Through years of drought and rain they have thrived. The winds this winter, however, were not just from the north, and not just in high-speed occasional gusts; but sustained winds in double digits shook our own house as well as the beehives from what seemed all directions.
Hives were wrapped, quilt boxes on, in the same configuration that has served the girls so well over the years. It may have been I took my foundations and hive stands for granted, so I'll work on rebuilding and perfecting those things. Maybe a more significant wind block on all sides.
All we can do is the best we can with what we know and even in my 18th season there are new lessons to learn.
Meanwhile, the willows and alder bloomed with much less of a hum to cheer them into spring. The cherry and service berry trees lost their blossoms too soon; but our old cider apple tree is pretty good at waiting for the last frost of the season.
It is so cold now, this 19 day of May, that frost could be around the corner.
Prunella coats the landscape side by side with wild violets and strawberry flowers. Lots of rain may bring summer nectar in abundance. Beekeepers can always hope.
No matter what the wind or weather, dandelions are the faithful flowers thriving in the background of these sometimes catastrophic times for the beekeeper. Dandelions don't necessarily need bees as they are capable of pollinating themselves; but apis mellifera, our honey bee, is just one of many bee species that need dandelions.
I was reminded most recently at our Dandelion Festival in Wonalancet last weekend that dandelions share a heritage with honey bees of healing and repair of our heavily cultivated lands
To begin with it is important to note that honey bees are the only pollinators that over winter as a family. In our northern climate these families can be 40,000 members strong. That's a lot of mouths to feed!
Both honey bees and dandelions arrived in the 1600s with our European ancestors, but while timber was harvested and land cultivated to build our towns & cities, nearly 140 species of native North American bees were suddenly at risk of losing habitat and forage necessary for survival.
Interestingly, large honey bee families took up the slack, so to speak, as their need for nectar & pollen, containing essential carbohydrates & proteins, moved them to source a wide variety of New World plants.
As a result, Honey bees fortuitously restored nearly lost native floral sources that would in turn invite these valuable native bees and other pollinators back to our lands. In this way, now centuries later, as we’ve expanded development across the country, researchers believe honey bees to have earned status as a keystone species. So why are dandelions so important to this generalist pollinator?
While native bees are solitary insects preferring specific nectar and pollen sources, sometimes only active when certain flowers are in bloom, honey bees start spring as a robust colony with nutritional needs to satisfy all season long. They are there on the earliest flowers as the snow melts, moving on to the blossoms of fruit trees, as well as maple, birch, oak and other deciduous tree flowers, always scouting the landscape for the next big bloom.
While our flowering plants and trees take turns looking for attention, some offering nectar, some pollen, some both; weather and climate are a constant challenge to all our pollinators, but reliably, the humble dandelion is there, much like the honey bee, having journeying across continents, picking up the slack, surviving in the most unlikely of places wherever the soil has been disrupted for fields, farms, and cities, on the road edges, sparkling in the sun on our lawns, all late spring through summer.
The dandelion offers pollen and nectar in abundance for a hard working family of bees feeding their young. The dandelion root runs deep, healing disturbed ground, bringing nutrients in abundance as a medicinal plant with all parts having value.
For the bees, dandelions are not the most supreme source of nutritious pollen and nectar, but they are there during times of drought and rain, scarcity and transition, reliable as long as we support their growth to the benefit of all bees.
Since this day of the dandelions I've looked more closely at where I see them grow on our own land; They are in the mowed paths, where the fence post holes were dug, all around the ground that was leveled for my beehives in the apiary. I have to watch where I step!
The girls know too, where and when the dandelion blooms for them.
Also to note: Two of the presenters at the first ever Wonalancet Dandelion Festival were Ethan & Amy of Again and Again Farm. They are fellow vendors at the Tamworth Farmers Market, humble farmers with a wealth of information to share for the good of the soil. Always a good place to visit good people.
