A short tour today starting at the beehive area. |
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The three beehives provided by Hendrik is situated behind this jumble of banana trees, castor oil plants and Leonotus Leonorus (a South African indegenous medicinal and ornamental garden plant that’s great food for birds and bees.) |
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You can see an interesting modification of the beehives here, with an extra hole drilled in the side and on the top. This allows for extra routes of access and ventilation. What’s interesting about it, is that the bees will close up these holes with propolis as it gets too cold for their liking, and open it up again when things get warmer, probably in late spring. So this also serves as an environmental measure of when it really starts to get cold and you can see that both the top and side holes are still wide open (altough the top one looks like they might be starting to close it). This is the first winter with this hive setup on the farm, but I’m going to start tracking the weeks in which they decide to close and open the hives, to find a bee-marker of when it’s getting properly cold and heating up again. |
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Another seasonal indicator is this guy, a Chasmanthe species (thanks again to Avril for the ID last year), which I see I spotted in middle June last year. Winter is coming! |