Sweet Priorities
While we’d love to dwell on the overwhelming amount of precipitation we’ve been hammered with this month and the oddly cold weather we’ve been experiencing, we are focusing on the positive. That said, you should be made aware that there are some crops that are not exactly growing as well as normal and we are feeling a bit pinched as we roll into week five. Thank you for bearing with us as we stumble through some of the strangest weather we’ve ever had to deal with as farmers. Keep your expectations in check when it comes to heat-loving crops like sweet corn and watermelons. They probably aren’t going to come to fruition in 2017 at We Grow with this cool June.
Most of you know that we keep bees at our farm and this week we experienced our first swarm of the season. While it was a pretty standard swarm that was identified, captured and transported without incident, the fact that our intern Racheal got to assist on the capture made it quite exciting. Giving someone a tour of a beehive humbly reminds us of the complex biology of honeybees and how fortunate we are to have them helping us pollinate our crops. Especially with summer squash and cucumbers in blossom right now.
Every week, we open the hives and look over every frame to check for the various stages of larvae or new queen cells. We also monitor for problems like mites or foul brood. We decide if the bees need more space and we add colony boxes or super boxes depending on what the bees are doing inside. Each year, our overwintering success improves. This spring we came thru with a little better than half of our hives surviving, which is an improvement but it could be better. Just maybe, the changes on our farm are helping.
Planting the seed of information about the struggle for today’s pollinators is important and significant. It isn’t just the non-native honeybee that is having a hard time surviving in modern times. Aside from the obvious lawn and garden chemicals, crop monocultures and mites, pollinators are struggling with reduced gene pools and climate inconsistency. Mason bees, bumble bees, hover flies and many more count on us humans to make bee-friendly decisions. Education is key. Learn more at xerces.org.
Learning every day,
