Kitchen Counter Economics Rotating Header Image

bees

You really can love January.. sort of

hivebody2Once you get past THE HOLIDAYS (I think I might want to try to trademark that), it’s easy to just frankly fall apart.

The weather, generally, is dreadful – we’ve had everything from 60 degrees to minus 1F with rain, sleet, snow, and ice. This makes it very difficult to get into the swing of things, weather-wise; it’s difficult to even be able to figure out what to wear on a daily basis. Yesterday, it went from 4 degrees F (heavy slacks and tights/wool socks, turtleneck and wool sweater, heavy winter coat/hat/gloves/boots) to almost 40 in the afternoon (shedding layers, shedding layers). Totally crazy. Today, we were supposed to have sleet and freezing rain – so we planned for indoor activities, which January is a mighty good month for, as long as your activity area is heated or you can do your work all bundled up (see list above). (more…)

Helping out pollinator friends

If you read news accounts on various pesticides and their effects on pollinators and birds, you might feel we are doomed. Not so.
If you are interested in Monarch butterflies, you might also feel we are doomed.
Again. Not so.

There are a lot of plants out there which can provide nectar (food for adult insects) and leaves (food for the larval forms) for pollinators and the more we can make sure there are a lot of them around and that they are blooming at the appropriate times (that is, that there is stuff in bloom basically all spring, summer and early fall), then we are basically doing our job. (more…)

Bee Report

Well, the weather straightened out enough that the DH could go out and check on the bees. Usually, he’d have gone out in the beginning of May but it was cold and rainy and this is not only not good for bees but everyone would have been home, so to speak, so it makes it much more dangerous for the beekeeper in terms of getting stung. On a day like today – bright, sunny, warm, a little breezy, everyone who is supposed to be out and at work… is out and at work. Everyone else is basically busy raising baby bees and doing storage work. (more…)

Blog Widget by LinkWithin

Bad Behavior has blocked 850 access attempts in the last 7 days.