You know it is spring when the bees are bringing several different shades of pollen. I tried to get a picture of them coming back to the hive showing their pollen sacks filled but they don't stop and pose for me. I will have to work on that. The colors range from white to almost a chartreuse green and it is a combination of the elm trees, juniper and wild mustard, I am sure there are other things opening too but these are the ones I know. There are lots of fruit trees that will be opening soon and they will be getting the pollen from those too. That old saying "busy as a bee" is really true!

Julie Denison, Associate Broker

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

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

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