Bees Swarming Today

We had a swarm of honey bees fly through the garden, orchard, pasture (where our mules were grazing) and chicken pens (with 18 hens). We were not concerned and they headed south. The noise was a treat and we know to stay calm and stand still as they whizzed by.

Swarming occurs when a colony has outgrown its current hive and is preparing to separate into 2 or more new, smaller hives. When bees swarm looking for a new place to call home, they are usually at their calmest. When they get tired or at the end of a long day, they will often rest in a tree, culvert or other place they feel safe. You might get to see this resting in your yard and they may stay as long as a week. This is not the same as an active bee hive.

I wanted to send this reminder to all neighbors and ask that you please do not respond by calling an exterminator. Honey bees play a vital role in our ecosystems and food supply. As organic gardeners we appreciate their important role.

Bees have been struggling in recent years due to many unnatural stresses which include habitat disruption, monocultural & genetically engineered food provisions, and invasive pathogens & parasites.

If you have a resting swarm of bees and wish to have them removed you can call one of the expert beekeepers below. They will most likely charge less than an exterminator and the wild bees can be kept in new, safe hives.

Tracy. 928-899-2720 - Williamson Valley Area

Ken Miller. 928-300-1260 - Located in Rimrock (Verde Vly)

Nancy J. Deane. 941-815-1588 - In Prescott, PV, Dewey

Mark Gregory - Kirkland area - 928-830-8770

Tom Veatch - 928 925 2096 - Areas south of Prescott

Some interesting honey bee facts:

• In order to make a pound of honey, a hive of bees must fly 55,000 miles 
• Honey is 25% sweeter than table sugar. 
• Honey is the only foodstuff that contains all of the necessary nutrients to sustain life. 
• Bee venom is used as a treatment for several ailments, including arthritis and high blood pressure and beekeepers rarely have arthritis .
• The darker the honey, the greater amount of antioxidant properties it has. 
• Honey has antibacterial properties and can be used as a dressing for wounds. 
• Due to colony collapse disorder, bees have been dying off at a rate of approximately 30% per year. 
• Bees are being used to study dementia. When a bee takes on a new job usually done by a younger bee, its brain stops aging!

(Thus ended the lesson - sorry to be so long winded, but I LOVE BEES.)

Thought for Food

Not every place you fit in is where you belong.

Mother's Day Flowers

Its early in the spring, but it's Mother's Day. Many of our garden plants are only a couple  inches tall, but the Iris are beginning to put on a show. Here is Sotto Voce. I also adore my cold tolerant stocks, violas and snapdragons. Enjoy.

Cold Camping

Had a wonderful time exploring and hiking, and then it became too frigid to enjoy the woods. Packed up and headed home a day early, but time spent in the forest was well worth it. Plenty of beautiful Clarets Cup (chinocereus) tucked in and around the rocks.

Here's what a Clarets Cup cactus looks like in bloom. Stunning!

Good, Bad, Beautiful

The beautiful red-stem Filaree, Pinweed, Common Stork's-Bill (or Mexican alfalfa as it's affectionately called in Arizona and New Mexico, is in full bloom . Its creating quite a stunning roadside display. BUT it is an invasive plant introduced in the 1800. Beauty or the Beast?

s.

Unimportant Questions

 

• Do twins ever realize that one of them is unplanned?
• What if my dog only brings back my ball because he thinks I like throwing it?
• Which letter is silent in the word “scent.” The s or the c?

From YOUR library

Shy Moon Poem

There.

I see you hiding,

Floating between cloud islands. 

Searching for the sea,

Open dark waters where

You illuminate my garden

With your bright,

Steady beam.

Finally.

You are in place,

Like a great ship

Sitting on the ocean

Of dark blue silence.

Surrounded by a mass

Of tiny, twinkling rafts.

Your starlight companions.

Celebrate Banned Books Week

The last week in September is Banned Books Week - 2018. Time to Celebrate!

Read a book that’s been banned. Here's a potential list: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, To Kill a Mockingbird, Stranger in a Strange Land, The Red Badge of Courage, The Catcher in the Rye, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Moby Dick.

