Bait Hives

    I arrived home on Saturday afternoon after being gone for a week. I was visiting one of my daughters, who lives in Forest Grove, Oregon.  The reason for the trip was to participate in a 5 day Mormon pioneer handcart trek.  The purpose of the handcart trek is to help the youth have a greater appreciation of sacrifices made by their ancestors.  Any experience that helps a teenager develop gratitude is pretty valuable in my opinion.  I had hoped to attend the Northwest District Beekeepers Association picnic when I got home, but I arrived later than I expected. Also I had visiting grand children, I discussed the matter briefly with Linda and it was readily apparent that I needed to stick around. I hope the picnic was a big success, especially the bee beard contest.

    On Saturday evening, just as my son James and his wife were preparing to leave, I noticed a big cloud of bees in the immediate vicinity of my hives. I initially thought one of my hives were swarming and I went to investigate. As it turns out, it wasn't a swarm leaving, but a swarm arriving.  As I got closer I saw that the bees were gathering on the front of a stack of deeps I had sitting on a double hive stand in my apiary. Since the bees were clustering on boxes that I knew were previously empty I realized it was an arrival, not a departure.  I thought it was kind of strange to see a swarm leaving at 7:00 p.m. as swarms usually leave the hive in the early afternoon.  I gave the bees a few days to settle in, then did a little hive exam on Monday, July 16, 2012.  The bees were occupying all of the bottom deep and filled five frames in the second deep so it was a pretty good sized swarm.  The third or top deep had no frames. I was lucky the bees hadn't decided to move right up to the top box and start building comb attached to the lid. I added a few frames to fill out the second box and got rid of the empty third deep. It was the easiest swarm I ever captured.

     Normally I would feed a newly captured swarm, but we are in the middle of the blackberry nectar flow. The bees would probably turn up their noses (actually antennas) at any sugar syrup I offered them. Instead, I will just monitor how they are doing.  If they don't manage to gather enough honey over the next six weeks to get them through the winter I will either merge them with another hive or feed them like crazy in early September.

    I think its always a good idea to have an empty bait hive or a bait box in the vicinity of the apiary. Sometimes we get lucky and a swarm just shows up.  At other times one of our hives may swarm when we aren't there to recover them. The ultimate bait hive guru is Thomas Seeley, the author of "Honeybee Democracy". He has spent his entire adult life studying swarm behavior and specifically what the bees are looking for in a new residence. Apparently, the minimum size of a cavity that the bees will accept is 16 liters.  If you don't have enough extra boxes to set up a bait hive, a swarm trap can be cheaply assembled from a couple of large peat pots, a few drywall screws, and a couple of sticks. The drywall screws are used to attach the two peat pots together, while the sticks provide a means to attach the swarm trap at an appropriate height in a tree. Ready made swarm traps can also be found in many bee supply catalogs.

    While I was checking up on the newly arrived swarm, I also checked on my other hives. Most were in pretty good shape, but a few needed another honey super.  It looks like we are finally having a good blackberry nectar flow.

   

Observation Hive Update

Our Observation Hive is Back.

   I put a new colony of bees into our observation hive today.  It was an awkward day to do it as it was a rather cool day.  I had to wait until 2:00 p.m. for the temperature to get up to just 58 degrees.  I would have preferred a warmer day but I didn't want to leave the bees confined in their hive until the following day.   I love having the bees in the shop and they are a big hit with the customers.  I just have to exercise some self discipline and limit the time I spend watching the bees..

Note the newly installed connecting comb in the center of the photo

   The colony came from one of my earlier queen banks and consisted of a little more than 5 frames of bees.  I put four frames of bees in the observation portion of the hive and the rest of the bees went into the lower portion.  The bees seemed to acclimate to their new home quickly and found both the feeder and the exit to the outdoors.  I took some photos several hours later and found the bees had already made some connecting comb to attach one of the frames to the window of the observation hive.

Note the open brood visible between the bees.

