Spring Work and Its Rewards

“Spring work is going on with joyful enthusiasm.”
― John Muir, The Wilderness World of John Muir

Well, it's not all joyful, but most of it is. It has been an interesting seasonal transition to say the least. My first round of seedlings, planted according to the earliest start date for transplants, did not last very long at all. Quickly, I adjusted my planting calendar in my journal and started a second batch. Now that batch has also perished. I have never had much luck sprouting seedlings indoors. I think I will just go ahead and purchase some tomato and broccoli transplants. The good news is, I have an abundance of life happening outside!

On a beautiful afternoon (March 29) I began planting some outdoors seedlings. 50 potatoes (19 small yellow, 13 red, and 18 large yellow), 4 square feet of carrots, 2.5 square feet of lettuce, 16 green beans, and a second round of 21 spinach. Today, all of these were showing beautiful green signs of life. Of course, this downpour/tornado tonight is not very promising, but at least I took photos to prove I didn't do it all wrong! Surely everything will do fine. They all survived the hail just two days after being planted, and a few nights near freezing.


In addition to edibles, I splurged a little on some annuals and an azalea, in preparation for my bees. I picked a semi-shady bed where I have had little luck, so I chose light colored begonias and some petunias. From my time spent working for a landscape architect (a very good one), I learned a few things. One thing is that plants can sometimes be like people. For example, there are different types

of begonias, those with dark green foliage and those with lighter green foliage. Like skin, the darker leaves can handle more sunlight without burning. So if you have a sunny spot, get the darker variety and vice versa. Anyways, I planted one azalea surrounded by 12 white blooming begonias, and 18 pink petunias. We'll see if they last, and if they don't, oh well, they're annuals!

Now for the most joyful, enthusiastic news:  we have bees! At the April Lady Beekeeper's Association meeting I gave a nuc box complete with 5 frames to the president. She had promised a swarm for me and I wanted to be prepared. Then, just two days ago, on the way home, I got the call. "Stephanie, we have your bees. You can come get them today." So off we went, bee suit at the ready, and jumped in my husband's car (I drive a hatchback, which is no good for transporting a box of bees, unless you want to drive in your bee suit...). We arrived to find the bees neatly packed in a box and tied with a piece of twine. Just like a beautiful, buzzing present. After some discussion, we headed home where they were set atop our hive to spend the night. To keep them fed while they were enclosed, we mixed 4 lbs of sugar with 1 gallon of water, heated until dissolved, then put in a spray bottle, and sprayed the bees through the air vents.

With the impending storms of Wednesday, I rushed home Tuesday to see if they were situated enough to be moved to the hive. Sure enough, I saw lots of activity and heard lots of buzzing. When we originally picked up the box, a number of bees had been trapped on the outside. They were still very much attached to their colony and not wanting to be separated. We managed to make it home with at least a dozen or two attached to the outside. Yesterday, I could tell that these bees had been exploring and bringing back some pollen and nectar to the box. All very good signs.

Once my husband arrived, we lit the smoker, prepared two feeders with the sugar-water solution, and took all our gear outside. The moving process was fairly easy. It was very exciting, but we were both nervous. At one point, my husband even mentioned that his confidence was not as high as when we had our "mentors" with us. In fact, we video taped the entire process and I realized while watching it later that I got a little too happy with the sugar water and probably overdosed everyone in a five mile radius on sugar. The good news is we got all the frames into the hive, added some more empty frames to fill up both hive boxes, and put everything back. Naturally, there were some bees who did not make it inside the box with the frames, but by dark, most had found their way into the hive and were safe and secure.