Looking Good

Our bees still seem to be happy and healthy. We see them in the yard enjoying the flowering herbs especially. They like our fennel plants quite a lot.

We realized this year that we want to start planting more flowers that bloom later into the summer/fall. Maybe some mums and asters? Please let me know if you have suggestions.

Last year the nectar flow dried out at this time of year, so I know Trish is keeping an eye out this year to see if she wants to supplement their diet with some bee tea.

Buzzing Along

Both of the hives are doing well! We see bees in the flowers and flowering herbs in our yard every day. The bees enjoy lavender and borage, of course, and we also see them in the oregano. If you aren't already planting borage, I would encourage you to plant some if you want to attract pollinators; here's some good info about borage. It has pretty, star-like flowers, and it's also believed to have medicinal benefits.

The other plant our bees love is Crocosmia, or "Lucifer" flowers. Here's a photo from Wikipedia--and it's perfect because we have had hummingbirds visiting ours quite a lot, too (or maybe just one hummingbird who returns quite a lot).

We have been seeing butterflies in the yard a lot, too. It's been nice to see so much activity. Trish's close attention to gardening shows a lot of rewards!

Meanwhile in the Garden: Peas!

We've been enjoying fresh peas from the garden lately. Here are a couple pics I took when the peas were in blossom. Trish stakes them with bamboo.

I think simple preparation is best for peas. I like them raw, or just lightly steamed. Of course they are always good in a salad or stir-fry, too. How do you like to cook peas?

Bees in Lavender

I snapped some photos in our garden today, and I happened to catch a couple of bees enjoying the lavender on the south side of the house. Bear in mind that I have a point and shoot digital camera, so these are not the best quality photos!

First off, here's a honeybee in the lower left corner of the first shot. Of course I can't know for sure that this bee lives in one of our hives, I'd bet that she does.

Then here's another kind of bee toward the center of this second shot. Not sure what kind of bee this is. It's a black color with a bit of yellow and white. We think of these as bumblebees, but they aren't the big kind. If you happen to know what kind of bee this might be, please do leave a comment on this post and let me know.

There are so many varieties of bees out in the world, enjoying the different blooms they find. It's a pleasure to see both in our yard.

We Bought a Goji Plant

Today we bought an established goji plant from a local gardener who is selling her collection of plants. We're looking forward to seeing how it does this spring and summer--and how the bees like it, too, of course! I'd love to discover that we can do well enough with goji berries here that I could put my food dehydrator to good use with them.

In the meantime, when it comes to berries to eat, we'll keep buying our organic goji berries from SunFood--I actually signed up for an affiliate account with them because they have the best organic goji we've found.

Back to gardening, Trish planted peas in the garden at the end of February, as well as some potatoes. Last year the biggest success in the garden was the cucumber plant--I hope this year will be a repeat. We enjoyed Greek salads with garden cucumbers all summer.

How is your yard/garden coming along as spring is (finally!) around the corner?

Growing Goji Berries

I did a bit more reading about goji berries and bees, and I started thinking that the goji berry plants could be a bee-friendly addition to our yard. Plus, the health benefits of goji honey would be good for honeybees as well as people.

I found an organic nursery in California (Peaceful Valley Farm & Garden Supply) that sells a variety of goji berry tree started from a plant in Utah. The folks at the nursery have produced a helpful video about planting and maintaining goji berries which I've embedded below. Trish and I are thinking about planting a couple in containers.

Recommended Magazine on Gardens and Bees and More

If you're looking for reading material, I'd like to recommend an interesting, new-ish independent publication out of Colorado called Greenwoman Magazine. The editor publishes a selection of nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and visual art. It's an 8.5x11 size of magazine with newsprint pages and a stapled binding--the color cover always looks nice, and the inside pages include some color images, too.

There's a nice variety of topics, from gardening to art. I especially enjoyed a long interview with an artist who often paints images of backyard chickens in a formal portrait style. If you enjoy creative writing about gardening, plants, and backyard wildlife (including domesticated animals), I think you'll like this magazine.

I just received some copies of the current issue (Winter 2012/2013) as I have two poems about bees published in it. Greenwoman is definitely a bee-friendly magazine!

Heading into Winter

I just read a couple of interesting posts on other beekeeping websites about bees in winter. The first is a thorough overview about what honeybees' lives are like during the wintertime, with details on how they cluster to stay warm and when and why they'll leave the hive in the colder months. See this page on All Things Plants for more details.

Then from Bee Rancher Buzz, a bee blog based in San Francisco comes a little tip about bee-friendly gardening as we head into winter. If there's something flowering in your garden, why not leave it for the bees? The blogger talks about letting herbs flower to give the bees a late-season treat. We did this with herbs this year as well as with some veggies in the garden that went to seed. In particular, we found that the bees loved fennel when it flowered. It may be a bit late for us Seattle gardeners to leave much to the bees, but if you're doing some cleanup and find something that's still flowering, why not leave it a little longer for our bee friends?