Special Visitors

Many years ago, I planted a line of three dogwoods (not our native species; rather, Cornus sanguinea) just outside our front porch. This is the part of the garden I call our ‘woodland’ garden, because it gets dappled shade all day from our mature trees. I have a lot of natives here (various Ribes, spice bush, coffee berries, etc, as well as some true geraniums, things that can handle dry shade). I wanted the dogwoods because of their bright red stems, but I haven’t been pruning them correctly I guess, because they have yet to show the flame color their name suggests.

Anyway, I can see them from our living room. Tom and I were sitting on the couch chatting yesterday and I was looking out at them and admiring the sun shining through their leaves when I realized - hang on a second, what am I seeing? - those leaves aren’t supposed to look lacy. But they do now, and for a very good reason - one that makes me super happy. They are being used to build the nests of leaf-cutter bees.

image credit: Planet Bee Foundation

Leafcutting bees (Megachilidae family) are solitary native North American bees who use soft leaves and flower petals to create nests for their young. The female bee finds a long channel or tube, for instance in wood or in a hollow stem, and painstakingly creates chambers for her larvae, depositing some bee bread (a little mound of pollen) and an egg in each one. Each chamber is separated by a wall made up of chewed leaves and mixed with resin or mud. The bees spend the winter as mature larvae in the chambers; in spring, they pupate, then chew their way out of the nest and go off to mate. The adults are active only in spring and early summer; most of their lives are spent in the cells as larvae.

We have at least 75 species of leafcutter bee in California. They are generally smaller than honeybees, tend to be more of a grayish color, and carry pollen on their bellies rather than on their legs like honeybees. They are wonderful pollinators, and in fact there is an introduced species that is a major pollinator of alfalfa and is economically important. The family Megachilidae also includes Mason bees and Wool Carder bees.

The ‘damage’ to the margins of the leaves is quite slight and doesn’t hurt the plant at all. The bees are extremely gentle and in fact, in all my years of taking pictures of bees in my garden, I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten a photo of one. I’m delighted to find this evidence of their existence in my little ecosystem and I hope I get the privilege of finally meeting one.

Hive Check

Other than snipping lettuce for delicious salads (one such harvest above), I’ve had little time to hang out in the garden. Between work and the rain (and the rain, and the rain, and the rain), I’m very rarely in a place where I am doing any observing. That stinks, really, because observing the natural processes in my garden is one of the great joys of my life.

Anyway, we finally had a break in the rain late last week, so I went outside to do some exploring in between writing lectures. Spring peepers were making a racket in the nearby creek, our almond and nectarine trees were opening their buds, there were a few asparagus spears popping up, and I found chrysalis’ hanging on the fence wires.

But all was not well. Standing by the beehive for a while, I noticed a distinct lack of activity. The day was warm, above 50 degrees, and as I said, we were having a break in the rain. There should have been all sorts of busyness happening - new bees being born and orientating to the hive entrance, foragers out searching for nectar - but nope. Nothing. Later on I checked in with Tom and he said that he had noticed less activity, too.

You can tell a lot about a hive by just sitting by the entrance for 15 minutes, but sometimes you’ve just got to suit up and get in there to find out what’s going on, and this was one of those times. Saturday morning, Tom did just that, while I ran to school to water the new seedlings. When I came home, he met me outdoors with a sad face. The bees were gone.

It’s a hard thing, when your colony just disappears. Were they too cold this winter, or too wet? Did the leveling of the hive last autumn make them restless? I had noticed some ant activity but thought my heavy application of diatomaceous earth solved that problem. Was there some other sort of predation or disease? Tom didn’t find any dead bees, so it was a bit of a mystery. We already had a full afternoon planned, so we waited until Sunday to do a more thorough post-mortem. I’ve become allergic to bee stings over the last ten years, but since the bees were gone, I knew I could safely help Tom clean out the hive.

So on Sunday morning, we opened it up and started going through the bars one by one. I noticed some wax moth activity - no larvae, or moths, or eggs, or tunneling (all of which would have been extremely disgusting and concerning) but something that I’ve always suspected was frass (basically, insect poop). And it might be, I’m still not sure. You can see it below. There was also a little bit of webbing, which is how wax moths begin to pupate, but we found no pupae at all. We caught it in time, and got in there before the moths took hold. That was excellent, because there was a lot of honey in there, and it was not affected at all.

We took out bar after bar of honey, six full capped bars in total. We rarely take more than a bar at a time, so there was a lot in there to clear out. We cut the comb off the bars and put it all into our high-tech big bucket/colander system for draining. Then we started taking out the bars that had an inch of capped honey at the top, but were empty below.

