yay, bees!

Today was a picture-perfect January day, from the point of view of a beekeeper. Temperature in the low sixties, sunny, no wind to speak of. Ben headed out to the Ridge around two to do some work, and gave me a ride.

I lugged the cedar bench over by the front hive, though as it turned out, I did not remove any frames and didn't really need it. Kay and I had left four frames in the top box of three. The first, in the center with open space in front of it, had an overgrown lump of comb projecting into the space, and some stored honey. The next was quite heavy and pretty full. The third had some honey, and the fourth, by the hive wall, had not very much. I was able to look down at the frames in the second box, and I could see quite a lot of capped honey and bees. So I concluded it was doing OK.

In the backyard the hive also has three medium boxes, ten-frame rather than eight. The top - the cut-down deep with silver paint from my first hive, contains 9 frames. I recall that some were just empty frames in October. Not so now. The first is an almost completely built comb, with the inner side capped with honey. The second was HEAVY -- full of honey on both sides. On the other (east) side of the hive, the situation was about the same, not quite as much honey. I tried to look down to the frames below, and could see capped honey and bees down there too.

If there is a day even warmer next month, I will try to get the boxes apart and see what's happening on the brood frames. Need to make sure there's room for the queen to lay down there. If there is brood, I may need to feed some pollen substitute. Also I am concerned that the back hive still may have an empty box on the first floor.

The winter honeysuckle is beginning to bloom, and a few bees are working it. But what is the source of all that honey they have capped since October?

bee banquet and a bit of rain

Monday was the CCHBA Christmas banquet. Mucho good food as usual. Kay and I shared a table with about half of the Pettibon family -- 11 kids. My good gracious!!

Turned out that my close-up from the inspection of the new hive on May 20 produced not only the October calendar picture, of bees on an almost-completely-capped frame, but also #3 in the photo contest. And even some money, Tom Siep says, but he forgot the awards, so I'll find out what in January.

OCTOBER CALENDAR PHOTO

I used my new frame grip to lift and hold the frames with just the left hand, so I could snap a close-up with the right. (No glove, but that worked OK, the bees weren't buzzy - hard not to get sticky on the camera though.) The back-lit appearance is genuine -- I was facing south from behind the hive, so the sun was behind the frame, lighting up the honey.


There is another spatter of rain that I hear as I write, at ten pm. We have had light rain for much of the day. First rain in weeks.

Tomorrow, or maybe later because Stephen forgot and double-scheduled himself, he and I will get out to the Ridge. I think he will start by sanding the closet floor and painting the closet, so I can get the Elfa shelves and the clothes into the closet and then see how much material I can fit into the craft room. Aiming to have him do about 6-8 days work, and get myself moved back in January! Much longer, and I will grow root here. It's been seven months.

catching up

Well, apologies to anyone who drops in here and wonders what has happened to me. Just busy, not much convenient internet access, houseguests, and a sprained wrist.

I came back from Massachusetts on March 1 to find spring had come, peaches and plums blooming three weeks early, green grass. The green grass soon became knee-high grass with abundant rain. Then late April and early May turned into summer, and the grass became hay. Many actual hay-fields have been cut already.

We did have a welcome return of spring weather in the last week,with rain (an inch and a half at the Ridge), and downright chilly nights. Warming up again now.

Kay and I split my beehive in early March. In early April I added a super to each hive. By late that month I was getting worried that they needed more space -- great masses of bees were hanging out all the time on the landing boards and sometimes up the fronts of the hives. What with the schedule of meetings with Crispin and Turid and engineers, lawyers, realtors, etc., and Jazzfest, I was unable to do anything about it. Also, the sprained wrist made building frames impossible. But I finally got some done and added a fourth story to the new hive last Thursday. Found several frames FULL of honey! I put two of them up into the new box to help draw the bees up there to work, I hope. I just this morning finished the frames for the original hive, and hope to get them on this afternoon.

That's a very quick recap of the brief spring. Here are Amy and Ellen and the 610 irises, and the backyard Ridge hayfield in the rain last week.

bee multiplication

Sunday 18 March
10am 70° cloudy light breeze


Kay and I split the beehive last Monday. We left two medium 10-frame boxes on the old stand. The bottom box is fairly empty - they have never built much on several of those frames. As soon as I figure they have their queen going (I’m pretty sure the queen went with the new hive) I will remove that box, put the upper, which is a new-built one, in its place, and put on the former original deep, cut down, on top. Then I think I have at least one more 10-frame box in pieces to build for a super before I have to use one of the old ratty ones again.






