A friend sent me a link to an amazing bee photographer. I’m fascinated on how these people get such great shots in the hive and the wild.
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Spring Time in Austin
So much is blooming right now here in Austin that I’m a bit sad I don’t have my bees yet. Granted, it is just a few more weeks, but with the dogwoods, redbuds, buckeyes, and all the wildflowers starting to come up, I feel like I’m missing out on some perfect weeks that a new bee colony would enjoy.
Here is a photo from my backyard of Texas Redbud in bloom.
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Installing Bees
There are tons of YouTube videos on installing package bees, but I found this to be one of the better ones in terms of video quality and lack of crazy regional accents. My wife still makes fun of the clip from North Carolina where the phrase “just baaaang on it” is used throughout. Now that I’m done offending my southern friends, this video will give you a good overview of the steps taken to install bees. It seems every beekeeper has a different method, and while I won’t be using the steps outlined in this video exactly, it is close enough.
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Tell’em Large Marge sent you!
So I’ve decided to name my queen “Large Marge”. I opted not to try and come up with a name that actually contained the word “queen” because it was just too limiting. So in less than a month now, Large Marge will be setting up shop in the bee-friendly South Austin site.
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Honeybees ate my baby
Here in Austin, TX, beekeepers are quite lucky that keeping bees is actually legal. In a lot of large urban cities, beekeeping is illegal and can come with hefty penalties if caught. That doesn’t stop a lot of people, but there is always the risk they could face fines or even destruction of their hives.
Luckily, major urban centers are coming around and even New York City is considering revoking laws “lumping the honeybee together with hyenas, tarantulas, cobras, dingoes and other animals considered too dangerous or venomous for city life.”
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Naming of the Queen
I still haven’t come up with a good name for the Queen of my upcoming hive. Any good suggestions?
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To Bee or Not to Bee
After my last post about native bees, I decided to see if I could photograph some in my garden. Today started out sunny, and there were tons of insects flying around the Carolina Jessamine which is a native vine currently blooming here in Austin.
I managed to get this picture, and it took me awhile to identify this little guy. I’m pretty sure this is a Green Orchid Bee.
I first thought it was a fly of some kind, but Google images supports my theory. I’m open to suggestions if folks think it is something else entirely.
I also managed to get a few decent shots of honey bees taking advantage of the warmer weather. Here is a honey bee with full pollen sacs.
And here is a nice bee butt shot as she is chowing down on some sweet nectar.
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Bee Dreams
I found a web site entitled Bee Dreams which has some amazing photography of bees.
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Hive Stand
So I didn’t think I was buying any more equipment, but the Dadant and Sons Catalog showed up at my door the other day, and I couldn’t resist this hive stand for 20 bucks. I was planning on just buying 4 cinder blocks to elevate my hive, but this is much better and even has legs with pest deterent trays. You can fill the trays with something like vegetable oil, and it will prevent ants and other non-flying insects from crawling up into your hive.
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Native Bees
While I am very excited about starting my honeybee colony, I would be remiss if I didn’t have at least one post on native bees here in Austin. There are hundreds of varieties of native bees in our area that each do their part in pollinating plants.
There has been a lot of emphasis on Colony Collapse Disorder affecting honey bees and their ability to pollinate commercial crops, but the real story should be how the use of chemicals and pesticides have killed a lot of the native pollinators which used to do the heavy lifting. The honey bee was not native to the United States until it was introduced from Europe so it was humans who helped create this dependency on honey bees to pollinate a lot of our food crops.
I am by no means an expert on native bees, but Texas Bee Watchers is an excellent site to learn a bit more about our native friends. It even has good links on creating a Nest Box to attract solitary bees to your garden. I also found their list of bee friendly plants to be very informative, and if you take a look, a lot of the plants are native and/or adapted plants suitable to the Texas climate. You won’t see a lot of bees on the “six packs of color” you find in your big box nurseries.
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Urban Beekeeping in Austin, Texas 