The books shown —along with many others—have been targeted for removal from bookshelves around the nation. Find out what all of the buzz is about! Join us as we celebrate Banned Books Week and encourage your children to read a banned book.

Watch Out for Blister Beetles

It's that time of year again... 

The blister beetles are doing their dance to make more blister beetles, and I suggest we all put on our old shoes and stomp until they are all flat and dead! You can ID them by their flat head, long bodies and legs, and thread-like or beaded antennae. Here are photos of species we see most often around Paulden, in Yavapai County, Arizona.

 

Every horse owner should know what they look like because it  just takes a few in a flake of hay to cause a horse to suffer digestive and urinary tract damage, inner hemorrhages and even death if they are unlucky enough to ingest too many. The beetles are capable of synthesizing cantharidin, one of the most poisonous compounds known to humans AND this chemical causes terrible blisters on the skin (see last photo).

The last (sorry it's gross) photo is when one got to me while I was cleaning out an old shed in NM. I never even knew I rubbed against its body until later. I had seen the beetles in the shed and did not recognize the species. The blister lasted 3-4 months and the doc felt it was at risk of infection if she lanced, so I kept it clean, bandaged, covered with a pants leg.

Beautiful bugs aren't always beneficial. This one is not one of my favorites.

 

Lagged NOT Logged

Overgaard Tree 1998

In 1998, I published a story in High Country News, Lagged not Logged. 

Now, LISTEN to a story I helped write for KNAU Earth Notes that involved traveling to see some of the remaining trees in the Kaibab National Forest, AZ.

Paul and I try to incorporate physical searches for lagged lookout trees when we travel the forests of Arizona and New Mexico. Included in our research is:

•  Historical trees that died or fell, including the Overgaard tree, which succumbed in 2002 to the Rodeo-Chedisky Wildfire. 

• Gathering GPS coordinates for the old trees using historical locations and compass data.

With our travel history we have learned:


* How lagged trees were designed and used. These important wonders of history, tell stories of firefighters that located fires in the early 1900’s by sitting like birds for hours in the tops of these trees. 

* Specific information for Arizona visitors and explorers about the lagged trees that are still accessible to backpackers, hikers, photographers and natural history enthusiasts. These amazing old trees have many stories to tell. Their historical value, condition and location is important – before they all fall to the ground. 

One of the easiest trees to access, view and photograph is the Tusayan Tree in Tusayan, Arizona, at US Forestry Dept, 176 Lincoln Log Loop, Grand Canyon, AZ 86023. (Follow US Hwy 69 to the USFS station and ask for updated to the tree. It is unmarked and near an APS Sub-station off first round-about in town).    

Hull Tree, Kaibab NF 2017

 

Hull Tree 1950's

998 High Country News: Lagged Not Logged, by Christine Haese

"Climbed Delodo Tree. Had a bad feeling, so dry and hot. Storm last night brought plenty of lightning, little rain. Spotted smoke to south, blowing northeast and picking up ... Caught hobbled mare and saddled up. Rode to Little Nelson Lake Tree, saw smoke again. Looks like a big fire ... May need extra folks on this fire." -  from Firefighter Journal of U.S. Forest Service fire spotter July 1935

Before the fire lookout tower, there was the "lagged" lookout tree - so named for the steel lags that provided steps to the top of the tree. The Civilian Conservation Corps created a network of these tall trees that spanned ridges and mountaintops across the national forests. Nimble fire spotters climbed to their tops on the spiked steps of tempered steel or wood ladders, then checked the horizon for smoke. Some lookout trees, such as the Hull Tank Lookout Tree on the Kaibab National Forest, still have their wooden platforms. On the Mogollon Rim of the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in Arizona, a 60-foot-tall ponderosa pine known as the Overgaard Tree still stands, its rungs grown high. And on the Kaibab National Forest, several lookout trees have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
 
While lookout trees were left standing across the United States, they were most common in the Southwest. For more information, contact the Kaibab National Forest, 928-635-8272, Black Range Ranger District of the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, 928-535-4481 or the National Historic Lookout Register, 1-800-476-8733.