The new hive on its cedar stand by the front fence looks quite nice. It has two 8-frame mediums with lots of nurse bees and brood, and a few foragers were kept by the branch-in-front trick. The inner cover is on the second box, then I have the half-gallon food jar surrounded by a third story. Just a makeshift cover for now, with plans for a nifty breezeway cover.

By Thursday they had taken well over half the food, and I refilled it. During the latter part of the week there seemed to be about 20 bees per minute foraging. Just now, however, I counted 100 over two minutes, and they included quite a few carrying pollen. So I believe that the foraging force is recruiting maturing bees as I hoped, bees to whom this is the home place and that other hive in the back yard means nothing. There are over 100 bees per minute active at the old hive, and I trust the new one will be up to that in a week or two.



We put quite a lot of frames of brood in this new hive. I didn’t have the camera going to keep a record, though. Kay lifted the 2nd and 3rd stories (both 8-frame) of the old hive over to the cart as a unit, with me frantically breaking off the lightweight almost empty frame from the bottom box that stuck. When we saw how empty the bottom box was, we put some of the brood frames, including one with queen cells, back from the being-moved boxes to the 10-frame that was going to stay. So I don’t really have a sense of just how many bees we moved. Photos from last Thursday show bees active on the tops of only two frames at the top of the new hive. But I think the lower box is pretty full, and probably has the queen. As soon as there is activity on five of the frames, time to give them another box. Probably just put a super with plastic foundation on top, not go into the lower hive.

Meanwhile, the photos show activity on about 8 of the 10 frames on top of the old hive. But I know that all the bees are up there, not down below.I am trusting that they are busy raising a queen, and thus not moved to swarm, even though that top box is so full. As soon as I think it’s safe for the queen, though, I need to get them down in the bottom box, with some nice empty frames to work on down there, but not so empty as at present. Though maybe a new queen will start setting up house down there. Perhaps I should give her a week or 10 days, to see. That would mean working the hive ... if she was already in a queen cell, she should be out now, or this week ... another week to mature, a week to mate and start laying ... maybe wait till April 4th or 5th. Or maybe do it while Amy’s here -- April 2nd?


BEE FEEDING

Old hive had one half gallon on starting on Tuesday after I got back from Massachusetts - the 6th. Still only 1/4 drunk on the next Monday the 12th. After the split they started drinking it up. Replaced on Wednesday Mar 14 and again Sunday Mar 18.

New hive given 1/2 gallon on Monday afternoon when set up. Filled it up - maybe 2/3 empty - on Thursday Mar 15. Discovered empty Monday morning (19th) and replaced.

So in a week the new hive has eaten about 7 pints, and the old 9 pints. Syrup is between 1:1 and 1.5:1.

Update 21 March -- Old hive emptied their Sunday bottle by Wednesday morning, replaced Wednesday evening.

cold and warm

Saturday 19 February
3:30 pm, 75°, breezy, mostly overcast

Let’s see. Saturday 29 January, three weeks ago, was about 77°. I went into the bees that day, and they were very un-aggressive and no trouble at all, unlike the day early in the month, when it was about ten degrees cooler, and they were all over me and one stung me through my sleeve.

Saturday 5 February was a lovely sunny day in the fifties. This was notable because the previous four days had not reached freezing (from below), and a couple of nights went down to about 10°. Snow and sleet which had been in place since Tuesday just vanished at last. The powder room cold water line froze and burst the copper tubing on Thursday. The birds at the Ridge just mobbed the feeder, which I moved to right up against the craft-loom window, hanging from the trellis, high. I had to get it out of Buddy’s reach, as I cleared out the garage for him for a refuge, and therefore he has been free of the house-yard.

Saturday 12 February was another nice warm day, after a second blast of sub-twenties weather from Wednesday to Friday. We had postponed Benthic Collection from the 4th to the 11th, then we canceled February collection altogether. All this week now has been above average temperature and mostly dry after the sleet and snow. Two or three days, including yesterday, got up in the 80s. I spent Wednesday morning out at LLELA at the trail-guide workshop. We met comfortably in the outside pavilion.

