The staghorn sumac (Rhus typhinia or Rhus hirta) flowers that the honeybees pollinated in June have developed into dark, velvety fruit clusters, or drupes. You can gather the drupes to make into a Vitamin C- and flavor-rich drink, or to dry and use next summer for your smoker fuel if you keep bees. Make sure you’re not collecting poison sumac fruits. Identification info at this Ohio State University web site, and a recipe at Healing-from-home-remedies.

You can also leave the fruits for the deer and birds to enjoy all winter, and for visual beauty in the landscape, their burgundy red standing out against the white of winter snows.

At the hive, the bees are still flying, gathering the last bits of pollen and nectar from late-blooming garden flowers and the last few asters, dandelions, or goldenrod.

Annie Watson

The honey bees are going all out, searching the goldenrod plants for every last flower that offers another grain of pollen, another drop of nectar, carrying their precious loads of gold back to the hive. The honey they are making now will help them through the long winter. Purple asters are flowering, and these too give nectar for spicy aster honey.

As I watch the bees, am I preparing too? Am I taking into my being the warmth of the sun, the blue jay’s sharp cry, the blades of green, the late-blooming dandelion? Am I storing up these things like the bees store honey, to be brought out like precious jewels during the cold days ahead?

Annie Watson

It’s happened to us all: You go away for a few days, or it rains, or you get busy with other things and before you know it that head of broccoli in the garden is flowering. But wait – Did you know that broccoli and other members of its family are favorites of honeybees?

Bees love the flowers from the brassicaceae or cruciferous vegetable family, which includes cauliflower, cabbage, cress, broccoli, brussels sprouts, kale, radishes, mustard, turnip, horseradish, and much more. It is thought that, as with humans, variety in honeybee diets is crucial to their health. By providing many different kinds of flowers for bees to forage on, you are helping them to be healthier. More information on the brassica family can be found at organicsforall.org. Information about how you can help the bees can be found at the University of Minnesota Bee Lab.

If you’ve accidentally missed a few broccoli heads and they go to flower, the good news is that their nectar and pollen will feed the bees. In turn, the bees will pollinate the flowers, enabling the seeds to develop. Later in the fall you can collect the seeds, and next spring you can plant extra for the pollinators.

Annie Watson