Suddenly, we started noticing bees. Hmmmm. These must be bees from neighboring hives, we mused, coming around to take the honey - easy pickings! So we kept going through bars. Soon, there were more bees. Hmmmm. Tom pointed a finger at me and firmly directed me indoors, then suited up to continue cleaning out the hive.

I went inside and promptly ordered a new colony to be picked up in Davis in April. About five minutes later, Tom comes in and shows me a video on his phone. Turns out, when he got closer to the front of the hive, he found more bees - and a queen!

Well, that changed the game! I realized, it wasn’t just the ants, or the wax moths, or the moving of the hive, or the wet conditions. It was also that sudden swing in temperature, the sudden arrival of spring! The bees had swarmed.

A swarm, as you know, happens when the colony becomes discontent with their old queen for some reason (or when the hive gets too crowded, or when there are predations or disease - or a combination of all of the above), and they make a new queen. Once the new queen is born, the old queen flies off with roughly half the colony to find a new place to live, leaving the new queen to get busy laying eggs. This must be a new queen, left behind with some of the previous colony.

Ok then! Tom stopped taking out bars, and made sure the small group was tucked up tight within a very small space (six bars or so, with some honey). Then he furiously cleaned up old wax and vacuumed everything out of the back of the hive. It was an excellent opportunity to remove old comb and excessive propolis, as well as a few spiders.

Our hopes are not high that this tiny colony will survive. But, there will never be a better time to try, with warmer daytime temps and flowers blooming. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll make it. And if they do, what am I going to do with the new colony I ordered??? Oy.

Well, at least we’ll have plenty of honey for the year ahead!

Leveling the Hive

When we installed our top bar bee hive (made by my father) ten years ago, we picked a nice site in a place that got morning sun and afternoon shade, was sheltered from wind, and mostly hidden to passersby. We also leveled the site before putting the sawhorses and hive in place, resting them on concrete blocks to keep the legs up off the soil.

Over the years, the earth has settled and shifted. This is due to many factors: One, this is earthquake country; two, we have 100% clay soil which swells and shrinks during wet or dry periods (and in California, it’s either very wet or very dry, not much in between); and three, I’ve been adding mulch in that area for years, which has probably worked its way under the legs somehow. So it’s not a surprise that our hive began to list.

For a long time, we would ‘solve’ this problem by shimming up a side (you can see our first shim on the left). That was an easy ‘fix,’ and would hold for a while before needing to shim it up on the other side. Sometimes I would even put an especially large piece of bark under one of the sawhorse legs. It wasn’t an exact science, but the thought of moving the whole thing and re-doing the area was daunting.

But finally, this fall, the hive started to lean in earnest. This was worrying, not least because if it started to gain some momentum, the whole thing could have just slid off the sawhorses, which would have been a colossal mess and would probably really freak out the bees (and make them very aggressive and/or want to leave), or even harm them. Was it leaning over that far? Probably not, probably I’m exaggerating. But what was definitely happening was that our bees started to beard every night, even on cool nights.

Bearding is when bees hang out at the front of the hive, on the ‘front porch’ so to speak, and make a big hanging mass of bodies which looks like a beard on the hive. This usually only happens when it’s super hot out, and the bees can’t keep the hive at the 93 degrees they prefer. They remove some heat from the hive by removing bodies. Smart, right? But bees can also beard when they run out of room, or if there is poor ventilation in the hive.

See the picture at the top of this post? That’s a beautiful comb, from our top bar hive. Since top bars don’t use frames, like Langstroth hives, the bees build on a bar which rests on the top (hence the name). What this allows is for the bees to build the way they like. And bees like to build their comb in catenary curves. When the hive is level, the comb perfectly fits the shape of the hive box, allowing for something called ‘bee space,’ which means there’s just enough room at the edges and bottom for the bees to move freely around the colony.

Gravity plays a big role in how bees build comb; they naturally build in line with the pull of gravity. When a hive is level, they create an ideal comb. When a hive isn’t level, the bees are confused. They build asymmetrically or in a funky shape. The comb can encroach on other combs, and create a mess. It can also lean with the hive, and honey is heavy, so the comb can slide off the top bar and create an enormous sticky pile of wax, honey, and bees at the bottom of the hive.

My working theory, while viewing the leaning hive, and the constant bearding, and after hearing how Tom, when working in the hive, found lots of comb stuck to the sides and bottom (so the bees weren’t building comb correctly), was that the unevenness of the hive was past the point where a shim would help. We just needed to redo the entire area. This was a bummer, because it meant we had to move the hive.

Just like there’s an ideal time to work inside a hive (sunny warm afternoons, when a good portion of the bees are out foraging), there’s an ideal time to move a hive, and that time is never. But, second best is when it’s dark and the bees are tucked in for the night. So, since I’m not allowed to work anywhere near the hive due to my allergies, we recruited my dad to help.