   The observation hive currently has two frames of capped brood and two frames of empty drawn comb.  Two of the frames in the lower unit are drawn, but the other eight frames are just foundation.  The weather will change dramatically starting tomorrow.  The fourth of July is expected to be in the high sixties.  After that the temperature climbs into the high seventies and low eighties.  That should cause the blackberry nectar flow to take off.  It will be interesting to watch and see how fast the population of the observation hive will grow with the emergence of the capped brood and the start of a serious honey flow. I put a jar of sugar syrup in the feeder but I don't expect to have to feed them much after that jar of syrup is gone.

    I took these photos with my iPhone. I was surprised that they turned out that well. I am going to have to figure out how to disable the flash.

 
 

Thimble Berries and Salmon Berries

    Both thimble berries and salmon berries are in the Rubus family and are thus cousins of the raspberries.  We have a lot of salmon berries in western Washington and a lesser amount of thimble berries. While there are a lot of salmon berries in my neighborhood,  I've never seen my bees pay much attention to them. Neither have I noticed large quantities of nectar coming into the hives when the salmon berries are in bloom. This is something I certainly would notice as the salmon berries bloom at a time when I am always feeding my bees lots of sugar syrup.

Thimble berry blossoms

     I wasn't aware of any significant patches of thimble berries in my neighborhood until recently.  This past week I noticed a patch of big white blossoms a little more than a quarter mile from my house.  The thimbleberries really stood out because the surrounding blackberries weren't blooming yet.  Then the following day I found another thimble berry patch about a quarter mile to the north,  The first time I only noticed bumble bees working the blossoms but the temperature was only 52 degrees.  Today I looked at the thimble berries when it was 72 degrees and again I only saw bumble bees working the blossoms.  That may be the reason thimble berries didn't make it into the plant section in Honey Plants of North America.  I would expect my bees to find any plant within a half mile that was a good nectar source.

     Thimble berries actually have a pretty good flavor, but an unfortunate mealy texture.  I've often thought they would make a wonderful jelly, but its hard to find a sufficient quantity in one place to make it worth the trouble to gather them. If anyone ever gives me a gift of thimble berry jelly I will know they put an awful lot of work into the gift.

Feeding the Bees

   Over the course of a week at the Beez Neez Apiary Supply Quentin and I spend a fair amount of time on the phone answering the questions of beginning beekeepers.  This past week (the first week of June) the most common question pertained to why their bees seemed sluggish and were clustered at the entrance of the hive.  This is actually a pretty easy problem to diagnosis. Our response was usually something along the line of, "When did you stop feeding your bees?"  In western Washington most rural beekeepers experience a serious nectar dearth following the bloom of the Big Leaf Maple trees in late April and early May.  This dearth or lack of nectar sources usually continues until the Himalaya Blackberries start to bloom.  This can vary from mid June until early July, depending on the weather of a given year and the exact location of the bees.  The Puget Sound area has lots of different micro climates.  This is further complicated by the fact that some urban beekeepers benefit from some good nectar sources among their neighborhood landscape plants. However, this time of year can be pretty slim pickings for most rural beehives.

   My advice is to never assume that you can stop feeding your bees based on some arbitrary date on the calendar.  There is no substitute for looking in the hive and thus ensuring that your bees have an adequate food supply stored in their combs.  You cannot rely on someone else's experience with their hives as they  are usually not in your same location.  Their hives may indeed have adequate stores sufficient to last them through to the start of the blackberry nectar flow.  Their hives may well have benefited from nectar sources your hives did not have.   The safe thing to do is to just plan on continuing to feed the bees until you notice that they have either stopped taking the syrup or you can see that they have accumulated significant stores of nectar.  Even if you are able to stop feeding for a time, the food supplies of your colonies will still need to be closely monitored until the blackberries start to bloom.  Assessing a colony's food stores is one of those things you are supposed to be doing whenever you open up a beehive and look at the frames.

