Water for the bees...

Beekeeping

I don't think it is any secret that honeybee populations are on the decline worldwide.  Honeybees are useful pollinators and they give us honey!  Planting bee friendly flowers that bloom all spring, summer and autumn is one way to help the bees.  Another thing you can do is to put out a waterer for the bees.  All that flying around makes them thirsty!

Where I live, it gets very dry in the summer.  This little guy was trying to get a drink from our water feature that we have in front of the house.  BTW: the birds just LOVE this water feature and take baths there all the time.

Making a bee waterer is not hard at all.  Just use a very shallow pan and add marbles so that the bees have something to stand on while getting a drink...

I placed my bee waterer in my herb garden where I have herbs and flowers planted.  I see bees coming and going all day.  You will probably have to add water every day because you don't want the water too deep and it will evaporate. quickly when it's super hot. 

In this article, they floated wine corks in a bucket to make a bee waterer.  Here is another article about making a honeybee water garden...possibly a future project!

I went out back last week and looked at the old log where I saw wild honeybees last year.  I waited all spring to see if they would start flying out of there but nothing happened.  Well, it appears that a new group of bees have moved in (it could possibly be some that swarmed out of my own hive).  Anyway, the good news is that I saw honeybees flying in and out of the old log again!  Yeah!  

Then, I turned around and found a dead owl...ouch!  It really freaked me out.  Mostly just scared me because I was NOT expecting that.  I think it was one of the parent owls and not one of the babies.  

I am going to keep this blog post short because I just have like a hundred million things going on now that summer is in full gear!  I have been picking raspberries and I picked wild blackberries last Friday and made jam to take to the Farmer's Market.  Next weekend, we may go in search of huckleberries...

~Denise 

P.S. I should say that on July 14th, it marked 1 year since we signed the paperwork and bought our farm!  So, Happy 1st Anniversary to us!