Snow "Honey Bee"

This metal garden decor was covered in snow, suggesting the visitor was a bee.

Snow "Bee"

Ever since I started keeping honey bees eight years ago, my perspective on life continues to change.

I was already sensitive to nature, enjoying the passing of time through what was blooming, or migrating, through my certified wildlife garden. It's more than noting the weather forecast, it's becoming in sync with nature's evolution and making it part of one's personal awareness, and schedule. When monarchs were scheduled to migrate through my property, I scheduled time on my top house deck to enjoy seeing them fly by.

It's not for everyone. One of my friends lives in Washington D.C. in a huge building apartment. She walks to the subway system through the building basement, then gets to her office through another underground labyrinth, never seeing, or feeling, the daily weather conditions.

I spent a week with her and although I enjoyed the quality time, I didn't enjoy the lifestyle. I missed seeing the birds and bugs that keep me company in my garden and my regular chores of taking corn, adding suet and pouring seeds into feeders.  In winter, I look for footprints through the snow, or mud, to see what creatures have been moving through and eating. In summer, it's wonderful to sit at one of my reading nooks and watch birds bathing in bird baths and checking out bees in my bird baths and bird feeders.

I also enjoy seeing the different shapes my flowers take when they are covered in snow, I call those snow flowers. When we had our last snow, I laughed when I saw my garden dragonfly sculpture covered in snow. If when it snows my plants transform themselves into snow flowers, why not a "snow honey bee"?

Charlotte

I See Bees Everywhere....

This gift of Nestle hot cocoa includes a little bee as the source, how cute!

I See Bees Everywhere....

Ever since I started beekeeping in 2010, I see bees all around me. I don't mean my bees are always with me, although some tend to be, especially when I'm working in my garden. It's a new awareness I have to bee-related references, and items.

A friend recently gave me a gift of hot cocoa in a cute coffee-like mug. She picked the mug, she said, because she knew I was a gardener and loved flowers.

What a charming surprise to find the hot cocoa that accompanied the gift mug had a bee on it. When I mentioned the bee, she was also surprised, she said she had not even seen the bee when she selected the cocoa.

That's okay, I told her, the bee just makes it that much more special, don't you think?

Charlotte

Busy Bee Restaurant

Busy Bee Restaurant in Buffalo, New York courtesy of a friend on a road trip.

Busy Bee Restaurant

Once a beekeeper, one starts seeing bees everywhere. Or maybe it's more that now one is a beekeeper, one is more attuned to bees and beekeeping.

My friend Mark doesn't have that excuse but he does keep an eye out for bee-related items. This one is his largest one yet, a restaurant in Buffalo, New York with a charming bee theme, he came across during a recent road trip.

Inside the Busy Bee Restaurant in Buffalo, New York courtesy of my friend Mark, on a road trip.

Mark heads a local historical society so I suspect the older-looking building was part of the initial draw. The outside sign is also very enticing, a happy bee offering three meals breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Inside the restaurant, the theme continues with a variety of bee-related memorabilia. I like the bee in front of a skep over the lunch sign. Even though skeps aren't used any more in beekeeping, it is a popular symbol for beekeeping.

Looks like black and white articles about the restaurant, and possibly local beekeepers, are framed on the wall.

Now I will have to add this to my list of places to visit!

Have you been to the Busy Bee Restaurant in Buffalo, New York?

Charlotte

Winter Bee Bars

When honeybees aren't rummaging for pollen in bird feeder cracked corn, they like a drink of sugar water from one of my bird baths.

If honeybees didn't have access to sugar water, they would be eating stored honey so I keep their "bee bars" stocked. That way they can save eating honey for colder winter days when they can't leave their hives.

Fun to see them out and about, I miss being with my bees in winter.

Charlotte

Looking for Live Bees

One of HomeSweetBees.com readers contacted me about getting 30-40 bees a week for therapy for a bad back.

Bee Stings For Arthritis

Although it has not been scientifically proven, some people say applying bees to a certain area of the body helps with arthritis and other medical conditions. Most beehives in Missouri are at their lowest numbers through winter. Beekeepers are not going to open a hive, and expose it to moisture and cold weather, to remove just 30-40 bees a week. Bees form a ball in the center of the hive and make it through winter literally shivering themselves warm. Although a worker bee may only live for 4-6 weeks during summer, worker bees over winter may live as long as 6 months to get the colony from one season to the next.

Personal Observation Hive

Experienced beekeepers tell me people who need bee stings for on-going therapy usually set up an "observation hive," or a hive that's inside with a vent access to the outside so beekeepers can more easily get to, and remove, the needed quantity of honeybees.

Sorry, all of my honeybees are adopted!

Charlotte