You can lead a bee to water

Bee Pond and Hives

Our small water feature for the bees, consisting of a water lily and a few fish. The rug you see here is an old outdoor rug we no longer use that does a great job keeping the weeds down.

Our county ordinance requires that bee hives have water available within 50 feet. While this is good practice, of course, the bees have their own thoughts on the matter. Despite my work to set up a small water pond near our hives, the bees completely ignore it.

To be fair, the neighbor’s pond is bigger and better shaded. I’m sure their water is much better tasting as well.

In addition to discussing our water source, I have an update on our Langstroth hives to share, of the three steps forward, two steps back variety. An update of our top bar hive will appear in a future post. Continue reading

Good Fences Make Good Bees

150607 SawzallA shout out to my blogging buddies The Prospect of Bees for inspiring my recent purchase of a Milwaukee M18 reciprocating saw, shown here surrounded by pieces of fence rails. Prospect’s recent infomercial of a post on the 12-volt version of this saw inspired some research and an eventual purchase. Since this is my first and likely only cordless saw, I settled on the 18-volt version, finding a special online deal from Home Depot that included the complete kit (saw, charger, battery) as well as an extra battery.
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