Tag Archive for: Wildflowers

Buckwheat Honey & Christmas Cookies

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At Wildflower Meadows, our friends and customers often ask us if we have any extra buckwheat honey for Christmas cookies.  Many honey connoisseurs insist that dark, rich, buckwheat honey is perfect for baking.

Buckwheat has a strong, distinctive flavor that is often described as malty or earthy.  It is dark and is often considered a “baking honey.”  Bakers use buckwheat honey for Christmas cookies, but here are some other tips for using buckwheat honey:

    • Add it to tea or coffee for a sweet and flavorful boost.
    • Spread it on toast or pancakes for a healthy and delicious breakfast.
    • Add it to smoothies or yogurt for a nutrient-rich snack.
    • Use it as a natural cough suppressant.

There are two main types of buckwheat plants: common buckwheat and tartary buckwheat.  Common buckwheat is the most prevalent type of buckwheat plant grown in the United States. It is a tall, erect plant with heart-shaped leaves and white, pink, or purple flowers. Common buckwheat is grown for its seeds, which are used to make buckwheat groats, noodles, and other foods. It is also grown as a cover crop, which means that it is planted to improve the soil and suppress weeds. Common buckwheat can be found in many parts of the United States, but it is most typically found in the Midwest and Northeast.

Tartary buckwheat flowers are white or pink, while common buckwheat flowers are white, pink, or purple. This is the type of buckwheat that our bees visit at Wildflower Meadows.  Tartary buckwheat is a smaller type of buckwheat plant with narrower leaves and white or pink flowers. Tartary buckwheat is not as common as common buckwheat, but it is grown in some parts of the United States, especially the West. This is the type of buckwheat that our bees visit at Wildflower Meadows.  The nectar from both types of buckwheat flowers is used to make honey. However, buckwheat honey made from tartary buckwheat is typically darker and has a stronger flavor than buckwheat honey made from common buckwheat.

Tartary Buckwheat

Besides being delicious, Buckwheat honey is a good source of antioxidants, including flavonoids and phenolic acids. Antioxidants help protect your cells from damage caused by free radicals. Free radicals are unstable molecules that can damage cells and contribute to the development of diseases such as cancer and heart disease.  Buckwheat honey is also a good source of minerals, including iron, magnesium, and potassium. Iron is important for red blood cell production, magnesium is important for muscle function, and potassium is important for heart health.

Autumn Wildflowers

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While we typically associate wildflowers with springtime, there are many types of wildflowers that blossom in the fall. In fact, autumn flowers serve a vital purpose for honeybees.  They provide a reliable source of hearty nutrition before the harsh winter comes. During the colder months, bees cluster together in their hives to stay warm, and they rely on their food stores from these autumn flowers to give them the energy to make it through the winter season.

            Many parts of the US receive plenty of rainfall starting in the middle of the summer that allows for a bounty of fall flowers, though the specific types of flowers that bloom will depend on the region and climate. In California, for example, where Wildflower Meadows operates, the summers are quite dry. Meanwhile, the southern US typically enjoys an abundance of fall flowers, especially areas affected by hurricane season. These flowers might include asters, blue sage, and sunflowers, among others. In the western US, monsoon season in the desert can lead to a variety of fall desert blooms, including verbena, buckwheat, and rabbit brush, the latter of which is a prized wildflower for beekeepers.

            The most invaluable fall blossom for beekeepers and their hives, however, is goldenrod. Named for its bright golden flowers, this wildflower is especially abundant in the northeastern US and begins blooming in late August. Goldenrod is unique in that its pollen produces a stronger-tasting honey compared to honey from other wildflowers; and many beekeepers actually make sizeable honey crops from fall goldenrod blooms. However, it is also risky to harvest honey so late in the season, because this can leave the bees light on food stores and possibly stress the hives going into winter.

Apiaries situated near fall wildflowers are highly sought after by commercial beekeepers, as when the pollen starts to flow, the bees naturally increase in population. The bees also get a burst of healthy nutrients right when they need them most just before winter. Not only does this save commercial beekeepers on feeding costs, but it also bolsters hive population in advance of the critical February almond pollination season in which beekeepers are compensated based on the strength of their hives. Strong colonies going into winter generally lead to strong colonies coming out of winter.

