How to attract Bumblebees to your garden

According to Hinterland Who's Who Bumblebees are native to North America (unlike honey bees which did not exist here until Colonists brought them over). They are large and fuzzy, and non-aggressive, unless you disturb their nest or swat at them (or step on them). Their stinger isn't barbed, unlike the honey bee, so they can sting multiple times if they need to. The drones (males) do not have a stinger at all. Bumblebees see in UV light so they are more attracted to blue and purple flowers, but they will happily feed off of any flowers they find.

Only 45 species of bumblebees are social, meaning that they live in hives of up to 200 individuals, whereas honeybees have colonies of up to 40,000. Bumblebees make very little honey as all but the new queens die off over the winter. They usually nest underground in abandoned rodent burrows, and they can be found in sub-Arctic to sub-Tropical climates.

My Love/Hate Affair with Weaving

This picture (above) is my latest project. I'm trading handwoven fabric for seamstress-ing. I am not very good at sewing, and my daughter will only come to medieval events with me if a) there is archery, and b) she can wear an Italian Ren dress. Archery is easy. We have the supplies and lots of events have the opportunity. However. I cannot sew. Working flat and trying to imagine 3D is pretty much impossible for my brain. If I had a dress dummy I could drape it, but alas. So, enough 18" wide twill to make a Norse apron dress here we go!

I love the repetitive action of weaving. It's very meditative. I find it difficult to weave in the summer, but in the winter I love it. I'm also a total dork, and I like to put on the Lord of the Rings movies (not the Hobbit- those movies were designed to sell video games and toys, especially the first one), and sit there and pretend I'm an elf. I have to say that the new tv series which has been announced is like Schrodinger's Catastrophe... Anyways.

Bee roundup for this year

Beekeeping has a very steep learning curve, and not a lot of leeway for errors. So far going into winter my own hive seems strong-ish, and the one that I'm looking after for a friend is dead. Getting a sneaky walking pneumonia for a month and a half really put a spanner in the works, and probably killed the second hive. Welp, at least my friend will be getting honey from his first year's investment. We can buy a box of bees in the spring and just install them into a hive that is full of drawn comb (ie. full of the wax cells arranged on frames and ready to go). He has a flow hive, so that's going to be interesting to see.

I finally got my own bees wrapped up for the winter and a mite treatment on them a few weeks ago. I also put some loose sugar sandwiched between sheets of newspaper. I tried making a solid candy block, but I did something wrong and it was quite liquid even when dry. Something to try again for next year. Maybe I didn't leave it on the heat long enough, or I didn't use the hand blender long enough to put in adequate air bubbles.I did use my cheese thermometer, which doesn't quite measure high enough, so perhaps it didn't hit the right temperature. I'd never tried candy before, so it's a bit of a mystery to me.

When I put the mouse guard on the front they started coming out at me, so that feisty-ness is a bit encouraging. I knew they wouldn't like the hammering on their hive so I saved that for last on purpose. Good thing, too. Despite the cold they were out for blood! I got out of there before they could sting me. May they stay feisty and alive through the next long months. And then promptly calm down and become docile again in the spring.

I can always hope...

So, I got 2kg of half-finished honey out of my own bees when I took out a frame to keep them from getting honey bound earlier in the summer, and I'll get 1/3 of my friend's honey when I go in there this week and remove and spin out the frames. I don't know how much that will be, but I'm hopeful. And so are some of my friends who have a standing order for honey, too, I'm sure.

I will make mead, darnit. I will. I have everything now except the honey.

Birds, feeders and the garden

My Dad loves feeding birds. He spends a lot of money every winter buying enormous bags of bird seed. And the birds love him, too. He has quite a few visiting his feeders for most of the year (he stops feeding them in May and starts up again in September). He loves to look after them, providing cover for them to hide in by planting bushes and native plants, and going out to shovel areas for the ground feeders if the weather is bad. It gives him a sense of purpose.

However.