Mom and Dad came over for dinner, and once it was dark, Tom and Dad went out to the hive and discussed the operation. Tom brought out our other sawhorses and set them nearby. They both made sure to cover arms and legs securely to avoid stings. Mom went out with a flashlight to help light the scene. And then there was nothing for it but to move it, that heavy hive, over to the side several feet. Job done! And no one stung, and no fuss from the bees at all.

I checked on them periodically the next day, and they were very confused. But by the second day, they had a new pattern of exiting/entering all figured out.

Then, the following weekend, the real work began. Tom started by removing eight inches of mulch and leaves until he found bare ground. Then he bought 240 pounds of construction-grade sand and wheelbarrowed it over to the space. Wet, level, wet again, level again, rinse, repeat. Then he bought bigger concrete footings and set them in. Level, pound, level again, pound again, rinse, repeat. Finally the sawhorses went back on the blocks. And then, my dad had to be pressed into service for the second time (will work for cookies!) and helped move the hive back in place in the dead of night. And voila! A newly leveled hive.

The bees had absolutely no confusion the day after moving back, which was interesting. They must have good memories. Or deep instincts that reminded them that they oriented to this position originally.

So, that oughta do us for another ten years. Unless the big one comes, and then we’ll have other things to worry about anyway.

Maintenance

It’s about 80 degrees at Poppy Corners, and it’s that exact time when, every April, we say to ourselves, “Is the neighborhood pool open yet?” The season of flip flops and tank tops signals also that it’s time to do some much-needed maintenance at home. Tom and I always keep a running list, inspired by Monty Don and Gardener’s World, called ‘jobs for the weekend.’ We add to it all week and then begin to tackle it as soon as we’ve finished our coffee Saturday morning. Our list this week was literally as long as my forearm - typical for this time of year.

Luckily, I’ve already planted most of our summer veg, which I normally wouldn’t do until the temp is consistently over 50 degrees at night. But I’m scheduled to have knee surgery on May 8, so I thought it would be good to get all that done before then, and luckily everything has survived. Since we removed all the raised beds from the North Garden (to make the orchard), I used that wood to make the raised beds in the South Garden taller. We’re not getting any younger around here and taller beds will be helpful in that regard. I ordered three cubic yards of planting mix from a local nursery, and added that to the beds before planting. It’s good to have all that done.

But today, the first thing on our list was the irrigation system. Now that we’ve had the last of our (prodigious!) winter storms, it’s time to begin a regular irrigation schedule. It’s important to start out with 100% saturation in your soil; if you do that, you’ll just be topping it off every time you water, instead of playing catch-up. But the irrigation system hasn’t been used all winter, so it’s not as simple as just turning it on. Inevitably there will be some problems - breaches in the lines, clogged drips, broken micro-sprayers. Tom and I turn on one ‘zone’ at a time and go around watching what happens and making notes. Often, I’ll see an area that needs coverage, and we’ll add some lines. Sometimes an area is too wet and we’ll adjust that too. Tom always has a lot of repair work to do. It’s really good to get all that done before irrigation becomes crucial.

Can you see the swarm?

After that, Tom opened our top-bar bee hive. Two days ago, I was out running errands when I got texts from two different neighbors: “Your bees are swarming!” So I rushed home in order not to miss it and to see if I could capture it for my dad, who always wants our swarms. Alas, it was too high to reach with our ladder. I’m not even sure if they were our bees (there are many beekeepers in the neighborhood), but it was a good reminder to spend some time looking through the hive and adding bars for new brood and honey. Everything looked as it should, and Tom took a full bar of honey out for us. Opening the hive is now Tom’s job since I’ve become allergic over time; he’s gotten really good at it and never gets stung anymore. I hang back and look on longingly, peppering him with questions which I’m sure he just loves. At least I can handle the messy job of cutting up the comb and extracting the honey, though gravity does most of the work.

I also spent a good deal of time today cleaning out our enormous passionvine. It’s a Passiflora ‘Blue Horizon,’ and has gorgeous flowers and small black sour fruits. It supports a huge number of gulf fritillary butterflies every year, and is a stopping place for every curious neighborhood child in summer. I bought it as a living deer fence, assuming that it would die back every winter with our frosts (and therefore remain manageable). It’s never done that, only gotten more and more enormous each year. It’s extremely promiscuous and shows up in all sorts of places I don’t want it to, so I’m always pruning the thing. However this year, we had so many nights of truly cold weather that the vine died back, leaving a hedge of dead leaves and flowers a foot thick. That was fun to hack through and remove. Now it looks quite bare, with just foundation vines on the trellis, but it won’t be long before that monster puts out new growth and begins the cycle all over again.

Tomorrow, we plan to wash the windows and screens, a once-a-year job that we loathe but that always makes such a difference in the way the light comes in our windows, so is totally worth it.