Pepper Trees And Bees

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Anyone who lives in California, Florida or Hawaii is likely well familiar with pepper trees.  They seem to be found both far and wide, and probably for a good reason.  They are extremely hardy, drought resistant, heat resistant, and sprout up like weeds along highways and roads everywhere.  Sun or shade, these trees don’t care.  Poor soil?  No problem.  The pepper tree is perfectly at home in a world where record-breaking heat and adverse weather conditions seem to be the norm.

Officially called “schinus mole,” pepper trees originated in Peru, but like many other invasive plants, were brought to other parts of the world with good intentions.  The original Spanish settlers of the American west cultivated these trees because they appreciated the hard bark, which they used for making saddles.  Also, the pepper tree, true to its name, was a source of genuine culinary pepper spice for the early settlers.

The pepper comes from crushing the little pink berries that these trees produce, which are the direct result of bee pollination.  The dried pink berries taste like pepper, and are basically pink peppercorns.  Though, let’s be honest, the peppercorns that we are most familiar with are black.  Yet, the pepper tree’s pink peppercorns are still a culinary favorite today.

From a beekeeper’s perspective, pepper trees are a gold mine, as they seem to blossom practically non-stop, with several major blooming episodes per season.  And, most importantly, the bees love them!  The first blossoms start in the spring, with the latest occurring well into October, when practically nothing else is available for the bees.  The heaviest honey flow takes place in summer when the temperatures are high, usually in July.  As you can imagine, the honey has a somewhat spicy flavor and is rather dark.  As humans, we may easily overlook this rather ubiquitous and weedy-looking tree, but the bees see these trees completely differently.  They are a never-ending source of foraging excitement!

Sage Honey

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One of the more delightful times of the year for a beekeeper is during the heart of spring.  The daylight is growing longer each day, and the bees have plenty of foraging work to attend to.  This is the time of year when so many flowers are blooming that you begin to wonder how the bees can even figure out where to go when they leave the hive.  With so many flowers to choose from, where do they begin?

Here at Wildflower Meadows, it seems to us that in times like this, wild sage blossoms are the bees’ favorites.  We know this by two tell-tale signs.  First, about mid-April, the incoming nectar switches from the deep reddish brown color of avocado nectar to the light and almost clear color of wild sage nectar.  Second, and more tellingly, we begin seeing foraging bees returning to the hive with purple heads!

Here in Southern California, the purple heads can only come from one source, black button sage.  Black button sage, also known as black sage or salvia mellifera, is a coastal chaparral plant that blooms with delicate purple blossoms primarily in April and May.  Although its flowers are purple, the plant is nevertheless called black sage.  This is because later in the season the flowers dry up and the flower pods turn to black caps, or black “buttons”, giving it its well-known name of black button sage.

The sage nectar that the bees enjoy so much resides at the base of a purple tube.  Eager bees dive right into this tube, and in the process, get a face full of purple pollen dust.  This can easily be noticed by an observant beekeeper watching the returning foragers with purple faces.  Their faces don’t stay purple for long, however.  Once inside the hive, the other bees clean the faces of their sisters so that by the time the foraging bees exit for their next flight, they are wiped clean and ready for a new round.

Sage honey is known for its very light, almost transparent color and its well-renowned ability to resist crystallizing.  It is one the most prized California honeys, with a delicate flavor that has a distinct “bubble gum” flavor – delicious through and through!

Filaree and The Winning Formula

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For Southern California beekeepers the formula of November and December rains, followed by January sunshine, is the holy grail winning combination.

This past November was one of the wettest in recent memory, with nearly five inches of rain falling before Thanksgiving!  The benefit, of course, is that with early rain, the earliest flowers sprout much sooner than normal, giving the bees an exciting start to the new season.

The first bloom of the year in the Southern California chaparral is filaree.  Filaree is a low-growing, small plant, common throughout the southwest United States, particularly in the desert areas.  Around our apiaries, filaree rarely seems to grow more than three inches tall.  Perhaps because it is such a petite plant, it seems to take very little time between the moment of rain until the moment that it blooms.  That means that the November rains will usually cause filaree to blossom in early January, provided that there have been at least a few warm and sunny days in the interim.

