🐝💗Our Backyard Beekeeping Journey!💗🐝

[drstratton]

The variety of white dutch clover I have doesn't get very tall. I like creeping thyme as well. Both are low growing and attract bees.View attachment 4197329

Another one to plant! Thank you!

 

[cavemanrich]

Another "flower" they really like is Malva zebrina. In the right climate it is a perennial. Here it acts like an annual. It reseeds prolifically. I now treat it as a weed in my garden.
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Its blooms continue past mild frosts with the bees taking full advantage of the late blooms.

I need to find some seeds for this flower. It is IDEAL for me. Blooms continuously. And if it doesn't act as perennial, self reseeding is just fine. I can find a spot in my flower garden for them

ETA.. Just found a seller of seeds, and they are from Michigan, So they will work in my zone. Reasonably priced as well.

 

[Sally PB]

Another "flower" they really like is Malva zebrina. In the right climate it is a perennial. Here it acts like an annual. It reseeds prolifically. I now treat it as a weed in my garden.

Thanks for showing us this!

That's beautiful. My husband tried a variant of this in the past and it never came back. But, we are going to try to find this variety, it says it should grow in our zone 6. Thank you!
Note to self, keep out of garden...lol

I need to find some seeds for this flower. It is IDEAL for me. Blooms continuously. And if it doesn't act as perennial, self reseeding is just fine. I can find a spot in my flower garden for them

ETA.. Just found a seller of seeds, and they are from Michigan, So they will work in my zone. Reasonably priced as well.

https://www.gardenhoard.com/mallow-french-hollyhock-zebrina-seeds.html
Was this the place, @cavemanrich? I'm going to order some from them. $3.50 a pack for 50 seeds. I bet shipping will be more than that, so I'll order 2 packs. I have several places I could plant them where they would look very pretty. I'll plant them away from the garden.

 

[PLW]

Hi everyone!
I thought I'd chronicle our new journey. Beekeeping! We have had our bees since April it will take awhile for me to get everything posted.

We talked about keeping bees for the past 20-25 years. We finally decided to quit talking and I'm so glad we did. They are such amazing, resourceful little creatures. They definitely put my work ethic to shame.

We were at North 40 and they were selling bee packages, so we jumped in feet first and ordered a package. That would give us a couple of months to gather our equipment and start studying and studying and studying...lol There is so much to learn. One of the first things we learned is that it would be better to buy a nucleus hive, so we ordered one of those too. It's also a good idea to have at least two hives. Still had a couple of months until we could pick up our bees.

So, this will have a lot of pictures of what we've done & experienced so far. I love to answer questions and help others, sometimes I don't have an answer and that makes me research to find the answer and I learn something new too.

The first thing we had to do was decide where to place our bees. We chose the NE corner of our yard. We could then face our hives to the SE, so they would get the morning sun and start their day bright and early.

We get a lot of wind so decided to build a fence. View attachment 4170251View attachment 4170252
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My husband designing and welding our new stands.
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Trying to decide how to set them.
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We decided to put in pavers to set them on.
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By this time we had our new hives. My husband built screened bottom boards for them. View attachment 4170256View attachment 4170258
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That's all I have time for right now. I'll post more later, as I can. Thanks for looking!

Wonderful! I wish I could keep bees. I'm allergic so the family vetoes.

 

[Sally PB]

More about Garden Hoard, the website I linked above. They have a minimum order of $10, so I got a packet of a new-to-me tomato as well as the 2 packets of Malva. Everything I looked at was certified organic, and they state (in several places) that they are getting a lot of orders, orders are hand packed, and it could take up to 4 weeks to ship out.

That's not a problem at this time of year, but I'll keep it in mind if I'm in a hurry for something. Of course, their timeline could change too. I thought the heads up was a very good idea.

Shipping was $6.80 (USPS), so my total was $17.80 for 3 packets of seeds.