    If you find yourself in the awkward position of having a colony on the verge of starvation, you may need to sprinkle a little sugar syrup directly on the bees. If they are sluggish due to starvation, they may be too far gone to access the feeder. Oftentimes a light misting with sugar syrup will help them regain their vigor more quickly.

    I think many beekeepers have had the unfortunate experience of having a hive or two starve out in the late spring. I know that I have.  As a consequence I suffered a fair amount of guilt and barely managed to get through the experience without going to counseling.  Ever since then I have been much more careful in monitoring the food supplies of my colonies in the spring.

Humble Bumbles

   I was looking at my blueberries early this morning to see if we had good fruit set when I noticed several  bumble bees, each just hanging onto a blossom.  Apparently they had been working late, were stranded by the rain or cold, and had spent the night clinging to a blossom.  I suppose it is also possible they had been stranded by an early morning rain storm.  When I took this photo there were other bumblebees busily working the blueberry blossoms.  I really have to admire the grit of the bumble bees.  They start really early in the morning and they work until its almost black dark. I wish we had honeybees that were so well adapted to our cool maritime climate.  The beehive in the background of the photo is my modified Warre hive.  I took a photo of the entrance of the Warre hive just after taking this photo and there was no activity at all.

Note the bumble bee in the center of the photo

Modified Warre Hive with no activity at the entrance 

    We have a huge rhododendron tree in our front yard.  I say tree because it is larger than some semi-dwarf fruit trees.  In late May and early June its covered with lavender pink blossoms and it is alive with bumble bees. With all of the bumble bees working the blossoms the plant is much louder than my little apiary of 10 honeybee hives. That buzz is already going strong when I go outside at 6:00 a.m. and continues past dusk. Bumble bees certainly can't be accused of working banker's hours. I've often watched the bumble bees working the blossoms, but I have only noticed a honeybee on the rhododendron once.  I'm assuming the structure of the flower or the nectaries is probably such that the honeybees have difficulty working the blossoms.

     It looks like our himalaya blackberries are getting close to blooming.  That is probably a consequence of our relatively warm weather in May.  I think we had close to ten seventy degree days scattered throughout the month.  I've lived in Snohomish since 1993 and I can't recall ever having seen that much warm weather in May.  I pay very close attention to the 70 degree mark as that is the magic point at which it is warm enough for queens to take mating flights. Now that we're into June the weather patterns seem to be more normal. Normal spring weather for us consists of highs in the mid to low sixties with a fair amount of rain showers, chance of showers, and chance of rain.  Now I'm concerned that the blackberries will bloom several weeks before the weather will be warm enough for a good nectar flow. Himalaya blackberries seem to be very temperature sensitive where nectar production is concerned.  At seventy and sunny they produce nectar profusely, At lower temperatures they seem to be a non-event for the bees.

Himalaya Blackberries on the verge of the bloom

Evergreen Blackberry with its deeply cut leaves.
Note the Himalaya blackberry leaves in the center of the photo.

Wild Cucumber

   As a beekeeper it is hard to avoid becoming an amateur botanist. I can't help but take an interest in any new plant that the girls find interesting.  I learned a new one the other day as my friend Quentin and I saw honeybees working small white blossoms on an unknown climbing vine.  Friendly bystanders identified the plant as a wild cucumber.  I had not noticed this plant near my house, but there appeared to be a lot of it growing in Quentin's neighborhood.

Note the cucumber-like fruit forming in the upper center of the photo

I believe this to be wild cucumber

    When I got home I quickly consulted my copy of Honey Plants of North America by John H. Lovell.  I found two short paragraphs on page 234 and a black and white photograph on page 235.   I learned its scientific name is Echinocystis lobata and that it grows wild along rivers from New England to Texas.  The black and white photo was sufficient for me to be confident that I had the right plant. This in spite of the fact that the book failed to mention wild cucumber's presence in the Pacific Northwest.  Wild cucumber is reported to yield a light amber honey of good quality in the bottom lands of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.  This would explain wild cucumber's presence in Quentin's neighborhood as he lives near a river while I do not.