Others have noticed their bees bringing in orange pollen, and we decided it must be cedar. I had thought of this, but had looked at some cedars and seen no pollen. Was reminded at the CCHBA mtg. that the trees are dioecious. Today I went for a walk around the west forty and found several trees that are indeed covered with cones of pollen. I doesn’t really look as orange as what I have seen being brought in, but must be the answer. Today, I saw a few bees coming in with orange loads, but most had very contrasty and visible pale yellow pollen, from the winter honeysuckle, which is covered with working bees.
Last week, no, because even its flowers can’t take the kind of cold we had, and it was covered with sad little brown blobs. But the small buds have all come out now, and it is fragrant and buzzing. Bare of leaves, though, they froze also, and it will have to put on a new crop.

While exploring for pollen-bearing cedars, I went over to examine closely the one that is right on the big corner post at the se corner of Holmans’ 8 acres, just sw of the tank. It is indeed full of pollen cones, More notably, however, next to it in the fence-line to the north is a possum-haw. I didn’t think I had any. This one is orange-berried, not the real luscious red, but it’s a sizable shrub/little tree. Hurray! Possum-haw, Carolina buckthorn, female persimmons -- wonder what I’ll find next?

New to the land today are 5 pinyon pines (species unknown) and 6 bur oaks, plus a vitex. I got them at the soil conservation service sale yesterday, and Eddie plated them today. The larger (sorta) bur oak in the nw corner of the yard to replace the big hackberry, which seems to be senescent. One little oak near the center of the rock wall, behind the beehive. Two pinyons north of the yard between me and the big house. One oak down the hill by the irises and the toothache tree where I tried one before. A set of three pinyons south across the grass from the shop, and a set of three oaks down in the north pasture below the tank, the closest I have to a bottomland. Well, I could have put them in the drainage near the lane culvert. But if that’s going to get sold, I’d lose them.

I learned at LLELA about a “weed wrench” and I’m going to get one, or maybe two, privets for the pulling out of which. Maybe it will actually be possible to permanently clear some of the area by the drainage-stream, and put in redbuds, French mulberry, Eve’s necklace, buckbrush, etc. Wonder if it can usefully pull Japanese honeysuckle, or if the vine just breaks off and regrows.

As I finish writing this (after a nap), a big full moon shines in the window. So next month it will be full probably on the 20th of March, the day before the equinox. That will make the next full one I guess on Monday April 18, with Easter the following Sunday, the 24th. The vagaries of the ecclesiastical calendar! If the equinox should happen to be on a Friday, with a full moon on the Saturday, Easter could be a full month earlier, on March 23. There were women my age in the Thursday craft meeting, where this discussion came up, who had never learned how the date of Easter is set.

winter, but sunny

I had a nice fire last night as temps went down into the thirties. 8 smallish logs (most 3-4”, one 6” or more) lasted about 4 hours. Agate was happy in my lap for much of the time; Alabaster was off somewhere else. I missed Tut, curled up sleepily watchful on the futon couch.

This morning, clear and sunny, it was just under freezing at 7:30, so I didn’t bother to go look for frost-flower sculptures. The forecast was 27°, and I had the herb bed all covered up again. The rest of the week is just supposed to be in the low to middle thirties, so I will uncover it and water and let it get acclimated to winter.

With the sun shining it’s up to 40° by just after 9:00am.

10:30 - 50° - went on walk. First down to persimmons to nail down ID of second one. Got a twig off it and the one I found with fruit, and the leaf-scars and buds are identical. Need to bring binoculars to see if that is a last persimmon up high in the larger one.

Walked from tank down through path in woods and then back on the lane. Tried to go through the old broken white gate, but it has shifted so that its chain is too tight to open.

Something is happening at the gas-well site. Couldn’t make out if they had a folded-up crane, ar if maybe they have brought back a derrick that’s still on the truck. Later - looks like they are putting up a derrick again. Hmmmm.

Found several persimmon seeds in the lane sand near the house, where I have evidently driven over a seed-laden scat.

Bee notes: By 10:30 it was fifty; by noon a bit over sixty. Bees coming and going, bringing in a good bit of orange and dirty-white pollen. I assume this is from the eleagnus, still perfuming the air and buzzing with bees, and the remnant of scarlet sage in the corner of the yard under the hackberry, which seem to have been protected from outer-space cold so far and still have quite a few scattered blooms. A few days ago these pollens were in the minority as about five out of six loads seemed to be golden yellow, the last of the broomweed and maybe other comps. They are about all gone now.

more on bees

This is my guest blog post graciously run by Robin McKinley on her blog last week:

I have been interested in the idea of keeping bees for a while. Fifteen years ago I took a course, but for several reasons didn’t get bees. I had another chance this spring, and this time I was really ready to take them on.

