Some beautiful, golden-hearted friends are supporting bee-centered beekeeping by allowing me to set a colony of honey bees, in a Bee Tree hive, on their five acres that is intersected by a year-round creek.
They practice permaculture and the creek comes complete with beaver dams! Another win-win-win for the bees, for my friends, and for me.
The swarm that was hived on May 23rd is doing great. Here’s a photo of one of the frames from the hive they were installed in:
The mother hive, which had to raise a new queen, is doing equally well.
New, lovely friends are allowing me to set some of my own hives on their 5 acres right along the river. They practice permaculture, and the surrounding fields of clover and alfalfa are not sprayed with pesticides or herbicides. My friends are supplying the habitat and I am supplying the honey bee colonies in Bee Tree™ hives.
It’s a win-win-win. The bees enjoy a healthy, diverse, nutrient-rich, pesticide-fee habitat, as well as a hive designed to allow them to live much more like they would choose to live in the wild; my friends enjoy a more flowering and fruitful property through the pollination of the honey bees; and I am provided with a wonderful place to pursue my bee-centered beekeeping goal of propagating an ecotype*.
I closed up the hive, and moved the colony to this location early the other morning with my friend’s help. After setting and leveling the hive, I opened it up to let the bees re-orient and begin foraging. Within just a couple of hours, they had found the sand cherries, as well as other flowering plants and trees, and were bringing back multiple colors of pollen.
*Ecotype: a genetically distinct geographic variety, population or race within a species, which is adapted to specific environmental conditions.
Little Mountain Town Beekeeper 