   This book is an excellent resource for the serious beekeeper,  who just has to identify any plants his bees are working.  The only serious shortcomings in the book's usefulness are the fact that it was published in 1926 and the lack of good quality color photographs.  The book has since been republished, but not updated. The book is divided into two sections.  In the first section, honey plants are listed alphabetically. The second section of the book has an overview for each of the lower 48 states.  Actually, at the time the book was originally published, Alaska and Hawaii were still territories.  At the present time the Himalaya Blackberry is the most significant honey plant in Western Washington.  This is a non-native invasive species which escaped into the wild from Luther Burbank's plant breeding program.  In Lovell's book there is no mention of the Himalaya Blackberry in the plant section and no mention of any blackberries as a significant nectar source in Western Washington.  That is because in 1926 there were no Himalaya Blackberries in Western Washington.  There is also no mention of Japanese Knotweed, but I assume in 1926 it had either not yet been imported or not yet escaped to the wild. The book does mention Fireweed, the native Oregon Maple (Big Leaf Maple) and Vine Maple as significant honey plants in Western Washington.

Candle Classes at the Beez Neez

   I had my first candle class of the season this past Thursday.  We're going to do candle classes on most Thursday eveings in November and December. I only had two students at my first class but that wasn't a bad thing.  I actually need to dip candles and pour candles for the store which is easier to do if all of the candle classes aren't full to the brim.  I also had some minor technical difficulties in keeping the dip tank supplied with liquid beeswax.  As a consequence the class ran later than usual and it was past 10:30 p.m. when we finished.  However, I now have a good stock of hand dipped tapers for the store and I've gotten the kinks out and found everything I need for the candle classes.

  I really love to dip and pour candles. Pure beeswax gives off a heavenly aroma so the entire shop smells wonderful when we dip candles. For me dipping candles it is one of life's simple pleasures. Its hard to believe that in colonial days dipping candles was a job often relegated to children.  I suspect the real reason it was often a "kid job" was due to the fact that they were usually dipping tallow candles (not exactly a wonderful aroma).    I think hand dipped beeswax tapers are the ultimate for homemade Christmas gifts.  Combined with some honey it truely is the gift of "sweetness and light".

   On the subject of sweetness and light, that line comes from a Jonathan Swift quote. "We have chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax; thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light."  I purchased a book by that title a few weeks ago at the state bee convention. The full title is "Sweetness and Light, The Mysterious History of the Honeybee", written by Hattie Ellis. I had  been wanting to read it for some time and one of the venders at the convention had it on sale. I'll have to do a book review for the blog after I've read it.

   We have an observation hive set up in the front window of the Beez Neez Apiary Supply. It has four frames and a swivel base. This makes it easy to rotate it from one side to the other and accomodate the customers asking "Where is the queen?" As luck would have it the queen is usually on the opposite side of the hive when that question is asked. She is marked with a big white dot on her thorax so finding the queen isn't difficult. The observation hive is a big hit with the customers regardless whether they are beekeepers or merely purchasing honey.

   I purchased the observation hive through the internet.  I won't pass on the manufacturer's name as I wasn't impressed with his woodworking skills. I expected better quality for the price I paid.  I really like the general design but it had one very serious flaw.  It had no door.  You couldn't put bees in or take bees out without removing the top and sliding out the glass from one of the sides.  To describe this lack of a door as merely inconvenient is a gross understatement. Quentin, my woodworking mentor, assisted me in making a door.  I then mounted the swiveling base onto a migratory lid and two deep hive bodies. There are ten frames available for the bees to use in the first deep box while I installed a cleanout drawer in the lower  deep. The whole apparatus sits on a dolly with wheels so I can wheel it outside when I need to do some work with the bees.

