I leave honey on the bee hives for the winter but I like to supplement with blocks of candy as we get into January-February. I make batches of candy throughout the winter and take opportunities to peek into the top of the hives. I get a sense of what is going on in there and can feed more candy if needed. We have plenty of winter days in the 40’s and it is no problem to peek into the top. I have changed my recipe, previously posted on this site, for bee candy making as I was

She seems to blend as one with this dandelion flower. I would have thought she had enough! I hope she is strong enough to take that load home! #beekeeping #dandelion #honeybees #pollen

I’m sitting in front of the woodstove and the snow is falling. So goes spring! Yesterday, was windy but warm and sunny and the honeybees were doing the best that they could to gather pollen from early blooming trees and flowers. I could not resist to, yet again, try to get the perfect shot of the blue pollen that the bees gather from the tiny Siberian Squill. At our Chester County Beekeepers meeting last night, we had a speaker talking to us about bee nutrition. The bees need

I started to study permaculture when I lived in Elkins Park, an inner suburb of Philadelphia. Permaculture was our gateway to gardens and chickens and bees. Our work on that tiny piece of land gave us joy, and it inspired connections with the people in our community. One of those people was a young neighbor. She gave one of the four hens a name: StellaLou. And, although our best chicken is no longer with us, she did make the journey to the new farm and inspire its name. “Stel

We thought that we’d like to have a visual screen between our farm and a neighboring property. My dog, Ginkgo, watches, diligently, over HER land (her boundaries go, frustratingly, beyond ours.) She can sit near J’s office and look downslope to the southeast, south, and southwest with little obstruction to her view. She watches for any activity and will, enthusiastically, announce the presence of our neighbor, our neighbor’s car, our neighbor’s guests, the buzzards and hawks

Last April, Michaelann invited me to join her in feeding the bees. On previous visits to the farm, I had enjoyed helping out however I could: tearing down old buildings, mulching beds in the garden, or simply splitting wood. But I had never helped with the bees before. I had no real aversion to them, but I had no real interest either. They pollinated flowers, they made honey, and they occasionally stung people. They were bees. That was that. Still, I did want to be helpful. S

I’ve had several people ask me how the hives came through the cold snap. Thank you for your interest! I have been, anxiously, waiting for a warm day to find out what happened. Yesterday, it got to about 50 degrees and I saw honeybees flying from only one hive. We fed this hive with a candyboard going into winter because they would not have had enough food to get them through. I saw nothing happening at the other three hives. With each walk back to the hives, I grew more conce