It’s been a crazy time up in my Beethedral this spring. We’ve had very wet weather ever since March, and I hoped that the bees would want to begin swarming from my four over-wintered hives as soon as they got a sunny day. Well, they did. It’s been swarm city here at MillHaven for the…
Hi Friends. While there are many, many places to put a few extra dollars these days (Irma, Harvey, Maria, Mexico…and the list goes on) I have a dream that is very big and that I would like to ask your help with. My bee mentor, Jacqueline Freeman, and I have been invited to attend and…
This past weekend, I remembered that I had a kitchen. It is a fact that escapes me for most of the summer months. Entranced by my garden and all of the precious tiny creatures who visit me in surprising fashion each day, food and cooking is the last thing on my mind from April to…
Michael Joshin Thiele spoke as he always does—softly and deliberately: “How was this for you?” he asked in the most lilting German accent you will ever hear. We circled around him, about fourteen of us hailing from different states and even different countries to attend the first-ever west-coast Sun Hive making class. In front of…
My back lawn is very sad. Most of its lovely green face is beneath mud now, and in other places the grass is drowned beneath rain puddles. This has been a very wet season, a record-rain season I’m told. Carter dropped sheets of old plywood across the yard so we could walk without having our…
Last fall, I did an unconventional thing—which is in itself nothing surprising—and brought a beehive inside. Sophia Hive was very small, and I believed I had nothing to lose bringing her in and placing her in a lovely, large acrylic fish tank outfitted with ventilation holes plus a plastic bee-highway leading to the great outdoors…
A few weeks back, I woke up in the dark, happy and grateful that I’ve managed to carve out two-plus hours of quiet self-time before the day lights up in earnest. I sat with my morning coffee, watching the first gloaming of the morning, realizing that as circumstance would have it, I had no agenda…
These cold mornings, I make it a habit to walk up to my bee yard no matter what the weather and take a peek into the plexiglass viewing windows on each one of my hives. My hives are kept under a shed-type cover and this every-morning hive check is a precious new ritual here at…