    There is a way for the bees to get outdoors by means of a plastic tube (1.5 inch diameter) that leads from the upper deep hive body over to the window sill and up the window to a board with a hole to the outside.  There is also a "T" junction that leads over to a feeding station. We removed the upper window and replaced it with the board with the exit hole.  This summer we added a small pollen trap to the exit, not with the idea of trapping pollen but to give the bees a landing board. It all seems to be working pretty well right now.

   We are on our third batch of bees in the observation hive. The current colony is ruled by the benevalent Elise the First. They are from one of our many queen banks we did this summer.  I released the last remaining queen into this particular queen bank making it a two frame nuc colony. I installed them into the observation hive in mid August. Elise went right to work and within a few weeks we had two frames of capped brood. At that point they had all the brood they could care for so Elise had to slow down for a few weeks until new nurse bees started to emerge.  The colony increased to three frames of brood before the queen began to reduce her laying due to the changing season. At present, they have less than a half frame of capped brood and within a month they will probably have no brood at all.

   I pulled the observation hive outside this past Saturday. It was a somewhat sunny day and I needed to find out what was going on in the deep hive body immediately below the observation hive. I was curious as to whether the bees had drawn out any of the frames and whether they had stored any honey or pollen below. I had also seen some wax moth show up on the bottom slideout board.  I was surprized to learn that the bees had not drawn out any of the lower frames. The wax  moths weren't breeding in the lower combs at all, but rather they were breeding in the pile of dead bees in the screened cleanout drawer in the bottom deep box.(Note to self, check the cleanout drawer more frequently) I was also surprized to find about two frames of bees congregating on undrawn frames in the deep hive body.  At least I have a good idea as to the current population of the hive (five frames of bees) and know they have no stored honey or pollen other than what is visible in the observation hive.

   Here I am on a lovely vacation with family at Disneyland.  Linda and I are vacationing with my son James, his sweet wife Beth, and their lovely children, Britton, Lucy, and John.  Disneyland is so much more fun with grandchildren.  I am extremely grateful to my righthand man, Quentin. Without him minding the Beez Neez in my absence, I couldn't take a vacation like this.

   I actually saw live honeybees at Disney's California Adventure a few days ago.  We were waiting for grandchildren near the Monster's, Inc. activity when I noticed honeybees collecting nectar from some heather in the landscaping.  I couldn't help but wonder where these bees came from to find these heather plants in downtown Anaheim.  I suppose its possible that Disneyland has their own beehives to pollinate their landscape plants but I don't think that is very likely.  Maybe somebody living in a nearby condo or apartment has a beehive on their balcony. Possibly the bees are from a wild colony in some building or hollow tree. It is an intriguing mystery that will remain unsolved for the present.

   Yesterday we drove down to San Diego to visit my niece, Alicia.  Once again I found honeybees all around.  There were honeybees on the trumpet vine in Alicia's backyard.  Then we took the children to Balboa Park and found more honeybees.  The park has a lot of wonderful old trees that are just starting to come into bloom. I think they are Acacia trees. The blossoms were covered by bees, diligently looking for the few blossoms that were open. I have to admit that I was a little jealous.  Here they have a significant nectar flow just starting with 75 degree weather. Meanwhile, back in Snohomish, we are feeding our bees trying to get them ready for winter.

   We maintain a succession of queen banks at the bee store from mid April through mid August.  It is simply a small queenless hive with lots of young nurse bees to take good care of the queens until such time as they are sold.  I use five frame nuc boxes for my queen banks.  I simply pull out two frames of capped brood from one of my hives at home for each queen bank.  The capped brood will emerge over the next twelve days and provide a continuous supply of young nurse bees.  When I get down to the last queen I usually allow the bees in the queen bank to release her.  I can use these released queens to either requeen one of my colonies at home or to supply a small colony for the observation hive in the shop. Besides I think it is a good idea for me to use some of the queens that I sell simply for quality control.

