Spring Showers in the Delta

There is a lot happening at Peace Bee Farm. The month of May brings the most pleasant weather. Daytime temperatures in the 80s and regular rainfalls make for a good white clover nectar flow. This spring’s newly mated queen bees are expanding their colonies to the point that they may soon be moved into regular honey production bee yards. These bee yards are scattered about the area to cover greater amounts of forage area and to lessen the potential for loss due to an outbreak of a honey bee disease or pests. The effects of windstorms, fires, and insecticide poisonings can also be lessened by separating the bee yards. We maintain several bee yards spaced a few miles apart surrounding our queen mating yard for the purpose of saturating the area with drones of our preferred genetic make-up. This helps assure that our queens will be mated with a number of high quality drones.

While checking the outlying bee yards, I caught this rainbow over some bee hives. The springtime weather made enjoyable working conditions and for a beautiful sight. Rain showers drifted across the wide-open, table-top flat Arkansas Delta, encouraging spring wildflowers. The honey bees interrupted their foraging for an hour’s break during the brief rainfalls. I finished checking the honey supers and feeding expanding bee colony divisions then headed to another bee yard located close to the base of the rainbow.
--Richard