If you were to walk through the countryside you could be forgiven for mistaking filaree for some sort of weed that would likely appear on a poorly weeded lawn.  The tiny filaree flower is a five-petaled, purplish pink blossom that is hardly noticeable to the average person.  But the bees are not average people, and they are not one to miss the opportunity of some early season action.  When filaree is in play, the bees in our apiaries can be found cruising about around our feet, basically at ground level.  They are not looking to sting our ankles, but rather to find the next filaree blossom and grab some fresh pollen.  According to Wikipedia, filaree is also a honey producing plant, though it is not likely to produce a crop.  Afterall, in early January, bee populations are relatively small and the days are still short, both of which are not optimal conditions for producing a January honey crop.

How Much Honey Can A Beehive Produce?

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Every bee season eventually reaches a peak when honey production hits its stride and the bees are bringing in the maximum amount of nectar each day.  This is referred to as the honey flow, and it is what most beekeepers live for.

When things are going right, a beehive’s worker bees are putting in long hours foraging, and the house bees are drying nectar as fast as the foragers can bring it in.  A single worker bee can visit over a thousand flowers a day.  Multiply that by thousands of workers, and we are talking about a lot of nectar!

What does it take to reach this kind of honey production?  Well, more than a few variables have to fall into place.  To reach peak honey production a beehive typically needs:

–       A high concentration of honey-producing flowers nearby, such as clover, buckwheat or alfalfa

–       Above average rainfall in the rainy season prior to the bloom (this makes the flowers rich with nectar)

–       A strong, healthy hive, booming with healthy bees and a large population

–       Plenty of space to store all the surplus honey

–       Sunny and warm weather (this enables the flowers to secrete nectar at a maximum), and

–       Plenty of daylight for the bees to fly; from sunup to sundown

A typical beehive in the United States can produce anywhere from 10 to 200 pounds of honey in a year.  That is an unbelievably large range, which indicates just how critical these variables are in order for a beehive to reach peak honey production.

If all is going well, how much honey can a beehive produce in a single day?  At Wildflower Meadows, we have seen beehives fill an entire deep super of buckwheat honey in less than a week.  That’s about 10 pounds of honey per day!  Of course, this happens only once in a while, when all of the above conditions fall into place.  More often than not, here in Southern California, we run into years of drought that greatly distress our native honey-producing plants.  However, when everything is going just right, producing honey can feel a lot like hitting the lottery!

Wild Mustard

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After the winter and early spring rains, wild mustard bursts on the scene with its brilliant yellow blossoms.  If there is one plant that symbolizes the heart of the queen rearing season, it is wild mustard.  Wild mustard is arguably the richest source of bee pollen that the bees see all year.  It is loaded with nutrients, and is a key ingredient for the bees’ production of royal jelly during the height of the queen rearing season.  Nutritious royal jelly leads to healthy queen cells, which leads to healthy young mated queen bees.

Although not a native plant, in many ways wild mustard forms the backbone of the food source not only for honeybees, but for much of the wild California ecosystem.  If mustard is plentiful, rabbits and other herbivores have plenty of nutritious greens to eat.  This results in a higher number of coyotes and other predators.

It all starts with mustard.

An old-time beekeeper once told us that he could predict the success of the upcoming honey crop simply by observing the height of the mustard plants in early spring.  He stood about 6 feet tall and measured how high the mustard plants grew relative to his body.  He confidently declared that shoulder-high mustard indicated that the ground was plenty wet and the season would be good.  Head-high mustard indicated a spectacular season ahead, and if the mustard could only reach waist-high, that meant trouble for the bees.

From our experience he has been proven correct!  Ever since he shared that bit of wise lore, we have always kept our eyes on the growth of the season’s mustard and found his rule of thumb to be accurate.

It is too early yet to tell how high the mustard will grow this year, but we won’t complain if it reaches our heads!

The Summer Dearth

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Nearly all regions in the United States reach a point, usually in late summer, where a nectar dearth occurs.  Here at Wildflower Meadows, our dearth typically begins in early August, after the last sumac flowers dry up.  The dearth period can vary from year to year, but at some point it is guaranteed to happen.

At the beginning of a dearth, bee colonies are susceptible to a number of health risks, chief of which is nutrition.  Honeybees, in general, do a poor job in preparing for dearth.  When times are good, the queen lays as much brood as possible.  However, most queen bees rarely anticipate that the good times will end.  It is only after the nectar dries up that the queen slows or ceases her abundant egg laying.  As a result, bee colonies nearly always overshoot their populations during times of abundance.  At the onset of dearth, the colony population is typically huge, with even more brood in the pipeline.  This creates immediate nutrition stress.

