Thems is October beans. Unfortunately, so far, it seems that the flowers haven’t been much pollinated, so that the beans per flower ratio is only about 1/100. But if these mature, I’ll have a handful to attempt more next year.
The problem is that I’ve not seen even one honey bee. The pollinating is being done by, of all things, Tomato Wasps, you know, the ol’ Braconid wasp, since I had lots of tomato plants just at this spot last year. But what happened to the honey bees? I do see plenty of hives around WNC, but I don’t know if they are active anymore. I’ve never seen people tending to them, and they look to be relics of the past, before the catastrophe. Most honey bees were wiped out by a honey bee plague quite a few years ago, threatening agriculture.
Hey! An opportunity to do a service to the neighborhood! In a long distant previous life – many decades ago – I used to care for a half dozen hives with bees of the Italian variety.
There’re a zillion references to honey and bees in the Sacred Scriptures, and right throughout the history of the Church. I’m tempted to get one hive. This will take some research and planning and placement logistics.
- MY QUESTION IS THIS: What’s the variety of bee that is the best for a tiny operation nowadays, after the catastrophe?
Regarding Flowers for the Immaculate Conception, there’re a lot of logistics going into any flowers, wild or domesticated, especially including honey bees…
Analogy: When giving souls as flowers to the Immaculate Conception there are logistics in the background that have to be taking place, as in priests who provide the sweetness of the Mannah from Heaven, sweet as honey, from the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Sacraments even and especially during times of idiocy such as the Covid-19 lockdowns. Any good wrought by any priests is actually through Mary’s intercession with her Divine Son, Christ Jesus. But there seems to be very few priests who are willing to be the worker bees.
So, we need bee hives, Seminaries, that don’t churn out compromised candidates, but rather young men who are well formed to be dedicated unto death to Christ Jesus, all the doctrine, all the morality, all goodness and kindness and fortitude and conviction and ability to lead, you know, without being given over to the disease of Modernism and all the catastrophic doctrinal and moral heresies of the day wiping out the bees, as it were, and because of that, eliminating the sweetness of the harvest of souls for our Lord.
Jesus commanded that we are to pray the Harvest Master to send out laborers to the harvest. So, we need to get the Rosary going, all those Hail Mary roses, flowers for the Immaculate Conception.
Here in Charlotte Diocese, we have a great Seminary with the best seminarians, best formators, best staff, best administration, best diocese. That’s taken many Rosaries. And we have to sustain them. Hail Mary…
- Anyway, back to encouraging giving actual flowers to the Immaculate Conception, and the logistics for that: What’s the variety of bee that is the best for a tiny operation?
ARISE! LET US BE GOING! 
So are you near ivy? Heather? Ivy, I’m guessing is plentiful in your area. But one would assume that any honey that remains in the comb would not go to waste as the bees would, naturally, eat it. I know very little about the proper way to use the Flow hive, but this gentleman reminds me of a friend who had a tendency to make his own life harder by being entrenched in his own way of doing things, He has no proper suit, no smoke; he seems ill-prepared for the task at hand – even after three years.
He makes a very good point about the different viscositys of various honey sources, but that is about all. My confidence in his analysis is highly compromised by his displayed abilities.
I felt like I was watching a person with poor balance try to use a unicycle – perhaps a typical buyer, but not a typical user.
Yeah, that looks like me trying to do the same thing, but not, I hope, after three years. 😉
I’m sorry, Father, I kept laughing, thinking that at any moment he might throw his hands in the air and run off camera. I’ve got the giggles now.
Well. You encourage me!
Here is a video (below) by a neophyte who brings up many good points about the climate and location for a flow hive. His first strong colony did not survive the winter, and he simply glosses over that fact. Instead of asking why, he simply accepts the results and moves on to the struggle of continuing with the remnants.
My takeaway was “well, sure, some locations preclude honey harvesting, which means the flow-hive might not get any use, but one of the main role of the bees is to pollinate, right? What brought up the idea of keeping bees in the first place, Father, was the need for your beans to be pollinated, yes?
So even if it turns out that your bee colony might not have enough time to produce extra honey for you to share the bee’s blessing with others, perhaps the plentiful beans will be blessing enough?
Looking forward to the day you may say, “yes, I keep bees – and they keep me.” Or, perhaps, on challenging days, ” am I my bees keeper?”
The guy who made the video I linked has an instructive channel which seems to be enjoyed by new beekeepers. Maybee worth checking out during your down-time.https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-xczyljpDKuM00-45OUrvg
I understand that the biggest hassle in bee-keeping is the honey harvesting. Until now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_pj4cz2VJM\
So cool!
Oh, yeah, the video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs8hnT-DTiI