Urban Beekeeping

Mark Leech, of Tasmania, Australia, writing about urban beekeeping, questions how Peace Bee Farm arranges its hives at three locations in the city of Memphis. Answering Mark’s questions about our urban bee yards reveals some interesting details. We discover that the nectar sources, the timing of the nectar flow, and the amount of honey produced varies within the city. Our bee yard located in the Memphis Botanic Garden produces honey earlier than the other locations and produces several distinct flavors of honey through the year. The area contains specialty gardens and a great diversity of flowering plants and trees. The surrounding residential neighborhoods contain flower gardens and numerous chemically treated lawns. A nearby golf course offers limited forage of clover. Observation hives a few miles away at the Children’s Museum of Memphis produce some surplus honey, even though they are primarily managed for viewing the bees and honeycomb. The older neighborhoods surrounding the museum offer wildflower forage in untreated lawns, vacant lots, and along railroad lines.

Today’s picture shows the view from our bee yard located in the rear of the Hunt-Phelan Home facing historic Beale Street in downtown Memphis. Even though the downtown area is largely paved and covered with buildings, the bees have access to trees and forage areas along the Mississippi River. Urban areas provide surprising amounts for forage for honey bee hives. The amount of honey produced may vary according to the neighborhood. Weedy areas and gardens often produce significant amounts of nectar and pollen. Carefully tended lawns, golf courses, office parks, and paved parking lots, however, are virtual deserts to honey bees and native pollinators. The Hunt-Phelan Home, completed in 1832, was designed by Robert Mills, architect of the Washington Monument, the US Treasury building, and part of the White House. The home has hosted US presidents Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Grover Cleveland, and Martin Van Buren. Confederate president Jefferson Davis was a frequent guest in the home. View Hunt-Phelan at http://huntphelan.com/.

--Richard

Cherries in Bloom

The cherry trees are in bloom along Cherry Road leading into the Memphis Botanic Garden. The flowering trees lining the road make this one of the most beautiful areas in a city of trees. The blossoms are attractive to honey bees, carpenter bees, and numerous other bees. The cherries are members of the rose family which includes many plants which are important sources of nectar and pollen for the bees. The Memphis Botanic Garden is a true haven for honey bees. The bees find a continuous series of flowering plants coming into bloom throughout the spring, summer, and fall. These urban bees produce honey considerably earlier in the year than their country cousins in the Arkansas Delta. There is a considerable difference in the available nectar sources separated by a few miles by the Mississippi River. The bees in Memphis find an array of flowering plants and clover on lawns that were not treated by chemical insecticides and herbicides. They also find a diversity of food in attended flower beds, overgrown vacant lots, parks, school yards, and public gardens, like the Memphis Botanic Garden. The honey bees in the Arkansas Delta, a region of industrial agriculture, find considerably less diversity of flowering plants. Unless plants have been specifically planted to support the bees, there is little food available in the open fields until the row crops bloom in the summer. Then there is an abundance of monoculture plants in bloom for a short period of time. Peace Bee Farm plants to provide a continuous supply of food beyond the agricultural crop blooming period. This is most important for providing good nutrition to the bees while we are producing our queen bees.

In today’s picture you can see some of the impressive cherry trees lining Cherry Road at the entrance to the garden. When we open bee hives, they have a pleasant odor of beeswax and honey. Our hives at the Memphis Botanic Garden have a definite fragrance of flowers.

--Richard

Honey Bees as Good Neighbors

Many beekeepers seem to love their bees; however, not too many people other than beekeepers like to have large numbers of bees close at hand. Some people fear honey bees as well as other stinging insects. A small number of people have allergic reactions to the venom of bee stings and need to avoid contact with bees. For these reasons, it is important that beekeepers maintain a safe environment for humans, pets, and livestock near the bee yard. Most beekeeping associations train new beekeepers on techniques for lessening problems associated with maintaining harmony between beekeepers and their neighbors. These good neighbor practices are particularly suited for honey bees kept in urban settings. Many managed colonies of honey bees are kept in hives in backyards of major cities as well as surburban settings.