The class was taught by two professional beekeepers. John was a beekeeping hobbyist before he retired from his engineering job, and since then he has increased his operation until he has several hundred colonies and a pretty full-time job again. His partner Blake was one of the local beekeeping club’s youth scholarship students as a thirteen-year-old. He took to the bees so successfully that now he owns about three hundred colonies, and is president this year of the club. He’s nineteen!

Their main beeyards are many miles south, where there is a better honeyflow.* Their honey house**, site of the class, is about 60 miles from me, at John’s home. In general, they don’t keep bees there at their home site, because it would be a serious nuisance when they were processing honey to have thousands of local bees battering at the door of the honey house to get the sticky sweet as they were bottling it. But they have a sideline of supplying a couple hundred new “nucs,” or nucleus hives, each spring to hobbyists in the Collin County area.

So in the early spring they accept hive boxes, put three or four frames of bees and brood from their strongest hives into each one, plus a new queen***, set them out behind the honey house, and feed them for six weeks to get them to start building up their numbers. Then the students, beginners, and other customers come back on the designated evenings and get their new hives.


Here is John’s driveway (John is on the right) with all the hives he is going to fill with bees. One of my frames had a tiny bit of extra protein, in addition to the glue and the nails, from an incautious hammer blow on the side of my finger. But the red spot doesn’t show in this photo. The red arrow points to MY hive.


I brought home my bees about 10pm on April 29. They look very small in my backyard (and as I look back at this picture, it’s so green! The yard is all dry and crunchy and straw-colored now). At this time there were probably around eight thousand bees in the hive. My first hive inspection is on Youtube.


Although John showed me my queen when I got the hive, I could never spot her myself. A couple of weeks later, I was upset to see queen cells built on the surface of the comb. These are extensions put over normal cells when the workers realize, by the diminished pheromones, that their queen is ailing or missing. If they have worker larvae less than three days old, they can enlarge their cells and keep feeding them royal jelly and thereby produce new queens, a process called supersedure.

This is a fairly normal occurrence, but beekeepers don’t like to see it, because there is a three-week gap in the hive’s springtime growth, while the new queen grows up, gets mated, and starts to lay eggs. But anyway, my bees managed it, and on June 17th I saw the queen, and lots of sealed cells of pupating young bees.




I’ll talk about some divergent philosophies of beekeeping, describe an inspection, and also let you know how much harvest I was able to get in this first year, in a couple of subsequent posts. Meanwhile, my cousin Kieren Ladner visited a few weeks ago. He is a professional photographer, and kindly agreed to document a hive inspection, so I have a supply of nice detailed photos of the bees in the hive, as of June 17. He took the three above.


I spend a lot of time sitting out in front of the hive with binoculars, watching the coming and going, and wishing I had x-ray vision. Also I WISH I had Elizabeth Moon’s (emoontx’s) camera, AND her skill at photographing bugs.



* Honeyflow is beekeeper jargon for the annual period(s) when a great many flowers are blooming and offering nectar, and bees can rapidly build up lots of surplus honey.

** The Honey House is the beekeeper’s production facility for extracting and bottling honey. State regulations cover such requirements as stainless steel fixtures and washable walls and floor. You can NOT use your kitchen and legally sell your honey.

*** The queen is the only fully-developed fertile female in the hive. She lays up to 1000 eggs per day in the spring when the colony is building up its strength for the honeyflow. The workers hatch from fertilized eggs, but their diet causes them to develop wax glands and mandibular glands (for making food for baby bees) but not functional ovaries. Their ovipositor becomes modified to the stinger.°

° And yes, I have been stung. Three times so far, and all of them avoidable if I had been paying attention to the bees’ behavior, and had not been stubborn. Two were relatively benign, the third must have had much more venom in her, cause it HURT and kept hurting for a couple of days. So now I pay more attention, and I try not to be stubborn. If they look or sound cranky, be flexible in your plans. GO AWAY.

muggy ugh

Oh, ugh. Sunset, overcast, 85°, and 63% humidity. The AC is not on because it isn't hot enough,and the room fan is just circulating the fug. I think I'll go adjust the thermostat, and electric bill and global warming be hanged! Weather says that areas that had rain are in the 70s, but we didn't. Weather, weather every where, and not a drop to fall.

