honey bees | My Everyday Photos

Tag Archives: honey bees

Bee Days

February 13, 2014 – 5:23 pm
Posted in beekeeping
Tagged honey bees, Methow Valley, winter
Leave a Comment

Just last week the temperature got as low as nine below zero, Fahrenheit, at my house. Today and yesterday it was pushing fifty above zero! The weather also brought in some new snow that was greatly appreciated. The warmth brought some stirring to Ken’s bee hives encouraging the honey bees to fly and relieve themselves and do some serious house cleaning. Here are a few of the images I made today. Those with blue backgrounds are on the metal surface that covers the tops of the hives. The bluebird sky makes a nice reflection, don’t you think? Some bees were walking around on the snow.

The Garden Last Week

July 23, 2013 – 1:17 pm
Posted in garden, Uncategorized
Tagged cabbage, echinacea, flowers, garden photography, hollyhocks, honey bees, Leek flowers, sunflowers, vegetables
Leave a Comment

Last week, before the temperatures rose to the nineties, the garden was vibrant and full of color. This week, it seems tired and droopy, no matter how often we water. Fortunately I made some images last week and captured it at its prettiest, so far, this year. It was full of pollinators – mostly Ken’s honeybees.

Cabbage with leeks

Raspberries

Bean trellis

Bean vines

Robin’s nest over the garden. It’s her second brood this year. She complains whenever we go in the garden.

Echincea

Echinacea

Echinacea with bee

Green-eyed Susan

Daylilly

Lavender

Salvia

Poppy pod

Hollyhock

hollyhock with bee

Raspberries – I can’t keep up with picking them

Yellow yarrow

Radish flower

Volunteer pumpkin/squash flower

Volunteer squash/pumpkin

Dill

Sunflower

Leek flower with honey bee

Sunflower – all of this year’s sunflowers are volunteers

Sunflower

Leek flower with honey bee

Leek with honey bee

Leek flower with honey bee

Leek with honey bee

Volunteer poppy – late bloomer

Volunteer poppy near the compost pile

Volunteer pumpkin/squash

Echinacea with bee

Sweet pea

Leek flower with bee

Leek flower with honey bees

This tomato will be striped, orange and yellow, when ripe

And one more raspberry

January Flight

January 30, 2013 – 4:15 pm
Posted in beekeeping
Tagged chinook, honey bees, January, Methow photography, thaw
Comments (5)

Every winter it seems there is an unexpected thaw. Does that mean it should be expected? I just don’t know when to expect it. This morning I woke up and it was already 40º and there was a light wind blowing. A warm winter wind is a chinook and can be quite damaging to the snowpack. By mid-afternoon it was up to 50º and downright balmy. The snow was sliding from the roof with huge whumps, blocking our trails to the shop and greenhouse. I was shoveling snow and wearing a t shirt; it was that warm. Walking around the house to check on things, I noticed a dead honey bee on the snow’s surface. Then I noticed one flying and then I found more in the snow. At the hive, there is a great pile of dead bees near the entrance. I don’t know if any of this is normal. Ken thinks maybe the bees are cleaning out the bodies of bees that have died over the winter, taking advantage of the warm January day. I hope that’s all it is. This whole beekeeping endeavour is fraught with unknowns at every turn.

Ken’s New Bees

April 23, 2012 – 4:40 pm
Posted in beekeeping
Tagged beekeeping, honey bees, Methow photography
Leave a Comment

I know, I keep flipping between vacation posts and life here at home but, you know what? Life’s Everyday Photos just never quit. There’s always something interesting happening. Look around you.

Ken’s new bees arrived early, while we were in Florida so our friends Don and Mary who had volunteered to mentor Ken in his first year of beekeeping, took them in til we returned. Last Friday Ken and Don brought them up here and yesterday they opened up the hives to see how they were doing.

The crew – all dressed up with someplace to go, bees buzzing around them