The beekeeper's first consideration is placing bee hives so that the flying bees will not regularly encounter people. A fence or evergreen hedge near the entrance to the bee hive will force the bees to fly over the obstacle, and this keeps the bees flying above the heads of neighbors. A hive hidden from view of the street is less likely to be vandalized as well. Backyard beekeepers should watch the behavior of the bees and remove the drones and replace the queen of any highly defensive colony. In areas with Africanized Honey Bee genes, bees should be kept in more isolated bee yards. Providing a source of water for the bees helps keep them out of the neighbor's swimming pool. Bees love the flavored water of swimming pools. Most beekeepers share honey with their neighbors. Today, while working my bees that pollinate the beautiful Memphis Botanic Garden, I noticed a wedding was in progress nearby in the Japanese Garden. My beees, located in the Urban Orchard, are visited regularly by the public. A juniper hedge keeps the bees aloft.
--Richard

Children Explore Honey Bees

The Memphis Botanic Garden serves a number of functions in the city. It provides a relaxing and beautiful park-like atmosphere for groups and individuals to meet. The area includes a number of gardens including a rose garden, a sensory garden, a butterfly garden, a Japanese garden, several water gardens, an urban orchard, and even a prehistoric garden Trails course through exotic and native plantings as well as through daffodils, herbs, conifers, and a cactus collection. Horticulturalists tend to plants in a variety of ecosystems and designed gardens. They propagate plants in greenhouses. Peace Bee Farm maintains a bee yard on the grounds of the Memphis Botanic Garden for pollination and for education. The Memphis Botanic Garden’s web site is: http://www.memphisbotanicgarden.com/. They conduct educational programs that address people of all ages.

Along with others, we participated in an imaginative educational program for small children. As the children and their parents passed along the Memphis Botanic Garden trails, they stopped at various stations for exploration. At our station, located near a bronze statue wearing a beekeeper’s veil, the children got an opportunity to don a beekeeper’s suit and look into a bee hive. No, there were not bees in it. The parents and grandparents accompanying the children had many question about the bees. Many were quite knowledgeable of the shortage of honey bees. They know of the importance of honey bees and native pollinators. Botanic gardens are important; they enhance our lives and help protect the plants. We should visit and support botanic gardens.
--Richard

Nectar Flows in the Garden

In the honey bee’s natural hive, pollen and honey are stored in close proximity to the brood nest. This allows the bees to feed the larvae the large amounts of food that the developing bees require. The bees store surplus honey above the brood nest. The modern bee hive, developed by Philadelphia pastor L. L. Langstroth in 1851, is designed to match the honey bee’s natural tendencies in nest building. The Langstroth hive has a brood nest at the bottom and storage space above for the bees to store surplus amounts of honey. The honey storage boxes are called “supers,” because they are superimposed one on top of another. Inside the supers are frames which hold the beeswax combs that the honey bees make. Langstroth’s design, which he copied from natural honey bee nests, has removable frames. These removable frames can be examined to check for bee health. They also allow for the beekeeper to remove frames of honey

The bees take in as much nectar as the colony can collect whenever plants are in bloom. The one thing that honey bees don’t do is stop foraging just because they have stored enough honey to carry the colony through the next winter. The bees’ eagerness and ability to produce a surplus of honey makes beekeeping for honey production possible. One of the ways that the beekeeper can tell how much nectar is being brought into the hive and how much storage space is needed is to look in the honey supers. When there is a considerable amount of nectar coming in, the bees are building large amounts of beeswax comb to store the honey. The bees produce the beeswax in glands on the underside of their abdomen. To produce beeswax, the bees must eat honey. White beeswax being added to the sides of the top bars of the frames tells the beekeeper to add another super. That is the case with this colony of Peace Bee Farm bees in the Memphis Botanic Garden's urban orchard.
--Richard