Honey bee Pollination Helps!

Harvest in Chanhassen!

September 2, 2012
Look at the beautiful vegetables, melon and eggs! All harvested from the Chanhassen apiaries where Liz and her Mom have a huge garden. Today, I am making a big salad for lunch using these veggies and eggs. For dessert a slice of melon! I have to believe that our bees helped a little in pollinating some of their crops. Liz and Gayle tell me that they see honeybees foraging all the time in their garden....That makes me very happy!

Friday morning Liz helped me with the Fall bee "chores". From the four hives at this location, we removed the supers that were empty: the bees did not give us a surplus this year. They worked mainly on building their hive, caring for the young bees , gathering pollen and nectar, and keeping the queen healthy. Together we placed in each brood box 2 cardboard strips that were soaked in  natural hop and food grade products mixture, it is called Hopguard. It is highly effective against Varroa mites, the number one enemy of honeybees.

Hops female flowers

Hopguard strip (picture: Beta Tech Hop Products)

Hop plants belong to the Cannabaceae family which include the well known Cannabis (hemp) and less known Celtis (hack berries). You may know about this plant as it is use in flavoring and stabilizing  beer! To make this natural medication, only female flowers or cones are used, the species is Humulus lupulus. Now you know everything :)

At this time of year, honeybees are very protective of their nest (hive) because they have gathered a lot of food since Spring which will be their reserve for this winter. So, when we started moving boxes and adding the hop strips a couple of colonies were really mad. We were in a cloud of terrified bees, hopefully Liz was there to "puff" the smoker around us! As soon as we were done, they would calm down...but it can be unnerving to work in this situation. Liz did an awesome job! I was glad she was by my side.

We refilled the water pans that I had set up in July when the temperatures were 80-100F . In two weeks, I will do it all over again...hopefully the bees will remember that I am not a horrible intruder, I just want to protect them against the big bad mites!