Thursday, July 20, 2006

Beyond the Dog-Cat Paradigm

For those of you who thought you would hear no more about Charlie and the Dingulators…who presumed the Bee Guy was a mere fleeting web link in the short but satisfying saga of Ranchblog…well, you may have missed the delicate foreshadowing of my previous bee-related post. Yes, the Bee-Man returns. And this time he’s movin’ in the hives.

On his last visit, as he was leaving, we asked if he had any hives he would be interested in keeping here. It’s something we have been thinking about pursuing for awhile. We actually own the book “Beekeeping for Dummies” (to give you a sense of the level of our ambition here). After reading about it we realized the book had possibly overestimated our intelligence, and this occupation might be best left to a professional. We were on the lookout for one of those, when the yellowjacket issue arose, and we had reason to hire a beekeeper. The benefits of a bee population are numerous, and any species where the males are referred to as drones without any back talk whatsoever, is alright by me [cheap attempt to generate heated comments from my 1 male reader].


He installed them a couple days ago. We’re not sure when—dead of night, early morning—could have been anytime. We missed it. I’m sure it was a very quiet event. They’re placed under an oak in the lower meadow near the road. It’s protected from weather and has the shady/dappled sunlight bees prefer. But, seeing that we’re having yet another 100+ degree day, they’re probably fanning the queen furiously and griping about global warming. There are a few small ponds here, and there are larger ones nearby, so they’ll have access to water—a necessity. Bees travel in a radius of 3 miles, so they might take a sip or two out of the neighbor’s pool occasionally. All 60,000 of them. Oh…sorry ‘bout that. Well, they’re supposed to be gentle creatures.


This morning the new residents were hitting the silk tree blossoms hard. We’ve halted any further cutting of lavender for the moment. There’s some left, but we’re thinking it would be best to leave it for them. It was recommended that we plant a Red Gum Eucalyptus, so we’ll be scouting for one of those.

Welcome Bees!

3 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  2. Egads! Am I your only male reader? Next time I visit I'm definitely not wearing my bear costume!

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  3. We have lots of male readers actually. And bear readers. And male bear readers. I just wanted you to feel special.

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