Good Job!

It is very obvious that having two hives of bees at the Homestead has made a real difference in the pollination rate of the old apple trees around here.

These trees barely produced fruit the two years previous to getting the bees. Maybe even longer, I don't know.

What I do know is that there was not a single honey bee to be seen here for the whole summer of 2009 and the old apple trees showed it in their complete lack of fruit. That's why I started my first hive.

This spring, when it wasn't raining, you could hear the intense hum of worker bees as they climbed in and out of thousands of apple blossoms.

This is a huge plum on a tree we didn't even know was a plumb tree. I think it had never been pollinated before.

The trees that had the good fortune to bloom when it wasn't raining are absolutely covered in apples.

The trees that had the misfortune of blooming during a blast of bee free rain, are not so fortunate.

 

This year our "Canby" raspberries which have been under performing, with odd shaped fruit in the past, have beautiful plump fruits this year.
All in all I think that despite the fact that we are in the middle of miles of nature we are were lacking in pollinators for whatever reason.

 

Happily it seems our bees are having a really positive impact on the Homestead.

Predators

Sitting in front of the hive while eating lunch this summer, I couldn't help feeling a little protective when I saw a Bald Faced Hornet tackling honey bees mid flight in front of the entrance. The Hornet would fly hard into the bee and knock it out of the air then quickly try to locate it in the grass below the hive. It took several tries before it manged to catch a bee on the ground. When it did, it stung it several times and grappled with the dying bee until it stopped struggling. The Hornet had caught dinner. In the natural order of things I suppose it is fair. My bees are not the only ones trying to eek out a living in this landscape. And my bees are, after all, not the natives.

This is a Bald Faced Hornet that flew into the trailer. I caught it in a jar and decided to take it's mug shot before I released it.

Flower/Crab Spiders usually wait in flowers to catch bees. Here are a couple of pictures I took the other day.
As crazy as it seems, I noticed what must be a mite on the back of this spider. There is an interesting,
albeit difficult to read, scientific paper about parasites on spiders.

This Flower Spider decided to set up at the one place she just couldn't miss, the entrance of my hive.
"Like shooting fish in a barrel" my Grandpa used to say.

She stayed for a couple of days and then disappeared. This video shows the bees going to check her out and then running away. EEk spider!

BH2O=bee water

I have been puzzling over what my honey bees want when it comes to water. It turns out I am not alone.
I was just reading a post by one of my fellow bee keepers about her water/bee dilemma concerning her neighbors bird bath and her son's wading pool.

Everyone seems to be wondering exactly what it is that makes the bees swarm to the neighbors hot tub or bird bath and ignore the sources of water set out for them.

The bees have their own idea about what they need, but it seems to change on a regular basis. What my bees love one week is completely bee free the next.

I had been thinking all morning about the fact that nary a bee has been sighted at the water barrel pond in my garden this year. Last year I had to add vegetation to keep them from drowning in it. So many bees were landing on the edge that they kept knocking each other into it.

This afternoon I sat in the sun near an old outbuilding and enjoyed my coffee. I noticed, after a couple of minutes in silent revelry (finally some sun), that there was a high hum going on above my head.

Up in the clogged and useless gutters were droves of bees drinking the composted water trapped in the gutter by globs of fir needles.

So that's where they are drinking.

What I know from my urban beekeeper friends is that their bees love hot tubs and swimming pools. Bird baths and neighbors ponds come in at a close second.

Here at the homestead they have more choices. I often see them gathering dew off the long grass in the late mornings. As the season gets dryer I find them at the drip emitters in my garden. The system will have turned off but each dripper still has a reservoir of water left in it. If my hands are wet in the garden they will often land on me to sip the water from the creases of my palms.
Last fall, while I was doing some masonry work on a chimney, the bees came one after another to drink the water dripping off of my mortar.

Thinking I could track down some authoritative source on what bees want for water, I combed my books and the web.

No one agrees. People have seen many bees on their livestock salt licks after a rain. Or in their garbage can lids. Hot tubs again. Koi ponds. Saltwater pools. Regular pools. Their kids wading pools.

And now I know they like gutter water. This one throws my most recent theory into question. I had been thinking about what all these hot tubs and swimming pools have in common. I was thinking "PH of course" since that is the one thing you must always keep on top of when it comes to pool maintenance. Or maybe not. What is the PH of a gutter full of fir needles, garbage lids of maple leaves, a plastic wading pool or a cement birdbath? I don't think they are the same but I don't know for sure.

Another element these all have in common with each other is temperature. All are either heated by the sun or electricity.

They also have a certain salt content. Either added to soften the water, by sweaty people or the vessel/debris the water sits in.

If I were to take a wild guess at this moment I would say that what we perceive as bees "drinking water" many times is just bees gathering liquid minerals and salt.  When they are truly drinking water what makes them choose one source over another? At this point in the search for the best bee water my hypothesis is that it is the perfect combination of location, temperature and PH.

But I realize that the  real question for many urban bee keepers is not actually about creating the perfect bee saloon it is "How do I provide a water source that the bees will choose instead of my neighbors pool?"

I don't have an answer to that, yet. One thing I have noticed is that open water that is too close to the hive gets rejected. Bees are very hygienic and I believe they will not drink open water that is in their cleansing flight path. So that helps with the "location" part.

The scientist in me is coming out. I'm setting out a dish of salt water and then off to the store I go for a PH kit. I am going to get to the bottom of this for my own sake. The bees I am sure, could care less.

I'll let you know if I find out anything and let me know if you have any ideas or experiences that will help in the search.