UPDATE!

As you can see the countdown is up! We will pick up the honeybees in Stillwater, Minnesota April 21. We will drive about an hour and get 3- 3 lbs "bee packages" and 3 queens. The bee package looks like a wooden shoe box with screened sides, there is also a metal can which has syrup , so they can eat during transport. Those honey bees come from California loaded on an 18-wheeler...a very long and non-stop trip for them. Each box contains 12,000 to 15,000 honeybees. And inside each the box, there is a little screened cage plugged with candy, so the queen can also eat. She is accompanied with 2 or 3 attendants that will take care of her. Then, we will happily place the boxes in the car and drive back home! We are all very excited! Some maybe more anxious than others!

Meanwhile, around the 10 or 15 of April, I will place the first box of each beehive in their permanent place. One will be in Chanhassen and the others in Shakopee. As the days pass, the project feels more tangible. To be continued....

The Hive and its Occupants

Female worker Drone Queen

Picture from: Zachary Huang (Extension.org) The dot on the queen is to be able to identify her readily in a large colony.

Since honeybees are social insects, they live together in very large groups of about 45,000 to 60,000 bees per hive. Interestingly, there are more females than males in each colony. The males called drones represent only 5% of the total population. Drones take 24 days to emerge as adult. Amazingly the queen "chooses" the sex of the egg when laying them! As a result unfertilized eggs (parthenogenesis) will be males and fertilized eggs, females. The males are bigger and a little wider than the female workers. They are very distinguishable by their enormous compound eyes, looking like they are wearing large sunglasses! Drones do not contribute to their colony... they don't gather pollen, or nectar, they don't defend the hive, they don't help rear the youngs either, and they don't produce wax... In our human world, they would certainly pass for lazy-bums! Basically, they eat, mate and die right away...What a shame!!! However, the drones are really important for the success of other colonies. Their only purpose in life is to mate with a virgin queen from another colony, hence the big eyes(?) to spot her. But this exploit is rarely done in their life time.

Honey bees are very sophisticated: There is a "cast system" among the queen and its workers, and a very effective division of labor within the worker themselves. A worker bee takes 21 days to develop to its adult stage, and is the smallest of the colony. This honey bee cannot lay eggs as its reproductive system is called "imperfect". However, she has many qualities which will help the colony to thrive and survive. For instance, the ability to collect an excess of nectar and pollen (wonderful for us!), to defend the hive from intruders, to rear the youngs and to regulate temperature of the hive which permits this fabulous insect to be perennial. This honey bee is a relentless worker. During her life span (about 35 days in the spring and up to 200 days in the fall), she will do many tasks, starting by cleaning and feeding the larvae, then she will build combs. At this time she is a "Hive bee". Later in life, she will "graduate" to being a forager, looking for pollen and nectar becoming a "Field bee". t Even if he workers seems and are specialized, they can perform any tasks, and are very good at reorganizing themselves if they are short of some "specific-task" honey bees.

The queen takes about 16 days to develop to her adult stage. She is definitely slender and longer than the workers or drones. Her wings sit on her abdomen unlike her peers. She is a perfect reproductive female. About a week after she is born, she will take what is called her mating flight, usually one or 2; during that time out of her hive she will look for ten to a dozen drones. This is all the mating she will have to do her entire life; she will "stock" the sperm and use it as needed! Remember the poor drones will die right after mating. Here in Minnesota a very good queen is likely to lay 200,000 fertilized eggs in her lifetime. She will follow the rhythm of our climate; she will start very slowly in January increasing her egg production in the spring, and again in the summer to slow it down in the fall.

Hive location

The wonderful thing about keeping honeybees is the fact that beehives can be located almost anywhere...in the city, in the suburbs, in the countryside, in a small garden, in a field, on a balcony and even on a rooftop! Of course, as beekeepers, we have to follow all rules, regulations and/or ordinances pertaining to the site chosen to keep our bees.

Bees can travel many miles to forage for pollen and nectar or to drink. Therefore we should not concern ourselves too much about that. However, it is best when colonies are easily accessible to us, because I will be the one (with my husband and son's help ) to haul equipment and hives full of honey eventually. Being close to a clean water source, with a little bit of afternoon shade would be ideal. A little shade is always welcomed, even for us wearing our white thick overalls...Everyone will be a little cooler in very hot temperature. Honeybees have to work tremendously hard to keep cool otherwise, and that's time away from their other tasks. Having good drainage, and good air circulation are important factors to the bee as she does not like dampness...Well, who does? really? A good windbreak, blocking harsh winter winds blowing from the Northwest in Minnesota decreases stress on honeybees. Otherwise, during winter, honeybees will work harder to keep warm, eating more honey than necessary and jeopardizing their chance of survival. I also think that placing beehives away from the public, and especially children is a good idea as well.

