As beekeepers, we work through a rhythm of yearly cycles. These include helping the bees build up for and then gather a crop for around six months of the year, harvesting this crop (with hope that there is one, it doesn’t always happen), packaging the crop, and working on marketing the honey and building equipment while the bees are dormant and resting up for the next season.
While this yearly cycle is constant, what is different each season and also on a day-to-day basis, are the constant changes of the flowers, amount of rainfall and snow, temperature in the location where the bees are (and on the other side of the world, which affect us), and also cultural changes of each location, such as alfalfa and clovers being cut earlier than 30 years ago in order to provide more protein for dairy cows, construction and development building in areas for flowers for the bees once grew, and farms becoming abandoned, which may allow for wildflowers such as berry bushes, goldenrod and asters to grow more profusely. 1997 will be remembered as an unusual year where patterns in nature were different, often unexplainable, which I think of as mysteries of the land.
- Because of a cool Spring, most of the colonies only had one day or so of flight to work on the dandelions in May. The bees traditionally get dandelion nectar and pollen for several weeks, and this enables them to build up for the main crops of the summer and fall. With only one day on the dandelions and a three+ week delay in other nectar and pollen, the bees were noticeably weaker most of the summer and many colonies had starved by June.
- This was a season where the bees made less honey from the ” major honey plants” (alfalfa, clovers, goldenrod) and a greater percentage from the ” minor” plants that provided nectar such as milkweed, chicory, purple loosestrife, sumac, thistle, leafy spurge, and aster. An early frost killed much of the goldenrod in September and later the warmest October in memory enabled the bees to work the aster plants for weeks on end and make honey.
- Several bee yards made zero honey up to early September and then made an 80 lb. per colony average during two weeks in mid-September. I saw this as a miracle it was very humbling to feel the power of nature.
These monumental forces that change the nature of each week for the honey bees are impressive and command a great deal of respect. We are not able to predict the changes that we face each season. While this is unusual for a business in America in the 1990’s, these changes have always been a constant for beekeeping. We have faith that over the years, the bees will make crops of honey.