Note

Today the hive only consumed about 3/4 of a quart of syrup. Last night I did a lot of homework, searching beekeeping sites for specifics about how to tell when to stop feeding sugar. Some commercial operations apparently feed all the time, and not just sugar, but corn syrup--even HFCS! No wonder bees are having trouble--imagine the nutritional difference between a diet of high fructose corn syrup and soy flour, and their natural diet of pollen and nectar. Inconceivable!
Anyway, I finally found this great site:
http://www.bushfarms.com/bees.htm
which has clear and basic instructions for beginning beekeepers. According to this information, when the bees think they have sufficient stores, they will start capping the honeycomb, and that's when you know they are ready to be independent. When we opened the hive yesterday, we saw some capping. That plus the lower syrup consumption makes me think we're right on target.

I was going to start a long discussion about pollen tonight, but I'm too tired to get too deep. It was a long day in front of the computer, at work today. One of my customers is dying of lung cancer and I spoke with her this morning, my first call. She had just had a breathing treatment and was calling to check on her special order of herbs. She's undergone two surgeries, and chemo, but even at this late stage, she is trying to avoid taking steroids! Crazy woman...she was delighted just to be able to talk, so she told me a lot of things. She sounded so content, even happy. She said she was just enjoying being able to be at home watching her garden, and she was glad that her last weeks could be this beautiful time of year. What's that quote? "April is the cruelest month..." After that call, which was sad and sacred at the same time, things got mundane and hectic real fast...but back to pollen.
Following the prolonged cold this winter, all the plants are just producing masses of pollen and people are practically dying from hayfever--almost literally in some cases, like my co-worker whose allergies turned to sinus infection which developed into bronchitis. Curiously, I'm not suffering at all, and pollen season has historically been my most at risk time for serious asthma trouble. I'll write more about pollen, and bees, and how to stop being allergic in my next post.