Actually today it seemed fairly cool, in the afternoon. I believe it must have been raining up on Mingo Road, or Aubrey, or somewhere. I walked to Point Bank, and there were noticeable northeasterly cool breezes.

Walking that mile and a quarter was no problem. The second one, on the way BACK, did wear me out, especially that hill at the end. Stopping when you are only half way to tired is always the problem. Besides, I needed to go to Point Bank to put in a check for Crispin.

Yesterday Eddie and Stephen put in 4-1/2 hours clearing the sides of the lane at the Ridge -- the lower half is looking quite inviting. They were able to cut the dead tree at the kink in the road. Meanwhile, I excavated the herb bed from the Johnson grass that was threatening to overwhelm it.

I took some more pictures of the progress on the honey frames. Or make that non-progress. They don't look any more capped than last week, and they almost look as though the bees have been eating all the honey out of some spots. Sigh. Won't be a harvest at this rate. John tell me the rule of thumb is that you can harvest when they are three-quarters capped. I sent him this picture, and he said it was a beautiful frame of honey. Now all they have to do is FINISH it!

They continue to bring in lots of pollen. I got some video of that that I hope to get on Youtube or Fileden soon.

Ugh. Wrists are sweating all over the laptop. Off to set the AC lower.

hot ...

11 pm and AC going, hot and muggy outside. Remind me again why I wanted the rain to stop ...
Not near as hot as it might be. I walked probably 2-1/2 miles this afternoon between 6pm and 8pm, to the bank and City Hall (utility bill) and the Cupboard and home, and it was pretty much OK. Mid-nineties. But still 84° after 11pm.
Going to be sore tomorrow, probably.
Just put in my order for medium frames, small cell foundation, extra veil (for Tom or whoever) at Walter Kelley.

Kay's honey!

Kay brought me a present yesterday. She extracted 20-30 pounds of honey Sunday; she also almost accidentally got several combs of foundationless comb honey. Wax moths got in some of her foundation, and at the time, Dadant was OUT of foundation(!?) So, since she really needed to give her bees space, she interleaved empty frames between the ones with foundation. No comb guides or anything. And it worked!

The honey is very good. It's very light, and fragrant and flowery. Hope mine is as good.

summer's b-a-a-ack

End of the rains, and days near 100°, nights upper seventies for the foreseeable future. The last rains were Friday and Saturday, as a stalled-out front at the Red River stirred up some instability to dump a few more thunderstorms out of the soaked atmosphere. Kieren was hammered as he came north from Dallas Friday afternoon, then we had a mild drizzle most of Friday night, and two heavy thunderstorms on Saturday. Sunday however was clear and sunny; the cooler cloudy days gone.

The Ridge rain gauge had 0.6" Friday afternoon, and then over Saturday it collected 2.3" more, for a total of something like nine inches over the two weeks. Sycamore Street's gauge Friday night was 1.8", but I brought it inside to read Friday night and didn't get it back out, so Saturday's storms were unmeasured. While there was more rain in town in several storms the last few days, overall there was less, maybe 6".

Yesterday Eddie and Steven worked around the house and yard at the Ridge. Both screen porches are now largely cleared of the enveloping jungle of creeper, hackberry, and mimosa, and the screen fixed.

I went through the hive (with video). The queen is continuing to lay; there is some uncapped brood and quite a bit of capped on several of the brood frames. But there doesn't seem to be much for all those bees to bring in, even with the rains. The newer super has just maybe three lightly-drawn-out frames, and there is no further progress in the upper super. I saw no pollen arriving, but maybe they gather some earlier in the day. I gave them a pint of syrup with a couple drops of lemon-grass oil to see what would happen.

As I was watching the bees in the late afternoon, I heard a mockingbird do a chuck-will's-widow call, very well too, it fooled me for a moment. He also rendered cardinal calls and song, carolina wren, house wren, and I don't know what else.

