Category Archives: Garden

Beautyberry, Callicarpa americana

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Each cluster of purple berries is about as big as a lemon. And each beautyberry shrub has dozens of clusters: a fruit-eating bird’s dream.

 In addition to providing food for birds (our resident mockingbird has occupied the bush and gorges herself several times each day), the bruised leaves of this shrub produce mosquito-deterring chemicals, making it a good shrub to turn to when under mossie assault in the woods

These photos are from our garden. In the wild, this species prefers the lower elevation limestone slopes over the sandstone uplands.

Goldenrod pollen

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Goldenrods (Solidago sp.) are in full bloom, giving insects a welcome bonanza of pollen.

A bumblebee packs pollen into "baskets" on its hind legs. The baskets are made from long hairs.

Paper wasps (genus Polistes) also love the flowers. Some studies of goldenrod ecology suggest that these wasps may be the main pollinators of goldenrod. These wasps are normally very flighty, but on goldenrod they seem to settle down to the serious business of investigating every floret on the flower stalk.

Ironweed

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The rain is finally over, leaving cold gray skies in its wake. The storm gave us a little more than six inches of rain. After the month of drought, this moisture is very welcome.

I inspected the ironweed patch at the end of the garden and found that the plants had withstood the rain. Not one of them was knocked down, even though they stand on skinny, four foot stems.

The color of their flowers is remarkable. I’ve been letting the flowers go to seed for several years, so we now have several dozen plants in a big patch. When the sun returns, the insects will swarm all over them, sipping their abundant nectar.

Extracting honey

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I took two boxes (called “supers”) of honey from our hives. Each super has ten rectangular frames that hang vertically inside the super. The bees store their honey inside wax cells on each frame.

Inspecting frames of honey

Each hexagonal cell on the frame is full of honey and capped with a thin layer of wax.

Cells full of honey

To get at the honey, I first scratch off the top layer of wax with a sharp fork made specially for the purpose. Some beekeepers prefer to use a hot knife to slice away the top surface.

Getting at the honey: vandalism of the bee's careful constructions

Then I put the frames into a centrifugal extractor. This tall metal cylinder has baskets inside which hold the frames vertically. These baskets are then whirled around at an alarming speed by cranking the handle on the top of the machine. This whirling motion flings the honey out of the frames and onto the inside of the metal cylinder. The honey then flows down through a mesh filter into a storage area at the bottom of the cylinder.

Honey frames (left), centrifugal extractor (center), and holding tank for opened frames (right)

After all the frames have been spun, I pour the honey into glass jars.

Flowing honey

The two supers had nearly six gallons of honey between them.

2011 honey harvest: the stored concentrated sweetness of Sewanee's forests and gardens

When I’m finished, I put the equipment and the emptied frames at the bottom of the garden. There, hundreds of bees come out to clean up the left-overs. Within a few hours, no trace of honey remains.

Bees gather for mop-up operations

Wriggling between frames to slurp up every last drop

I left each hive with one or two supers of honey to keep them happy through the winter.

Bumblebees crowd into squash flowers

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Our Seminole squash vines have dozens of flowers, each of which is stuffed full of bumblebees (or, as Darwin called them, humble bees).

Seminole squash flower

The bees cram their heads under the central column (the pistil that gathers pollen from incoming bees), lapping at the nectar that oozes below. Occasionally a bee will break away and fly to another flower, but mostly they keep their heads buried in the flower, moving only to push themselves deeper into the nectar.

Seminole squash flower with bumblebees

The photographs above are of female flowers. Interestingly, the male flowers are a little smaller and, although they attract bumblebees, they don’t seem to elicit from the bees the same adoration and abundance.

Male Seminole squash flower

According to RAFT (Renewing America’s Food Traditions), this variety of squash is one of America’s ten most endangered native foods. This breed of squash was originally cultivated by Native Americans in and around the Everglades by girdling trees and letting the vines grow up the dead limbs. This gave the plant its other common name, “hanging pumpkin,” for the arboreal fruits. We’ve grown this variety for two years now. Its vines and leaves are enormous and they tend to smother all other plants in their path as they grow outward. They are phenomenally productive and seem to have no problems with disease. And, evidently, the bumblebees love them.

Bees pollinating corn

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Corn is usually described as “wind pollinated,” but honey bees love to gather its pollen to take back to their hive to feed to their babies. As the bees rummage through the corn tassels, they release clouds of pollen that drift away to land on the silks of the female flowers. These silks receive the pollen, then the pollen’s sperm cells migrate down the silks to fertilize the eggs in what will become the “ear” of corn. On days when the wind is calm, bees seem to be the primary cause of pollen movement. Corn is therefore perhaps better thought of as both wind and insect pollinated.

Honey bee gathering corn pollen into the "baskets" (corbicula) on her hind leg. These baskets are made of combs of bristles.

Three honey bees work one tassel

The garden is out of control -- photosynthetic anarchy. Beans, corn, cucumbers, watermelons and squash vie for space in this shot. Quite a change from the diesely air and cracked concrete of Pittsburgh.