Finally, I also learned that facing the hive to the east helps the bees start their day early. The sun will shine bright into the escape hole and will warm and go deep into the hive..."waking up" the bees for the new day. If we think about all those elements; they do make sense, and are not so difficult to implement, and the bees will be happy

Dandelions: Best Food in Town!

Everyone remembers their children bringing bouquet of dandelions (Taraxacum officinale) home. I used to put them in a little vase on the dinner table. The kids were so proud and happy to see their flowers displayed in such an elegant manner...that they would hunt for them on every yard in the neighborhood!

Dandelions are essential in the honey bees' diet . They are an indicator that the honey bee season is starting. In fact, they are the first flowers that the honey bees will see in the spring. In Minnesota the first dandelion blooms can be seen around the first week of May.

When the Mayflower left Plymouth England with its English Separatists (Pilgrims) and arrived to Plymouth MA in 1620, not one dandelion could be found or seen on this new discovered land. It is then that this misunderstood plant has been introduced to America by European immigrants which used dandelions as part of their every day diet. What is under appreciated about this medicinal plant is the fact that every part of the dandelion is edible. For instance, these new comers roasted the roots to use as a caffeine free type of coffee; the leaves were toss together to make salad greens, and the flowers were boiled to make wine!

Even if the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continues to treat the dandelion as a weed, it has remarkable values. It has good sources of calcium, potassium ,vitamin A and C, protein, fat, carbohydrates, magnesium, sodium, phosphorus and iron. It has almost as much iron as spinach and 4 times the vitamin A. In addition, did you know that a serving of dandelion greens has much calcium as half a cup of milk!

The earliest mention of dandelion is obscure but Pliny the Elder (AD 23-79) wrote about it in his Naturalis Historia published in AD 77-79. The dandelion has also been recognized as an effective diuretic, helps in the prevention of urinary infections, and cleans the liver. Later, the Chinese herbalists recorded its use in AD 659.

Its peculiar name originates from France during the Medieval era : Dent de Lion ( lion's tooth) because of the distinctive jagged edges of the leaves.

So, next time take a different look at the dandelion and smile!

Honeybees Champion Pollinators

Why do we care about honeybees anyway? Because bees in general are the most important pollinators in most ecosystems. In North America 4,000 species of native bees can be found, such as bumble bees, Mason bees and Sweat bees for instance. They are mostly solitary, living alone in the ground or in a burrow inside a twig.

Above, Mason Bee.

Sweat Bee

Bumble Bee

However, the honeybee is the recognized as the "Champion Pollinator". This insect is social, and now adapted to live in a contained man-made "house" which can be easily transported where needed.The honeybee has had a long relationship with people for a very long period of time and it may be one reason why we care so much. Along the way, we discovered that honeybees were beneficial insects, that they were helping our crop production. Honeybees pollination is critical to agriculture, adding more than $15 billion to the value of American crops every year. (U.S. Department of Agriculture). A single honeybee can prance up to 10 hours a day from flower to flower, collecting nectar and pollen to feed their off springs; in the meantime pollinating our plants!

What's more interesting ( at a smaller scale!) is that honeybees are beneficial for our own yard and gardens. The bees will help pollinate our flowers and plants. In return, those plants will produce seeds, and thus we won't have to purchase new plants every year. At the end of the season, we can just collect the seeds, placing them in labeled envelops that we will either plant or exchange with our neighbors next spring.

The "trick" to attract pollinators is to grow native plants (trees and flowers) from your own area in your garden. However all plants are not created equal...usually ornamentals are not a good source of food for honeybees (more on that later). A good idea would be to plant an herb garden along the native plants; they especially love the mint family (Lamiacea) and perennial sages. Or you could leave some semi-natural areas in your landscape. To help the pollinators even more, try not to cut down all the stalks from your perennials in the fall, they are nesting place for many. I am sure that if you follow those two simple ideas, you will enjoy seeing more butterflies, bees, and beneficial insects and in the process you will appreciate their work! There is a great website that I like to visit called the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation (www.xerces.org). Enjoy Spring!