I could tell something was terribly wrong when I saw Stew's and Felix' long faces, behind the protective hoods they wear when handling our beehives, as they returned from collecting the honey panels from the beehives."A real disaster," said Stew, in his usual understated manner. "We barely got half a bucketful of honey."Except this time …
Tag: apiculture
Bees buzz while vegetables snore
Late last year Stew and Félix checked our beehives and were alarmed. One hive was doing great, a second not so well and the third was totally kaput. A few weeks ago they checked again and found two hives buzzing with bees making honey, but the third was still empty.So last week we took off …
Regime change in our beehives
Despite bad weather and nervous handlers,two new queen bees are now buzzing in our hivesLast week Felix and Stew set out to replace the queen bees in two of our three hives, a tricky ritual even during optimal conditions—bright sun and warm weather—that became trickier during the torrential rains we've been having for several days.Our …
A killing, then a coronation
Killing the queen bee in your hive is nasty business, nearly as bad as cleaning the mess after putting the honey in jars. This little creature, about an inch long, spends a couple of years, maybe less, frenetically flitting around deep inside the hive laying thousands of eggs that engender the thousands of bees that …
Birth of a Salesman
For all his laudable personal qualities—honesty, first-rate smarts and a willingness to work, among others—our gardener Félix' prospects in life are dampened by the fatalism that pervades most Mexicans in the campo or countryside. Life is but a torturous trek and you just pray something really awful doesn't happen along the way.It's not a worldview that …
What's With the Bees?
After a bumper crop of honey in October, really far more honey than we could process, eat or give away, a check of our hive by Stew and (Bee) Bob Lewis last week showed production had dropped drastically. This after a bountiful, if short, spring when the landscape was filled with yellow jarrilla and huizache …
Bee Day arrives
The much anticipated day to collect the honey from Stew's beehive finally arrived last Friday, and a ho-hum feeling buzzed through my spine. The project had been going on since February, with free bee stings for everyone including the dogs, which had learned to flee whenever they saw or sniffed any bee-related doings. Most of …
Bee Bob Buzzes By
Yesterday, San Miguel's roving apiculture ambassadors, Bee Bob and his ten-pound mutt, Pepper, buzzed by the ranch for an emergency consultation. The actual emergency occurred about two weeks ago when Stew once again try to answer that perennial question, "What is going on with the bees?"Honey? Buzz off, we're not in the mood. He had donned …
About the birds and the bees
If the level of partying and fornication--and the number of stings inflicted on nearby humans and animals--reflect the health of a beehive, then Stew's is a doozy. He had installed the bee box, custom-made by a local carpenter, six weeks ago but the actual bees, about seven or eight thousand of them, didn't arrive for …
Here come the bees, honey
Ready for occupancyUnless the vagaries of Mexican Time interfere, later this week we should be getting a three-pound package containing approximately 7,000 bees, ready to buzz under the direction of a queen bee. The latter is traveling from Veracruz in her own separate little jewel box-like container, while the rank-and-file bees are coming from a …
El Rancho Santa Clara 