Welcome to the Bee Temple! This past weekend I finally readied the hive for winter, by adding straw bales to the north and west sides (which are in shade) and placing two bales on top. Insulation for winter. I went by intuition on the placement… It might be my imagination, but the bees have seemed far more active since I did this. I interpret this to mean that they are cozier at night, and need less time to warm up and get to work in the morning.

Artemis, who normally sits atop the hive, has been relocated to the front entrance. She’s the greeter, now.

In early October I had to kill my original queen – she’d stopped laying eggs, which is really bad news. My hive had honey, but without a fertile queen to make babies, it didn’t matter. My ever-generous mentor, Jessie Brown, shared a tiny trap-out colony, which had a newly fertilized queen but no honey stores for the winter. So we merged them, after smashing my queen. (Yes, it was stressful.) Carnage ensued – lots of dead bees – but within three days my hive had accepted the new queen and her remaining workers, and the newly merged colonies had cleaned a pile o’ corpses out of the hive. There were eggs and larvae and I saw the queen moving about with purpose, as if she’d owned the place for years.

Here’s hoping the girls can hold it together through a La Nina winter!

These images are from my exhibit with David Ondrik, Homebodies, at Harwood Art Center. We’re in the small gallery, an intimate space for this contemplative show about the pleasures of home… and beekeeping! Titles: Grandmother Circle, Twelve Bar Winter, Honeymoon (all 2011), Inside Night (2010).

I noticed that the bees seemed to be chewing on their duct-taped entrance, and peeled it back to discover that they had chewed A LOT of the duct tape up. I can’t imagine that glue is going to be good for the gals, so I decided it was time for something a little more permanent: basswood.

They are chewing on that, too. I can hear them chewing, and see them scraping flecks of basswood off their tiny, heart-shaped faces. But I figure chewing on basswood is better than chewing on duct tape. And it looks spiffier, too.

Here’s the first bee to emerge from the hive, after I affixed the new decor with a battery-powered drill:

The bees seemed to take my intrusion with grace. No angry buzzes ~ I like to think they knew basswood was an improvement over the duct tape.

It’s been kind of a crazy summer, which I won’t even begin to go into, but now this: ROBBER BEES.

As a brand-new beekeeper, flying by the seat of my pants with the help of my mentor, Jessie “Bee” Brown, I’ve experienced more emotions than I thought a beekeeper would: joy (bees make honey), wonder (baby bee eats her way out of her cocoon), disgust (wax moth larvae), terror (my initiation sting), and some despair (comb breaking off its top bar, and dealing with that mess).

I’ve loved coming up with creative solutions to small problems, and find the beekeeping community to be eccentric and charming, with a definite DIY approach.

But the fact is that every time I start to feel like maybe this bee thing isn’t too hard, something totally unexpected knocks me on my butt.

Enter the robber bees. When I called Jessie to tell her that the bees were acting strangely, it took her about 5 seconds to diagnose the problem. “You gotta get in there and close down the entrance!” Which sounded like a whole lot of fun, since there were a bazillion cranky bees milling about the hive, looking for trouble.

The duct tape is my half-assed but functional attempt to reduce the entrance to my top bar hive, so the robber bees can’t get in. Now the bees who live there have to use three individual bee-size holes on three different sides of the hive, rather than the big family-style entrance.

I removed the tape after the first invasion ended, but two days later the marauders were back, so I think I’m just going to leave that sucker taped up until it’s cold?

Dorked-out bee bliss

from the internet, not "my" owl

Continuing with the bird theme…

The past two years, I have noticed an owl that appears in our neighborhood in the very early spring. I became aware of the owl because I heard it call in the night; I’ve never actually seen it. Three nights ago I was reading in bed when I heard the call, and I smiled to myself. You, again!

This morning I decided to find out who was calling. I started by searching the calls of small owls that live in New Mexico, because two years ago David saw a little owl on our alley fence … and I assumed it was the same guy. But none of those calls matched. Finally, I listened to the last owl-of-New-Mexico on the list, the Great Horned Owl, sure that the gentle cooing I’d heard could not possibly be that giant bird.

Yep. There’s a big old owl in the ‘hood, folks. Lock up your cats. You can hear the call, here. I’m awfully pleased to have this urban bird, hanging out…

Flicker

“The Wish to Be Generous” is a wonderful poem by Wendell Berry, a fine Kentuckian, who writes about land, farming, and life, among other things. I came across this particular poem in my Los Poblanos CSA newsletter, back in December.

I am honored to be participating in a very generous project initiated by artist Patricia Malcolm. In her words, this is: “… an invitation for you to host one of my Icons of Nature in your home as part of an endeavor to assist in the healing of Mother Earth.” After an amazing show at Albuquerque’s Open Space Visitor’s Center late last year, Pat decided to do something a little different: rather than pack those paintings up and put them in storage, she had the idea of loaning out thirteen of the paintings for a six month period of time. She put names in a hat, and drew out thirteen (one of which was myself). We were then invited to choose a painting and/or creature that spoke to us.

I chose the flicker, a woodpecker that I often see in pairs. In general, I’ve noticed a lot of woodpeckers in the neighborhood this winter, including the Northern Flicker, the Ladder-Backed Woodpecker and (I think) the Downy Woodpecker. I’m not a bird-watcher, per se, but the tapping and knocking has been hard to miss!

Pat’s flicker painting was created in memory of her friend and mentor Mimi, a woman I never met. It’s an honor to have a painting dedicated to a “woman of wisdom” in my home…

grow something good

In 2011, the “art” part of artgardener will take a backseat to the “gardener” half. In addition to being a Master Gardener intern, I am hoping to set a Beaming Bioneers event in motion for Albuquerque. To that end, I’ve started another blog, Beaming Bioneers Albuquerque, at bbabq.wordpress.com.

What new endeavor are you putting your energy into, this year?

fox den

sabbatical noun (circa 1903): a break or change from a normal routine
(as of employment)
synonyms: leave, time off, holiday; see vacation.

Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary
and Webster’s New World Thesaurus