No, not iris! Our bees are enjoying evenings on their front porch during our warm weather. This activity is called "bearding" because the mass of bees supposedly looks like a beard. Bearded ladies ( photo / image / picture from marlingardener's Garden ) Bearding is the sign of a strong hive. When all the bees are home in the evening, it gets warm in hive and they come outside to cool off until nighttime. All three of our hives are bearding, so we are happy beekeepers!
Oh, darn, I was looking forward to enjoying some Iris photos since all mine were unflowered by the hail last week. But the bees do look quite nice too.
Now that is very cool, MG. I hope you'll post more pictures of you guys doing your beekeeping thing. It's awfully interesting. I checked out the beekeeping section on your website too!
Thanks, y'all. Toni, we have NO iris. When we moved from town, it was absolutely the wrong time of year to bring iris rhizomes with us. I do have promises for rhizomes from local gardeners for this fall. I do miss my iris! Daisy, the beekeeping on our website is my husband's domain. He knows tons more about bees and keeping bees than I do. I just help out, brew some bee syrup, and make sure the watering stations are full. I also get to crank the manual extractor when honey harvesting time comes! I'll try to keep up with the bee happenings. How nice that you find it interesting!
My friend's brother is a beekeeper locally and I could listen to him go on about bees for hours. He gave me a jar of his honey this year and it was amazing. I'm not usually a honey fan (love bees but not honey so much) but this was delicious.
So glad to know your hives are so healthy. I have heard that beekeeping can be a bit of a challenge any more. Wonderful sight to see. :-D
I just love it when I learn something new like 'bearding.' O.K. I too thought I was going to see some Iris. Next time I'm at a hive in the evening and see that, I will remember bearding. Now about the Iris pictures........ Thank you Jane, Jerry
Daisy, local honey, especially raw honey is so unlike the store-bought stuff that you wouldn't know they were both made by bees! There were shipments of tainted/adulterated honey coming from China, so China's honey was banned. China solved the problem to transshipping their honey to a country that didn't come under the ban and continuing to sell it in the United States. We have a customer list, and are hoping to have enough honey to meet the demand (and we live in near a small town and word-of-mouth is our only advertising!). Jerry, afraid you'll have to wait a long time for iris photos--but if you like the bees, I'll post some more! Did you know bees dance? The scouts go out to find a source of nectar or pollen and then come back to the hive and "dance" the direction and distance so the other bees know where to go. The dancer makes circles, goes up and down a bit, and certainly could win on "Dancing with the Stars." Jewell, our bee site is fortunate in that the surrounding farms don't spray insecticides. Before we got the hives and bees, we checked with all the surrounding farms for allergies to bee stings and use of pesticides. Since we came up negative with both, we went for it and our girls are happy and healthy. Of course, the neighbors get honey, and several have even offered places on their farms for placing hives. Not only the bees are happy around here!
awesome job on the bee's, i just learned the "bearding" from this thread too.. bee's are so important. I'm sure your neighbors will benefit from all the bee's hard work in many ways.
Fantastic news MG. I recently found out that a local historical site has honey bees and from time to time they offer bee seminars. If I can time it right, I'll go to one. In my little yard, I try to encourage them to come and a lot do. I don't know how many are honeybees though... probably not as many as the other kinds. Yes, I agree on the difference between local honey and store bought. No comparison. I'm very happy for you and your bees!
Great to see!!! I hope mine do as well. I started with 5 for the winter and it looks like I'm down to two. Maybe my bee tree will throw me a few swarms. Maybe some one could get a video up ( or google it) of bees marching into a hive. That's a really cool thing to see.
