Honeybee

 

 

Oh wait, not that honey bee, but it is a fun song!

 

Our honeybees made it through the winter!  We really thought they were gone after 2 warm weeks past with no action, but we saw them for the first time on May 31st. 

 

 

The bees moved in 4 or 5 summers ago and each year they go to work pollinating our plants and making honey for the winter.  The only downfall is that they live in our garage wall.  We don’t harvest the honey, but hope to one day remove them from the wall and put them into hives. 

 

I can only imagine what that hive looks like on the inside…

I’m sure the damage to the wall is great, but the benefit for the garden is even greater.  You won’t find us killing these bees, ever.  We work right under their hive and although they come out and fly around, we’ve never been stung.

 

I can’t wait for these guys to get to work on Garden 2.0!

Do you know anyone with beehives?  Any bee advice?

A Map of the Yard

I’m not sure that all of the yard pictures really make sense without a general idea of the layout of our yard.  This is my horribly inaccurate, not drawn to scale version of our yard.  This gives you an idea of what you are looking at.  The large pines line the drive way on the left side and line the yard, but I didn’t include them.  The entire area behind the swamp at the very bottom is all woods…~138 acres of woods.
(Click to see the entire image)

Is the layout what you pictured it to be?

Drainage

We have a very wet yard.  Our property is basically a peninsula to a large swamp.  I hate it, but that is mostly because the mosquitos seem to think I’m an all you can eat buffet.  Jon calls me his natural bug spray…it’s true love

Due to this swampyness we are in dire need of drainage.  Jon got started by adding a ditch to help drain the yard into the main swamp.  This will help our lawn dry up.  Hey, maybe we can mow before the grass is 2 feet tall!