Our Bees In The Winter

The bees seem to be doing well so far this winter and even with a covering of snow, as you can see from this picture, they keep themselves nice and warm. They snuggle up together, all 30,000 or so of them., The ones in the center move to the outer edge and work their way towards the center again, that way everyone stays warm even when it is really cold outside. On days when the sun is out and it is warm enough for them to go out for a bit, they are doing housework and cleaning up the hive by removing dead bees and taking them outside. The bees that have this job are the mortician bees.

Julie Denison, Associate Broker

Beautiful Mornings and Rainbows

It was a beautiful morning,
Clouds filled the sunny sky overhead,
Soft rain came down,
All was peaceful,
The clouds cleared away,
Topped off with a rainbow.

Gail McGough-Maduena, Associate Broker

Placitas Recycling Association

Our very own Placitas Recycling Association at work in our recycling yard on a beautiful sunny day in January. We take lots of items, including cardboard, newspapers, junk mail, plastics #1 and #2, and aluminum. We all have lots of fun and see our friends and feel like we are doing something to make the world a little better. Join us on Saturday mornings from 8-11 a.m.

Julie Denison, Associate Broker

Bees In Bed for Winter

This will be our first winter with the bees and I am hoping to see their smiling faces next April when we open up the hive to for the first time since the fall. With the major wind storm that was forecasted for Thursday, December 1, I became concerned that the top would fly off and the girls would freeze so I tied it down. It is now covered with 2 inches of snow, a nice blanket I am sure. It is kind of white on white but here is a picture of the hive in the snow. Julie Denison, Associate Broker

Food Truck at La Puerta Real Estate Services, LLC
Oh Yay! Oh Yay! We have a great new addition to the Placitas Food Scene! Kimberley Calvo, a seasoned chef and Placitas resident is parking a food truck in the west La Puerta parking lot offering lunch and dinner Tuesday through Friday and breakfast on Saturdays, though this schedule is not yet set in stone. She's just started this week and welcomes feedback and suggestions. She is very excited about her new venue as are we, here at La Puerta. Her food is fresh and seasonal, tending towards organic as much as possible and definitely healthy and delicious. The menu changes regularly so we won't get bored and she may be posting her menus on her website. She says she'll also have a selection of kids' food so when you're driving starving children home from town, you can stop by and pick up a healthy meal for them without your having to rush to prepare their dinner while they're becoming little grumps. We welcome Kim and her assistant chef Alan to our neighborhood and hope you'll all come out to support this fine new local endeavor.

Sandy Poling, Associate Broker

Double Rainbows and Golden Valleys

Although Hawaii officially claims the title of “The Rainbow State”, our high desert Placitas area furnishes some beautiful rainbow views to rival the loveliest of Hawaii’s rainbows. One recent morning this October, the residents of Placitas were treated to this double rainbow against a sky still filled with darkness from the refreshing nearly-all-night rain it followed. In addition to the vibrancy of this rainbow, the sun coming up over “our” Sandia Mountains also gave a spectacular golden glow to the Rio Grande valley to the west – allowing us all to imagine that our pot of gold was close by. We Placitans must be among the most fortunate people around as far as natural high desert beauty is concerned, and I, for one, am very thankful for this beauty!

Eva Marie Renninger
Office Manager

Julie, Tracy and the Bees

My daughter, Tracy, and I decided last winter that we wanted to keep bees, so we joined the Albuquerque Beekeepers Association and started learning about them and put an order in for 4 lbs.of bees. Apparently, that is about 4,000 bees and we had decided to use a top bar hive so we had a third partner build the hive and we were off and running. (Although you don't want to run around a bee hive!) Since we started this in one of the worst dry spells we have ever had and the bees did not have enough plant life to work with, we were determined to have a healthy hive. I think that comes under "ignorance is bliss", but onward we went. We learned that we needed to supplement their food with sugar water and have drinking water close by. I proceeded to buy plants that the bees really like, (the hive is at my house, not Tracy's house) in hopes that it would make a difference to their survival. It seemed to work; they have flourished and were doing fine. Then the robber bees arrived and took all their honey! Never heard of such a thing, but we made the entrance smaller and the bees were able to fight off the robbers and we are back to enough honey for the winter, just in time. In a couple of weeks we will not be checking on the bees because of the cold and will not open up the hive until March. More on the bees then. Julie Denison, Associate Broker