A tiny clicky noise made me look up. On a bare peach twig 3-4 feet over my head was a dragonfly. He perched there, then made little circuits, just a 4' circle or maybe figure-eight, and back to the perch, for a long time. I looked him up; he's a Widow Skimmer. This picture is very close to his appearance, though the species seems variable in wing pattern and body color.

rain again, yay

Another thunderstorm, courtesy apparently of a tropical low meandering north along the Louisiana border, broke noisily and wetly over us this afternoon. Later I read 0.3" on the gauge at the Ridge, but I believe there was more in town. Wunderground says 0.47" -- I haven't read my gauge yet. And more coming! Thursday, and then maybe next week too. The ground will be wet to the middle of the month, anyway. It looks all green again at the Ridge, though a lot of it is not grass but little opportunistic weeds, and lots of ragweed. As soon as it gets dry again, I need to mow that ragweed down, before it seeds.

Later -- sure enough, Sycamore Street got 1.5" of water while the Ridge was getting .03".

It's a good thing we had had a good deal of rain before the 4th, given what some neighborhood vandals did on the lane. Seems to have been a fairly impressive fireworks show, judging from the size of some of the remains. And then they just LEFT all the trash!





But watching the bees always calms me down. Caught in flight with a relatively fast shutter speed (late afternoon, with flash) they look distinctly un-aerodynamic, and not nearly as graceful as birds. They seem to hang at any angle in the air.

berries in the rain

What a welcome break in the weather! All week it has been relatively cool, if a bit muggy, and it looks to continue for a few more days. The rain Friday evening and Saturday morning at the Ridge was another two and a quarter inches, as a gentle drizzle for hours in the evening and early morning.

Mary and her friend Rebecca and I got started berrying around 8:30, an hour later than our original expecting-heat plan. Mary had to go in a bit after ten after running to fire ants that stung her numerous times, but she was feeling OK in the evening. Rebecca and I put in another half hour or more. I froze three small ziploc bags of berries and kept a bowlful in the fridge. (This picture is from July 2007, but the same cycles come around every year - I ate both berries and lambs-quarter this week.)


I told Rebecca about the violent thunderstorms, sometimes with hail, that we had had at past berrypicking/ice cream parties (Cassie's pockets full of hailstones). She is from Florida, where apparently hail is uncommon. Then after a partly sunny afternoon that got up to the high eighties, and felt hotter in the full sun while I was watching the bees, it suddenly got very dark and commenced a sockdologer of a right and proper 4th-of-July-berrypicking thunderstorm! Extremely heavy rain and lashing wind for a half hour, drizzle for a half hour, then the sun came out again. Another inch and a quarter, for a total on the week of nearly six inches!

Since the rain Tuesday morning, some flowers have picked up. I don't know about nectar, but at least the bees are bringing in pollen again. I took numerous photos of the entrance, and caught one pollen-laden worker as she disappeared into the shadow of the interior. Photoshop made her visible.

Well, Alex is moderating the temperature this week

Hurray! Last week was at or near 100°F every day. Yesterday was nice and cloudy; we got a lovely slow rain for much of the evening and night, and the rest of the week promises to be cloudy and low nineties, or even lower, with possibly more rain if Alex slings it our way.

Lots has been happening at the Ridge, that I haven't gotten around to writing about. The spring flowers have been and gone. The horsemint is blooming now, and deerpea. The black-eyed susans made a good show, but have totally dried up now. The last rain before last night was a thunderstorm in the early morning of the 15th, two weeks ago, and 3/4" of rain doesn't last for two weeks.

The bees, after a slow start, got going with a new queen, who is laying lots, Unfortunately the nectar has apparently dried up, so all those new bees don't have enough to do. Unemployment leads to too many security guards, and I got stung a second time Saturday, because I didn't heed the extra buzzing and flying around, and go right away to get more protection on.
In the first couple of weeks of this month, they made about 2/3 of a super of honey, but almost nothing since then. I am really hoping that this rain and, with luck, more this week will restart the honeyflow for a few more weeks.


Later -- the rain gauge in the herb garden by the front gate says 2.3 inches! A good "rescue rain," as Elizabeth Moon says. It will last a week or so, and we might possibly get some more later in the week, hope, hope.

The horsemint is done, however. The handsome upright stems with the white whorls of bracts still look lovely, but the bracts shelter globose clusters of maturing seeds, with very few flowers left. The snail-seed vine is starting to bloom, for whatever it may be worth to the bees, and the mesquite on the tank dam is blooming. The mimosas continue to bloom, but I have seen very few honeybees working it -- there was a bumblebee on the old one in the corner of the yard today.

(note — these two pictures of bees by my cousin Kieren Ladner)