The Pollination Association

The other day a work colleague of mine told me all about her new adventures in bee-keeping. She knew I'd be interested; anything vaguely animal-or-nature-related is right up my alley, and especially when they intersect with food production and Do-It-Yourselfism. I just made that up. Did I just make that up?

Anyway, it got me to thinking. I don't think I'm quite prepared, time-wise or financially, to devote myself to bee-keeping, though I do believe it's in my future somewhere. I started to think about the ecology of my yard, and about who's doing all the work in it. I have a lot of bumblebees. Since my entire perennial garden is overtaken by oregano each year, and it blooms at about this time, the garden is currently one giant buzzing engine of pollination and productivity. Incidentally, I'll bet that oregano honey is marvellous. In the spring, when the apple trees are in bloom, the buzzing comes from overhead and I used to find it disconcerting but not anymore. Those bees are too busy to notice me.

Though I don't really think I need to encourage the bees any further, since they actually seem to have colonized my yard without any effort, I came across designs on the internet for bee houses. It came about through my research into where exactly bumblebees nest, what the nests look like and whether or not they produce honey. I didn't get any great answers to the first questions -- though the nests do tend to look gross, like bubbling wax or lava, on the inside -- I did learn that bumblebees don't produce much honey, only enough to feed their young.

At any rate, I looked up the designs for bee houses, so I can observe their lifecycle sometime in the future. I'm not inclined to buy bumblebees, since I have so many already, but they say that if you put the houses out in the spring, they'll find them themselves, since they spend a good chunk of time searching for an appropriate nest at the beginning of the season. I doodled this design in PaintBrush:
I read that bumblebees seem to prefer mauve and yellow, so I will paint the area around the entry pipe in a mauve and yellow flower-pattern. This also gets a hinged lid/roof, which will overhang a bit. The pink stuff is fibreglass insulation. And how civilized are they? The first room is a 'vestibule', which they use as a washroom so they don't have to poo in the nest. I know humans dirtier than that.

So over the winter I'm going to make a few of these and stick them all around the property. I'll see what happens - I'm almost happy with whatever decides to use them, unless they're earwigs.

On the more complex side, Lee Valley tools has a pattern for making bat houses. Bats are such terrific little creatures: they pollinate certain plants, but mostly they're an awesome form of mosquito control. If we sit out on the deck at night we can feel/see/hear them flapping by overhead, protecting us from our buggy scourge. Bat houses aren't simple to make - they are governed by some strict rules - and they have to be placed in tricky spots away from busy areas. I'm thinking mine would have to be up in a tree somewhere. Bats are shy. But I think it would be neat to provide homes for them and encourage them to stick around. Maybe if the winter's really long and dull I'll get to that.

My colleague has promised me a field trip to her friend's hives. She's got two, apparently, and produces a LOT of honey out of them. It seems that one could become overwhelmed by the quantity of honey produced, especially if you're not inclined to eat it often. But honey is a great, natural, organic and ecologically-sound sugar substitute - I even read that it can be used to sweeten cider - so it might be worth it to anyone interested in the 100 mile diet-type food sourcing ethos, as I am. How great would it be to get all your sugar from the back yard? Pair that with maple syrup, which my brother's friends make, for a bit of variety and all your sweetening needs can be covered within 10 miles.

I look forward to seeing what's involved in the hives, and whether or not it would be do-able to have just one in my back yard. We're trying to create a small orchard area in the back, as I planted a cherry tree this past spring which looks nice and healthy, and next year I think it'll be a plum tree, to replace the sickly one in the front yard. Stick a bee hive under those and away we go. She told me that it needs attention every two weeks, and that sounds like a maintenance plan that even I could stick with, especially since it's only for half the year.

Back to cider: I think we're going to try to tackle cider this year. We have two varieties of apple growing in the yard, and more scattered around the neighborhood (the area used to be an orchard, many many years ago). The ones in the yard are pretty cultivated, not crab-appley or wormy at all. I have MacIntoshes but also another kind, which are huge and juicy but oh-so-tart. I figure a mix of these two will suffice, with maybe some sour wild ones thrown in, but my big question is whether or not I can extract the juice using an electric juicer. I don't really feel like building a press, especially since I don't have all that much time this fall. The apples are almost ready to pick so it's going to become an issue soon, and I need an answer. Then I need to go to the wine making place and get a carboy, and an airlock, and then I need to source some old Grolsch bottles that I can clean up and use for bottling. I think there's a closet in the basement with "Cider-Factory" written all over it. We're going to make hard cider (duh) and carbonate it so it'll be nice and fizzy and ready to drink by Thanksgiving or Christmas. I can't think of what else to do with my apples, I really have too many each year, and I never have the energy to make more than one or two pies. I think I still have apple juice in the freezer from last year. God it's such a mess.

So stay tuned for food-production tales. In the meantime, here's a story I wrote a few years ago for YouGrowGirl on my home-canning adventures.