We also have reserved time for hiking both days. After all this rain, the hills are simply covered in wildflowers. This morning, we walked up to Shell Ridge where a guy named Phil (a volunteer with the Walnut Creek Open Space) has been working for ten years to restore a giant hillside with native flowers. This year it is simply spectacular, with every kind of California native annual you can imagine. Below you can see a very small section of the hillside, covered with poppies and chia. Tomorrow, I’m hoping we will have time to go a little further afield and hike in a place where we can ford some streams, which never gets old in our normally-arid Bay Area, and see nature-planted flowers.

Flexibility

As all of you know, my home state is on fire. This is not a new occurrence. This is happening with regularity now, every single year. Many factors go in to why this happens; forest management is but one of those reasons. These particular fires were caused by freak lightening, something we almost never get here, and certainly not in August. This lightening happened during an extreme high pressure dome which had us experiencing very high temperatures for over a week (and are still lingering inland). The causes of the lightening and the heat dome are rooted in the same cause of the extreme weather that is happening everywhere. Climate change is here, friends; we are no longer simply anticipating it.

I stopped on the road yesterday as I was driving to the store, to take this picture. Smoke is just a very real part of our lives now, every August through November. We need one kind of mask to help keep us safe from Covid-19, but another kind of mask altogether to protect us from the particulate matter in smoke. We’re told to stay outdoors to protect ourselves from the virus, but to stay indoors to protect ourselves from the bad air quality. Choose your poison, folks.

image credit: Matthias Gafni, San Francisco Chronicle

Of course, there are some who cannot choose. California farmworkers are still laboring beneath the smoke-filled skies, to make sure the world has as many strawberries and almonds, and as much lettuce, as they would like. Climate change, like institutional racism, affects certain populations first and hardest. The definition of privilege is surely this: Me complaining about being stuck in my air-conditioned house, while distance learning at my expensive university, on my home computer.

These hard weather days have seriously affected our garden and livestock. Our oldest OG chicken, Molly, died very suddenly in the heat. I went out to spray the chickens with water one afternoon, pretty much the only thing I can do to cool them off (which they hate, but need), and Molly was lying, quite dead, under the quince tree. It looked like she went fast, which is a blessing. (Gertrude, the chicken with the bum eye, is much better and reintegrated with the flock, at least. I think she might be blind in that eye, but she is eating and drinking and managing very well.)

We found the world’s smallest swarm on the chicken coop door one night. Who knows if it came from our colony? Regardless, even the bees, who love heat and keep the hive around 93 degrees at all times, couldn’t handle the extreme heat and smoke and made a listless break for it. Tom scraped the swarm off into a box (receiving an inevitable sting on the wrist just above his glove), and placed the box under the oak tree. The next day, they flew off.

The plants, particularly the tomatoes and peppers which are under full sun all day, are quite crispy and no longer producing. Tomatoes, especially, cannot set fruit if the temperature is much above 85 degrees F. And their leaves are all very yellow and desiccated. I’ve noticed that some of the local trees have started changing color, several months before they should, protecting themselves by cutting off nutrients to the leaves.

All the seedlings I started in the greenhouse have been eaten down to the soil, I imagine by squirrels. This has never happened before. I cannot shut the door of the greenhouse because it would be a thousand degrees in there, but my light agribon cover isn’t doing anything to keep out serious threats.

red sunset shadows through smoke on the back fence

So, some flexibility is called for, not only in the humans, but in the garden. I have ordered more seeds and have decided to take the summer garden out early. I plan to do the season changeover on Labor Day weekend rather than the first weekend in October. I’ll take out all the summer produce (luckily our canning shelf and freezer are full, as I had more time this summer to preserve; one good side effect of being stuck at home) and get those fall and winter seeds in the ground, covered with low tunnels to protect them from those pesky squirrels and birds (who are also just trying to survive the horrible weather and smoke). I feel good about this decision.

Another good reason to do this changeover on Labor Day weekend is because the Friday before, we will be taking Adam to college. Or at least, that’s what we expect will happen (flexibility has been required in this department and more may be needed as plans change. UC Santa Cruz was just evacuated due to nearby fire). Staying busy in the days that follow that will be just what I need.

Meanwhile, we pray for the firefighters, one of whom lives on our block and has a toddler and another baby on the way. We pray for our leaders as they navigate a confluence of big, scary events. We pray for those that have had to leave their homes and go to live in shelters, many with just the clothes on their backs. We pack go-bags and make sure the emergency binder is updated with all the newest information and prepare to leave at a moment’s notice if necessary. Another lightening event is possible Sunday night into Monday as another tropical storm moves up the Baja peninsula, which also could cause high winds. We haven’t even had our usual autumn big-wind events yet. Fire season is just beginning.