makes that seem a little less strenuous. THANKS AGAIN LOVED THE POSTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
atthelake22 ;)
Thank you all for your comments.
I agree that people who don't keep bees just don't understand. I go home every day for lunch and eat my sandwich and drink my glass of milk sitting right next to my hive's landing board. My hive is on concrete blocks on the edge of my back yard pond. I love sitting there, in the afternoon sunshine watching the field workers landing and leaving, watching the young bees take their orientation/cleansing flights, watching the squadrons of drones come and go. Most every chance I get I'm out there watching them.
Just as an added reinforcement to what I observed with my bees in the button bushes, another hobby of mine is wildlife photography. Last week I spent 2 1/2 days out in various wetlands/nature preserves within maybe 50 miles of my home and I kid you not, I only saw 3 honey bees in more than 10 hours of stomping around prime honey bee foraging areas.
Look these coordinates up on Google Maps or something similar:
41.751778n 86.0140284w
All the area around that, maybe 80 acres is a restored tall grass prairie, a beautiful place, filled with wildflowers of all kinds. It's called Boot Lake Nature preserve. There are literally hundreds of yards of head high white and yellow sweet clover along the sides of the trail. I mean absolutely prime A1 bee foraging area and I watched and I only saw 3 honey bees as I walked along all that sweet clover. . .
I am going to see if I can find someone who might like to have a hive or 2 or 3. . . LOL out in that area next year. . . but presently there just are no bees out here.
Again thanks to you all for your comments.
Dave