After taking off some of the summer honey the bees tend to get a little defensive since there is less and less nectar coming into the hive. This time of the year I try to check the hive to make sure they have enough food, but not spend a lot of time inside of them since it can trigger robbing. The hives at my brother's house were doing okay and seemed to be finding small sources of pollen and other resources, but it was certainly not what it had been in June.
Taking a trip out to my parent's house was a different story. I had stopped by to inspect the hive and when I was done decided to take a walk in the back field. As I walked through the chest high hay and brush of the fields there were quite a few things I noticed.
First was it seemed like there were a lot less grasshoppers than when I was growing up. I remember as a child we would walk through those same fields and you could watch a small cloud of grasshoppers moving across the tops of the hay. It seemed odd not seeing this as I walked. The other thing I noticed was the blackberry brambles that were spread throughout the field. Not only when I walked into them and they cut my legs, but also as I could see the full berries starting to ripen. I was about a week too earlier to enjoy more than a few, but I certainly made sure to pick as many as possible.
Of course there was a deer or two, when I passed them they made a quick retreat into the woods. I even heard a few ducks take off from the creek bed as I walked. What mattered most though related to the bees was the golden rod.
As I walked through field there was golden rod in large patches over 20 square feet. For the fall this is supposedly a great nectar flow for the bees if the conditions are right. As I walked back I kept going back and forth on how I should address this. At my brothers there is hardly any golden rod, so last year the bees only used it to fill the section of their nest for the winter. Here there was likely between 3 and 8 acres of the stuff. Since the fields hadn't been farmed in at least twenty years the plants had just grow naturally. So when I got back to my one hive at my parents I placed another honey super on top. Hoping that maybe I would be able to pull a little golden rod honey to see what it was like.
When I returned about two weeks later for a quick peek I noticed that there were bees covered in yellow pollen. My hope is that they had started hitting the golden rod. I haven't had a chance to get back since then to really see what else they have been up to, but I am hoping in a few weeks that I will be able to get into the hive and see how much additional honey we might be able to pull from out fall harvest. It would be so exciting even if I just got a little taste!
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