Bee-gone!

Wow! What a night! Emily from  AZ Queen Bee came out last night about 8 PM and took care of our bee problem, which turned out to be more extensive than we had thought. The whole extraction process took about an hour and a half.  She said that normally wild hives have about 10,000 bees, but estimated there were about 50,000 in the hive under our Bridge to Nowhere (which is going somewhere soon...most likely to the landfill!) There was not much honey, but a lot of bees, eggs, and larvae in the hive. The queen apparently took the Edenic command to "be fruitful and multiply" quite seriously. Fortunately, these were fairly docile creatures, as bees go.

After suiting up, Emily used a vacuum device to suck up the bees into bee boxes for transport to their new home. She wound up filling three bee boxes. Here's what they look like:

She then upended the bridge so that she could scrape out the honeycombs underneath. Practically the whole bottom surface of the bridge was covered in honeycomb. Here's a picture of her holding up a section of it:

Mike was a little more daring than I was in, and got in close enough to take some pictures and a short video of the bees swarming the underside of the bridge. Here's a screen shot taken from the video, which turned out much better than the still shots did:

And here's the video:

Oddly enough, Mike didn't get stung, even though he got in closer than I did. I got stung once on the leg and decided not to go any closer. BTW, if you get stung, take the stinger out as quickly as possible, ice it for several minutes, then put toothpaste on it. This is the least painful bee sting I've ever had.

Emily said that it might take several days for bee stragglers to dissipate. This morning, we saw several dozen flying around, I assume looking for their former home. She also told us that "robber bees" from several miles around might wander in after catching the scent of the disturbed honey and wax. 

If you're ever in need of a beekeeper, I highly recommend the AZ Queen Bee! She is very knowledgeable and professional. I found the experience very interesting and educational. 

To Bee Continued

 I put up a "help me" post in the Desert Gardeners of Maricopa County Facebook group and got a response from someone whose brother is a beekeeper. She came out today, along with her nephew, to scope things out in advance.  The pictures I took yesterday were from my camera phone, which only has a digital zoom. Mike took these today with his "real" camera, which has an optical zoom.

There appear to be three distinct clusters of bees hanging from the underside of the bridge. We think they came in after Friday's heavy rains, because I first noticed them on Saturday, and because right after a rainstorm is when a hive is most likely to split off to form a new hive. These bees must think they have found paradise in our Arizona Backyard Eden...a shady, protected spot, lots of flowers, and easy access to water in our ponds. However, what is paradise for bees might be called something else by humans living in close proximity to them.

Hopefully, the father-and-son beekeeping team will be here today or tomorrow to escort our bee friends to a home that will be a better fit for them than this spot behind our pool.

Bees where I don't want them

A couple of days ago on my walkabout in the yard, I noticed an unusual number of bees in an area behind our pool, near the fence line. We have a decorative wooden bridge we call "The Bridge To Nowhere" there, and they have apparently set up housekeeping under it. Although they are not particularly aggressive bees, they cannot stay where they are. I really don't want to kill them if I can avoid it, because there is such a problem with bee population decline. I called a couple of beekeepers that people in the Desert Gardeners Facebook group recommended, and hopefully they will be relocated to a better home soon.

August overview

We've spent most of July clearing out the raised beds for fall planting. Summers here are like winters elsewhere...not much fun and not much success in the garden. Serious gardeners extend the growing season by putting up shadescreen over their vegetable beds, but we usually don't; we just give everything a rest.

An unexpected consequence of our conversion of the grass pathways to gravel was the loss of several more trees in the summer heat. In addition to the apple tree, a plum and a fig tree started showing signs of severe decline. My theory is that the tree roots were shallow and spread out because of the grass watering pattern, and couldn't adapt to a drip irrigation system.

If you're wondering what to plant in August, here's a list: We planted beans, carrots, lettuce, and summer squash in the smaller bed nearest the house and are going to try corn (again) in the larger bed by the streambed.

July overview

This is not my favorite time of the year. because it's hot...hot...hot! It's not much fun to work in the garden, and the garden shows it. But since I made the commitment to myself to post overview photos around the first of each month, here's one from a different direction. I stood on top of the upper pond  to take this picture.

All good things...

Unless you shade them, tomatoes don't last very long in our summers. Pollen becomes inactive and the fruit and leaves become sunburned. These are probably the last slicing-size tomatoes we will get this summer, although the cherry types seem to go on and on.

Today I pulled up three tomato plants that were in significant decline. One was a plant that survived the winter and leafed out again, and the other two had their root systems compromised by the patio addition. I also picked almost a dozen ripe tomatoes from the plant in the picture above. There are a few more green ones remaining, and I'll probably take this plant out too after I pick them.

More on the road less blogged about

Our "backyard" is really fairly small. We do most of our gardening in the "side yard", so that's where most of the pictures on this blog were taken. The trees flanking the pathway are a pink grapefruit and an orange, and together with a lemon tree that isn't shown, are the oldest trees in our yard. They were planted as 15 gallon trees in the summer of 2002. Citrus trees have done much better for us than any kind of deciduous trees. They are on drip irrigation and we fertilize them three times a year. Here's the chart we use to calculate how much to feed them and when. You will note that they look more like bushes than trees because we allowed them to grow into their natural shapes. That's best for the trees, because the shade protects the bark from sunburn. Some say the fruit growing on the lowest branches is the sweetest.

And here's a picture of what the trees looked like when they were first planted! That's my mother in the picture. A breast cancer survivor since 1991, she is convinced that pink grapefruit played a part in her successful treatment. So when we moved here, one of the first things we planted was a pink grapefruit tree.