WELLFLEET — The bee yard bakes in the midday sun, redolent of honey and the faint spice of propolis. Workers dart from hive entrances, returning heavy with pollen and nectar […]
Beekeeping
VIEW FROM THE HIVE
Late Summer Jobs for Field Bees
Carrying water in a dearth, then making white wax for the new nectar flow
Most people know that honey bees collect nectar and pollen from flowers. But field work for honey bees is much more diverse than that. Field bees suck nectar from the […]
BEEKEEPING
Bee Yard Basics
What your neighbor’s boxes, stones, smoke, and other gear are all about
Deep into summer, beekeeping on the Outer Cape is mostly a waiting game. The queen has been laying since April; the hive population is perhaps 60,000. Though we’re in a […]
VIEW FROM THE HIVE
Swarming Is a Sign of Success
When honey bees take to the woods, they’re driven by a collective purpose
A honey bee colony’s plans and those of its beekeeper often diverge, and those disparate intentions of bee and keeper can confuse and confound the objectives of both. At no […]
VIEW FROM THE HIVE
Apitherapy for Anxiety
Honey bees head out for pollen, offering humans a chance for contemplation
Connecting with nature is one benign, widely practiced, and evidently very effective way of coping with anxiety. In Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, Ishmael, instead of “stepping into the street, and methodically […]
View from the Hive
Bees in Boxes
Built to make tending and harvesting easy
Probably the most common image that comes to mind when someone mentions honey bees are those tidy (classically white) wooden hive boxes set out in a field, orchard, or country […]
VIEW FROM THE HIVE
Honey Bees Await the Solstice
Our dark Outer Cape bees winter in frugal clusters
WELLFLEET — On this farm we have Wellfleetian honey bees — although not really; their origins are more likely Ukrainian. Honey bees were never native to North America. With the […]
VIEW FROM THE HIVE
In Winter, Bees Become a Superorganism
A strategy to conserve energy and food
Hive entrances are eerily vacant and quiet this frigid November morning, but an ear to the boxes reveals lots of life inside. A healthy cluster of wintering honey bees emits […]
