The good Sun

One of the keys to making plants happy is to put them in a place that has plenty of sunshine.  As the planting continues, good sunny spots at the Florida Bee Farm are becoming scarce.   While thinking about this and a few other upcoming projects I decided to remove all the plants in front of the rain barrels and turn that into a growing area.  It's probably one of the most consistent sun spots at the Florida Bee Farm.

The papaya trees and corn plants were moved to add to the green fence around the apiary which has been a recent project.  Several flowering bushes and plumaria flowers were then relocated to the Bee Garden which is another ongoing project.  And after moving all the plants, I was able to start modifying the rain barrel irrigation plumbing which will undergo some major upgrades very soon.   The irrigation system will be beyond amazing. 

New growing table

After clearing the area a good size growing table was built and the top was painted.  It's a nice solid table which will have a hardware cloth surface for drainage.  Mulch and weed cloth was added under the table to keep the weeds at bay.  This table will have it's own irrigation zone and should be prime real estate for growing stuff.

Pineapples, Peanuts and Paul

The projects are never ending at the Bee Farm which keeps me busy.  This weekend it was transplanting flowers and trees from the front of the shed area to the Bee Garden and the area around where the Honey Bees Live.  To make a green fence around them to define their space.  Kind of a separation between the garden and bee space.  Gives the apiary a more natural look.

Pineapple emerging

Yesterday while talking with a fellow gardener, she noticed that one of my pineapples was growing a baby pineapple.   Something I hadn't noticed.  After looking at all the pineapple plants I noticed several new pineapples. Also while looking at the pineapples I pulled what I thought was a weed from one of the pineapple plants.  Low and behold there was a peanut shell surrounding the root of what I thought was a weed.  These pineapple plants were in my front yard in an area where I would feed the squirrels and blue jays peanuts.  Apparently one of the squirrels hid one of his peanuts by the pineapple plant which was later dug up and brought out to the Bee Farm.

Today, the peanut plant was replanted into it's own pot and now we can try to grow peanuts on the bee farm.

Peanut plant buried several years ago by squirrels

The other major project that has taken so much time this weekend is the Honey Bee Garden.  It quickly gets overgrown and is difficult to maintain because I'm often not sure what is weed and what may be flowers coming up from seed.  Many hours were spent weeding and planting some daffodils and other flowers I purchased.  The goal is to spruce up the Bee Garden and make it a memorial in memory of our son Paul.  When I mentioned it to our other son, he thought it was a good idea and added "maybe we should throw a half dozen empty mountain dew cans in the garden for realism which was funny with our brand of humor .... and I'm pretty sure Paul thought it funny also.

Honey Bee Garden a work in progress

I posted in a local plant and seed swap facebook page that we would trade honey for flowers to build up the honey bee garden area.  And we already had someone come out with some passion fruit vines and had a couple other offers. 

Cool Bees

I debated whether the title should be Cool Bees or Spoiled Bees.  You could say they're both.  Today we went to the nursery and picked up a couple plants to make a natural barrier between the apiary and the garden / shed area.  Most of the plants we got were very popular with honey bees at the nursery.

cool bees

new palm

Even though it was 94 degrees, we both spent a few hours planting and watering.  Also brought a large bunch of Hawaiian plumeria plant cuttings that were crowding the walkway at home.   After planting, everything was watered and looking good.   We even picked up some milkweed for the butterflies.

The bee hives were nice and shaded under their new structure and fortunately there were no guard bees with an attitude buzzing us while we gardened.

Settling in

Woke up early and drove out to the Bee Farm to check on the new arrivals.  It was nice to see them all settled down and adapting to their new home.   Worth the effort.  The honeybee garden was loaded with buzzing bees.  A beautiful Florida morning.

New arrivals (right)

Honey Bee Sunday Garden Brunch

Today the bees were enjoying a nice Sunday brunch at the honey bee garden cafe behind their hive.  Plenty of sunflowers to pick from as well as gladiolas and other delicacies.  It looks pretty and there's something highly therapeutic about watching plants you grew from seeds transform into beautiful plants.

Beans !

New palm trees are doing well and the vegetable garden has it's share of wins as well as a few losses which are to be expected.  Beans are growing like a bean as they say.

The other advantage of the bee garden is it benefits butterflies and native bees as well as honey bees.  We can't forget about these important pollinators which are also very important to our environment.

Honey bee garden

bees on sunflowers

Honey bees enjoying sunflowers

honey bee garden

The smell of bees and honey

An unexpected benefit of beekeeping is that occasional smell of honey from the hive. A little puff of wind or slight breeze is all it takes and if you're lucky enough to be downwind, you're in for a treat.  They are bringing in the nectar now and filling up comb.

Today I went to a friends who also has a couple beehives.  His wife and him manage the hives together and so I was able to be there when they opened up the hives this weekend.  There was a lot of anticipation because when they split the hives a few weeks ago, the one queen died.  So they had to wait while the bees created a new queen from existing brood.  And they were pleasantly surprised that both boxes had a fresh young queen.  Unfortunately the boxes had way too many hive beetles.  We manually killed at least 20 of them.  Maybe more.

I still need to get the new home ready for the last swarm.  Maybe tomorrow.