   When we receive a new shipment of queens they come in what is called a battery box.  That is about 50 queens in their individual cages with about a half a pound of loose bees inside the box to care for them.  When they arrive I have to transfer the queens to the queen bank.  The queens usually come in what is called a California mini cage. Each cage has a hard plastic tube filled with fondant which acts as the release mechanism when the queens are installed in a new hive.  Since we don't want any of them released prematurely I have some modified frames that queen cages are placed into which don't allow the bees to access the fondant.  I place one frame of queens on either side of the two fraames of capped brood in the nuc box and then add the loose bees from the battery box.  In order to minimize fighting between the two groups of bees I spray them all down with a strongly scented sugar syrup to make it more difficult for them to tell friend from foe.   The scented sugar syrup is pretty important. I omitted it once and ended up with a significant pile of dead bees in front of the queen bank.

    When I make up a new queen bank I am always very careful to try to avoid using frames with any eggs lest the bees start raising their own queens.  However, the eggs are so very small and it is very easy to miss them if there are only a few eggs on the frame.  This happened with me on my last queen bank. Since I am often somewhat busy when I have to get into the queen bank I don't always check the two frames of brood as often as I should. The queen bank had been in use for about a week before I noticed that we had a few queen cells in progress.

    A loose queen in the queen bank is a serious problem as she will immediately start killing the caged queens.  Once I had a queen escape while I was marking her.  I thought she had simply flown away, but darn if she didn't find her way back into the queen bank twenty feet away. I lost several hundred dollars worth of queen bees before I discovered that I had a loose queen in the queen bank.  Since then I have used a queen muff when marking queens so they are better contained.

   Normally I would scrape off any queen cells I found in a queen bank, but I decided to try something different this time.  I made up two "press on" cages using number eight hardware cloth and used the cages to confine the queen cells.   One cage didn't seem to stay in place very well so I did end up removing two of the queen cells.  The other cage worked as intended and I was able to remove a virgin queen about a week later.  I marked the queen, put her into a queen cage clearly marked "Virgin Queen" and gave her to a friend.

   The following photos show me removing a frame of queens from a queen bank and holding it up so you can see what I'm talking about.  Our immediate next door neighbors at the bee store are plumbers who fortunately are gone most of the time.  They have been pretty patient about the small bee hive in fromt of the store.  The honey customers usually aren't beekeepers so some of them will get a little nervous about the bees out front.  However, I simply remind them that it is a bee store after all.

   

    The last serious nectar flow we have in western Washington is Japanese Knotweed. I will start out by catagorically stating that this is a non-native invasive species and nothing in this blog should be construed to encourage anybody to plant or cultivate Japanese Knotweed. That having been said, it is a dynamite honey plant and produces the best dark honey I have ever tasted.  As a general rule dark honeys are more strongly flavored than light honeys. They are also reputed to be more healthy as they have more anti-oxidants than light honeys. However, many dark honeys have strong unpleasant  aftertastes. Buckwheat and Western Sumac are both good examples of this general trait of dark honeys. Some people have grown up with honeys such as this and describe the light honeys as lacking in flavor. I, on the other hand, do not care for the "funky' flavors of many of the dark honeys. If the only honey I have on hand is buckwheat honey, as far as I'm concerned I am out of honey.  Japanese Knotweed honey is a notable exception among the dark honeys. While it is strongly flavored, no aspect of the flavor can be described as unpleasant or odd. Knotweed honey has a strong and loyal following among the Beez Neez customers.

    Japanese Knotweed is a tall plant, growing to about six or seven feet tall,  with large heartshaped leaves. It has a jointed stalk which has led it to be called beautiful bamboo.  It is not a bamboo but is actually a member of the buckwheat family.  It produces a massive amount of roots which make it very difficult to eradicate. It is like the mythical hydra when you try to pull out the roots. Every little broken piece of rizome can start a new plant.  It readily colonizes along streams and rivers can can be found in many other places in our damp climate.  When it blooms it produces a mass of wispy upright white flower clusters  It was originally introduced into the United States as an ornamental, but it quickly escaped to the wild and has become a significant problem plant in many parts of the country.

