Reeny's Butterflies, Blooms, & Bees: 4/15/12

How I Got Started

I started Butterfly gardening many years ago. My yard has been a progression over the years, and has made many transformations. Twenty years ago I experienced Hurricane Andrew. My yard and house were destroyed. We decided not to replace the pool screening and open up the backyard and put in some landscaping. That was the official beginning of my love for gardening in South Florida. I added a beautiful water garden years ago, and have been adding host and larvae plants for pollinators, mostly for the butterfly, for as many years as I can remember. I had my yard certified as a Natural Habitat, through the National Wildlife Foundation. To have a natural habitat you need to provide and meet certain requirements: 1. Provide a food source, 2. Provide a water source, 3. Cover, 4. A place to raise young. I try not to use any pesticides in my yard. I vermicompost and recycle as many of my food scraps as possible. If I had more land I would have a huge compost bin to recycle all my yard cuttings. Basically, I try to lessen my carbon footprint on this earth. In my own little world or backyard I try to provide an ecosystem in my water garden, provide birdbaths, birdfeeders, hummingbird nectar sources, feeders, puddling areas, host plants and nectar plants for butterflies and other pollinators. I am hoping to raise everyone’s awareness of the importance of saving our Butterflies, Blooms & Bees. Without them our world and food source will be in trouble. I hope you all enjoy my journey. I am not a Master Gardener, or Master Beekeeper, an Entomologist, or Journalists. I am simply a Backyard Gardener who is trying to lessen her Carbon Footprint of this Earth.

I hope you enjoy my blogs.

Saturday, April 21, 2012

Our Native Butterfly

This is a video of our Native Long Wing Zebra Butterfly. Their larvae have devoured this passion vine. It is so beautiful to sit and watch them as they flutter all around the vine. I hope you enjoy this video.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=3709916630669

Friday, April 20, 2012

Bee Conscious

Interesting article from the Sun Sentinel about the PBC Beekeepers Association

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/community/custom/society/palmbeach/fl-societysl-bees-0411-20120418,0,6439368.story

Afternoon Bee Activity

Check out this video of my bees:

http://s161.photobucket.com/albums/t218/reeny55/?action=view&current=715.mp4

Checking On The Splits Again!

It has been just over a month since I did the original splits. The weather this weekend is going to be very rainy there is a low off the coast of Florida. I am worried that if I don’t get into my hives today I won’t be able to because of the weather. As soon as I went into hive #2 I could tell things didn’t look right. The population was down and most of the bees were towards the front of the hive. I didn’t see any eggs, larvae, or capped brood other than what I had put into the hive on April 7^th. I didn’t see a laying queen but I did see several queen cups and cells on several bars. I gave them another bar of eggs, and brood from hive #3 and hopefully they will continue to do their thing. Hive #1 is another story! I have a laying queen!!!! I was so excited because I found her on bar # 8 and she is laying beautifully. Nature is amazing! To think that the bees are able to raise a queen from any egg that they feed royal jelly, she hatches, goes out on a virgin flight, mates with several drones that are waiting for her in a Drone Concentration Areas (DCA), and returns to the exact hive and starts her life as a Queen bee. Amazing!

The other two hives are looking good as well. The queens were present and their brood pattern looks great and they are growing in size. I forgot to mention that during that process I was able to harvest several bars of honey especially from hive #2. Since the population is down right now they did not need all those bars of honey so I was able to harvest 5 bars total. What a great bonus!! I spent the rest of the day crushing and straining honey. I harvested 14 jars of gorgeous amber honey. After all those stings the honey was sweeter than ever! I think you can also see the difference in the color of the honey. The darker amber honey was older and the lighter honey is newer honey from the spring. I had some labels made and I can’t wait to send my honey to friends and family.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Mason Bees

While I was attending the Bee College there was a class on our Native Bees. I wasn’t able to attend, but now wish I had. Jason Graham gave the class and he is in the process of obtaining his Doctorate from the University of Florida. About 2-3 weeks ago they started a Website called the Native Buzz. http://www.ufnativebuzz.com/index.html . This is a citizen science project, and they are trying to increase the public awareness of the importance of our pollinators. Everyone should be able to get involved. It is not very hard to start a habitat for our native bees. There are plenty of mason bee houses that can be purchased commercially.

I got my house from www.masonbeecondo.com. I also bought ten Japanese Horn faced Mason Bees, from Crown Bees www.crownbees.com. There were 6 females and 4 male cocoons. To provide a proper habitat for native bees they need: pollen, nesting materials wood with holes, reeds, bamboo, and mud. Unlike honeybees the mason bee lays little eggs in holes made from wood, reeds, etc. In the fall you harvest these little cocoons, place them in the refrigerator where there stay dormant until spring. In March when the weather starts to warm you release these mason bees and hopefully they will stay in your yard and pollinate your flowers and trees. Mason bees and native bees are excellent pollinators. They actually are better pollinators than honeybees. Honey bees assume different roles in their six week life. One role is to be a pollen gatherer, and a different role is to gather nectar. As a result, the honey bee enters a flower differently depending on what she is gathering. Each flower visited isn’t necessarily pollinated. Mason bees gather both pollen and nectar in their flower visits.

It is estimated that over 97% of the flowers visited by a mason bee are pollinated. Roughly one foraging female mason bee is equivalent to one hundred foraging honey bees. I had my little hibernating mason bees in the refrigerator for a few days waiting for my mason bee house to arrive. Once I took them out of the refrigerator they became active very quickly. I brought them out to the yard and their habitat and off they flew. I have no idea if they will return to the mason bee house. Hopefully they will be out in my yard pollinating my butterfly garden. If those little mason bees do not return I will hopefully attract our Florida Native Bees to my habitat. I have joined the citizen project through the University of Florida. I hope you get involved this would make a great project for a family with children. One thing I forgot to mention is that mason bees usually don’t sting like a honey bee. So you could attract these little bees to your garden without being afraid of getting stung.

Our butterflies, and bees and other pollinators are in crisis. Without our pollinators our food sources and supplies are in jeopardy. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared “man would have only four years of life left.” If we don’t look after our pollinators eventually of food could vanish.

Scientists are speculating as to the cause of Colony Collapse Disorder. I am sure you are all aware that our bees have been in trouble for many years. Many feel there is a link between pesticides and CCD. There are many articles, news reports, and movies to increase our awareness of the dangers to our pollinators. Two movies that are available to view are “Vanishing of the Bees” and “Queen of the Sun”. Both are great movies and really make you stop and think that we as a global society need to protect our pollinators.

I recently became a Backyard Beekeeper. It was the next progression in my quest to help our pollinators. I decided to take a non traditional approach to beekeeping and have Top Bar Hives (TBH). They have been used in third world countries because they are relatively inexpensive to build. They are a horizontal box with bars that the bees draw out their own comb. This has been difficult because most beekeepers use the traditional Langstroth hives. Managing a TBH as a new beekeepers has been quite a learning experience. Most traditional beekeepers raise their bees on artificial foundation, feed sugar water, and use pesticides to control the Varroa mite that is destroying our bees.

Most traditional beekeepers use large cell (LC) foundation which is approximately 5.4mm instead of a more natural size comb of 4.9mm. The larger the comb the more honey they produce. Over the years this is stressing our bees and making them larger and larger and more susceptible to parasites such as the Varroa mite. My bees are raised in my backyard and neighborhood and are able to forage on a diverse plant variety, instead of many bees that are given just one monoculture i.e. pollination of the almond trees in California. I don’t use any pesticides, fungicides, and raise my bees as organically as possible.