Showing posts with label harvest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label harvest. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 06, 2012

Bees & Flowers

Wax skyline
My life is all bees, honey, and tips at work right now so you're going to have to bear with bee-oriented shots, which I assure you is far more interesting than IT-oriented tips I'm working on in my day job. :) We're extracting honey - most honey we've ever had for two reasons. 1) At one hundred or so hives, we have more bees than we've ever had before. I think that's double what we had last year even after selling a number of nucleus hives (starter hives) in the spring. 2) We had a great raining winter and spring and it's keeping the flowers going and now the Mesquite is as well. Here it is early June and I'm still amazed at the flowers that are in bloom, fueling our bees. Awesome! Mark was particularly happy that the last bit of rain rejuvenated the Indian Blankets, as the bees love that and this kept them going with honey production. The first shot was at Rattlesnake bee yard near Marion (Tx). I was watching Mark, David and Ira pull the honey supers off the hives in order to begin extraction. I loved what was left on these frames when they pulled one of the supers off - looked like a skyline to me. And I wanted to eat it! lol. I shot the picture below at Deadman Creek bee yard at the Lazy U Ranch (a certified organic ranch).
 Bee on Indian Blanket blooms 2

Sunday, June 03, 2012

A Flea, a Fire Ant, Thistle and Bees

A flea and a fireant
One weekend, I accompanied Mark to our local Home Depot on Austin Street near Interstate 10. As we drove up, I exclaimed in frightful delight - what a great photo opportunity! I laughed and nearly jumped out of the truck to get a shot with the ginormous flea and fire ant. But then I spotted the Ortho salesman who had just spotted us. Probably my overly exuberant skip. Sigh...I really just wanted a picture standing near or under the blow-up critters but I didn't want to chat about insecticides so we snapped a quick shot and kept moving towards the opposite door. Now, besides this being a photo op I couldn't let pass, I think it's sort of an odd way to lull people over. How interesting to think a flea and a fire ant are appealing in that way. hmm.Now, to a more pleasant visual of the Seguin area, I'd like to share a lovely shot of the thistle that has bloomed nicely this year. I photographed it as I visited bee yards during our honey harvest. Lovely, lovely year for wildflowers. Here it is the beginning of June and we have tons of flowers everywhenuure!Thistle in front of hives

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Peachy

Yum!

Hi everyone. As you can tell, we've been busy. Honey harvesting is in full motion right now and with my work, we've been neglecting our beautiful peach tree! I guess everything just comes to you when you least expect it. This tree hardly ever bears fruit for us in the past years, though we enjoyed a few here and there. Well look at it now! Not only have we been blessed with over a ton of honey (and they're still making more) but we've also got so many peaches, we can't get to them fast enough!

Butterfly on peach