     The nectar flow from Japanese Knotweed starts in mid August and lasts through mid or late September.  This makes it somewhat of a challenge to harvest knotweed honey as this is the exact time that many beekepers are doing fall medications. I know of one sideline beekeeper who charges a premium for his knotweed honey due to the disruption it causes to his normal management scheme to harvest it.  While the plant is fairly widespread along the river systems and not uncommon in other places, not every beehive will produce knotweed honey. My beehives are only a mile away from the Pilchuck River which has lots of knotweed growing along its banks.  That seems to be far enough away such that most of my beehives don't produce a significant amount of knotweed honey.  Mainly the bees use it to backfill areas of the broodnest as the broodnest shrinks in the late summer and early fall. I'm assuming my bees might produce more knotweed honey if I lived a little closer to the river.

   The above photos of Japanese Knotweed were taken today (August 14) along the bank of the Pilchuck River, just north of Snohomish.  The flower clusters are just starting to open and the bees have just begun to show an interest in the blooms. If anyone has an interest in learning more about Japanese Knotweed the local county weed control board is usually a good source of information.

       I intend to use this blog to write about beekeeping here in beautiful wet western Washington. I thought I would start out by dedicating some space to various Northwest honey plants.  When I talk to new beekeepers about the various nectar flows I often get a "deer in the headlights" response as I rattle off names like Japanese Knotweed or Fireweed.  I have to remind myself that not every beekeeper starts out as a serious plant geek.  I was a plant geek before I was a beekeeper, but I'm even more into plants now that I've had bees for over ten years.  Every time I find a plant with bees all over it I can't rest until I find out what it is.

    On my way to work this morning I drove by this lovely patch of fireweed and I had to stop and take a few photos.  Our local fireweed honey is one of my favorites, but the fireweed honey we get in western Washington is rarely pure fireweed honey.  There is another honey plant called pearly everlasting whose bloom overlaps the fireweed.  Pearly everlasting is a sort of white strawflower that grows up in the mountains and foothills where the fireweed grows profusely.  Pure fireweed honey is very light colored and would normally be classed as extra water white on a honey grading scale.  Pearly everlasting produces a much darker honey such that even a rather small percentage of pearly everlasting honey mixed with the fireweed darkens the honey significantly.  Thus the fireweed honey produced in western Washington is often darker than fireweed from other locales and can vary a bit from year to year in color and flavor.

    This is mostly information I have gleaned from several commercial beekeepers who put their bees in the fireweed every year.  I have never taken my bees to the mountains and we do not have sufficient quantities of fireweed growing here in the lowlands to produce fireweed honey.  What small amount of fireweed honey my bees gather is usually lost in an ocean of blackberry nectar. That being said, I still love to watch the bees working on fireweed  blossoms and I have tried to protect it even when it has sprung up in inconvenient locations in our gardens. My wife Linda is less enamoured with the fireweed. She finally lost patience with me this past spring and ripped up most of the fireweed growing in our garden. Based on her description of that task it appears that fireweed has a pretty extensive root system.

   My daughter, Rachel, left our beekeeping supply store last year and moved to Oregon. I had to either take on an employee or go crazy being shackled to the bee store all of the time.  I hired my good friend Quentin this past January and it has worked out very well for me.  I hope it is working out as well for him. He is very good when it comes to woodworking or mechanical things which are very useful skills to have around the bee store. Quentin has also been a very quick study with the bees and I consider hiim to be a fairly knowledgeable beekeeper at this point.  He has really taken to the honey and is now a serious honey snob.  His absolute favorite honey is our local fireweed.  He is positively evangelical when it comes to educating the public about our wonderful local honeys and he is especially delighted when a customer decides that they like the fireweed best.  I'm hoping he doesn't suffer a serious crisis of faith if this year's fireweed honey tastes a little different from last year's fireweed.