If a beekeeper fails to support the colony at the onset of dearth with supplemental feeding, particularly of pollen supplement patties, this nutrition stress can lead to poor quality bees not only in the current generation of bees, but in the next generation.  Poorly nourished nurse bees can lead to poorly nourished larvae, and so on.

Another danger to the colony at the onset of dearth is a potential drop in queen pheromone.  Researchers who measure queen pheromone in colonies note that the presence of this pheromone is not consistent over the course of a year, but rather fluctuates, often rising with the presence of abundant conditions, and declining during dearth.  As a result, queen supercedure is more apt to occur during dearth than abundance.

As a conscientious beekeeper, you should always have an idea as to when the dearth periods occur in your region, and prepare your colonies for them.

 

The Inspectors

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As June arrives and the beekeeping season reaches its peak, we begin to think about our annual county beekeeping inspection, which is right around the corner.  Above is a photo that we took from last year’s inspection.

Our county beekeeping inspectors arrive in mid-summer in full force; armed with the latest beekeeping technology, multi-layered beekeeping suits, range-finding binoculars, foulbrood inspection kits, and carrying checklists that seem to be miles long.  They ask questions such as, “Where is the water source in this apiary?  How many colonies do you have here?  How close is the nearest residence?  What fire prevention steps are you taking, etc.?  These questions can go on and on, lasting the better part of a morning.

Of course, the inspectors have to live up to their title, and also inspect actual bee colonies for evidence of foul brood, varroa mites, viruses, diseases, colony temperament, and so on.  At Wildflower Meadows, we have few concerns with third-party colony inspections, since as queen breeders, we regularly do the same inspections, and are hyper-vigilant in guarding against diseases.  It is our job to regularly monitor the health and temperament of our own colonies, and we take this responsibility seriously.

Sometimes, however, the thoroughness and breadth of the inspectors’ checklists catches us off guard.  We were written up last year for not sufficiently trimming the weeds in an access road leading up to one of our apiaries.  We wrote about weed trimming last year, when we mentioned how beekeepers are sometimes hesitant to remove pollen sources from around the bees.  We are no different:  flowering weeds are precious pollen sources, and like many beekeepers, it breaks our heart to be forced to remove them!  The inspectors, however, in their quest for fire prevention (which obviously is very important in California) had no patience for our arguments.  We are now required to get more serious about our weed trimming responsibilities, oftentimes trimming in places that we never even thought about before . . .

Who knows what the inspectors will come up with this year?  Nevertheless, we are feeling confident.  Our colonies are looking great, our water sources are full, and our apiaries are weed-free.  And, at least for now, we are ready for the next round of inspections!

 

forager

The Forager

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An adult worker honeybee typically progresses through a series of roles during her short life span.  During her first two weeks of life she assumes the role of nurse bee, staying inside of the colony, tending to the larvae and to the many needs of the queen bee.  By the start of her third week, still inside the colony she takes on a slightly different role of  an “intermediate” bee; a worker bee who has not quite graduated to foraging status yet.  Her work at this point mostly consists of receiving and storing nectar from the forager bees, producing wax, and building comb.

By the start of the third week, however, a worker bee “graduates” her housekeeping duties and finally becomes a forager.  She will begin by taking a series of training flights to get oriented, and then ultimately heads out into the open world to forage for nectar, pollen, water, and propolis.  The transition to foraging is more or less a death sentence for a worker bee.  The risks to a foraging bee’s life are vastly higher than to a young bee that stays safely inside a well-secured colony.  Not only does a foraging bee have to deal with predators such as swallows and other bee-eating birds, a forager faces a multitude of environmental dangers such as cold, heat, drowning, spider webs, car windshields, etc.  Of course, a forager also can get lost or exhausted in her many daily trips to and from the colony.

A foraging bee makes an average ten to fifteen foraging trips per day!  With this heavy workload, even the strongest and luckiest forager bee only will live about another three weeks while foraging.  Assuming an intrepid foraging bee makes it through the gauntlet of dangers during her daily foraging, sadly her little wings will eventually wear out from all the hard work.  By her third week of foraging she reaches the end of her short lifespan.