I was able to plant 18 strawberry plants today! Unfortunately, these plants above are NOT mine! It’s a great idea for a strawberry cage I found on Pinterest.

Take a look at my great garden helper that I hung out with while planting those strawberries!

Home Solar Power Discounts – One Block Off the Grid

Short video of a bee orientation flight at our hive. I love the orientation flights because it means our queen is doing a great job of laying eggs and ensuring a great supply of future workers. Today, when we checked the hive, we found 8 frames of brood! What a delight!

Morgan Bullard opened up the hive for us today, to make sure we weren’t totally clueless about this whole process. Take a look at some of the photos! We finally saw our queen (first time ever!), saw three queen cups, 8 frames of brood and lots and lots of honey in the supers! Good job girls.

**This post is reblogged from the Escarosa Honeybees blog!

Two years ago, a small and focused group of beekeepers in Pennsylvania began an event to educate people on the benefits of bees and beekeeping. One year later, the event had reached nation-wide acclaim and 501c status. This year, hundreds of beekeepers around the country are joining together on August 20th to spread the good news about honeybees!

If you don’t already know, honeybees are an important link in our food chain. Estimates say that between 50% to 80% of our food supply is dependent on pollination by honeybees. Without their help, we would see a large drop in the quality and quantity of many fruits, nuts and vegetables that we love (like pumpkins, apples, almonds, citrus, brassicas, nightshade vegetables and more!)*

This year, the EscaRosa Beekeeping Association will be joining with National Honeybee Day organizers to help spread the word here in Pensacola, Florida. We will set up a booth in beautiful downtown Pensacola at the thriving Palafox Farmer’s Market. At our booth, expect to find:

delicious honey
baked goods from easy honey recipes
honey and beeswax products
honey samplings
recipes
honeybee hive demos
real live beekeepers of all ages!
honeybee gardening advice
and much, much more!

We will set up our booth by 8 in the morning and will continuously be in attendance to answer any questions needed. Find out how you too can become a beekeeper. Join in one of the oldest agricultural pursuits (over 4500 years!) and discover just how magical honeybees truly are.

*Yes, these plants are also pollinated by solitary bees in some cases.

This is really the time for gardeners to rejoice, as we will once again be able to work the earth with only a modicum of sweating.  (With the recent heat, that’s definitely something to be glad about!)

To start out the month of August, we have welcomed several new additions to the gardens.  Here are some of the things planted at the end of July/beginning of August…

• pie pumpkin
• spaghetti squash
• more asparagus beans
• zinnias
• sunflowers
• marigolds

What are some of the jobs we’ve been busy with?

• pruning, uprooting and cloning tomatoes and basil
• planting clearance flats of plants from Lowe’s
• pulling up any plants that look remotely diseased or done for by the heat/drought

September is one of my favorite gardening months because…this is the month to plant garlic!  Always plant more than you think you will need!  At least, that’s how I always look at it. 

The rest of the evening and now this morning, there continues to be a large group of bees on the porch, in the air and on the hive front.

I want to know this: are these my bees?  Is there really no problem?  I’m pretty sure the ones in the straight line are our bees but what about these?

They’re trying to get in through the top of the hive, where there’s no hole.  Do I need more bee space?  Are we being robbed?  Bees are entering with pollen, I see bees fanning the hive and a fair amount of bees hovering around the hive.  Our young bees have always oriented at around 1630 hours so I’m not quite sure what could be going on.

I look forward to hearing your advice on this.