The Man Who Poked the Bumblebees' Nest...

Last summer a pair of chickadees nested in one of our nest boxes. I left the abandoned nest, a soft mound of fluff constructed mostly of moss, in hopes they'd return this year.This spring I've seen a pair, perhaps last year's, checking out the nesting box. A half dozen times they've inspected the nest, popping in and out and then going on about their chickadee business.

It's nesting time for our local avian species and the chickadees have apparently decided to relocate. A couple of days ago I think I discovered the reason. I opened the nest box door and noticed the floor of the box was damp and nasty looking.

My thought: I'll clean it out, let the chickadees build a new nest...plenty of building material around, especially in our backyard. I pulled out the old nest and tossed it nearby, went to the outdoor faucet and rinsed out the inside of the box. When I returned to hang the box, I happened to glance down at the discarded nest and noticed a bumblebee hovering around it.

I bent down to investigate. Mid-nest I noticed a number of cocoons the size of hummingbird eggs. I poked around in the moss and to my surprise two or three little bumblebees, like fuzzy baby chicks, emerged: the chickadee nest had morphed into a bumblebee nest.

Doing my best to keep the nest intact, I carefully picked it up, reinstalled the clump in the nest box, and quickly closed the door. I checked the ground for any stragglers. Circling a fragment of fluff was a large bumblebee. The queen, I thought. Her majesty landed on the remnant, perplexed, I'm sure, as to the whereabouts of her brood. I captured her in my glove and after a shake or two dislodged her into the nest and closed her in, hoping she'd set things to right again.

Since the incident I've peeked in the box two or three times and each time saw a couple of baby bumblers prowling about the moss. Yesterday I looked in again. No activity. I poked the nest a time or two, eliciting an angry hummmm from within the moss. Today, hoping for a photo op, I opened the door again and six or eight of the babies came swarming out in full defensive mode. I took my photos and with a couple of  irate bumblers orbiting my head backed quickly away.

As a staunch advocate of all species of bees, I maintain the more plentiful they are, the better for us all. At this posting the outdoor temperature is fifty-seven degrees with a light rain falling. My honeybees, fair weather folks, are taking the day off, in out of the weather. Yet bumblebees are foraging in my black raspberries, setting this year's jam and jelly crop. A nest of them on the property is a blessing indeed.

But I'll miss the chickadees.

The Man Who Kicked the Honeybees' Nest...

Of the six colonies I tried to overwinter only one remains, the others now just empty boxes taking up space: mildew-fouled, crypts of moldering carcasses. Year after year my discouragement with this bee business grows. I'm tempted to throw up my hands, run up the white flag, cry "uncle, uncle," but honeybees have been a part of my life for more than five decades. I can't imagine this property without them drifting to and fro about the place. It's a Zen thing, I, guess, or perhaps a tenuous alliance with Mother Nature who sends her winged messengers to announce the wakening spring. All I know is there's a place in my heart reserved for bees.They're good for the vegetable garden, certainly, but they're better for my soul.

When wintered over bees begin to feel the pull of the vernal equinox, they urge the queen to ramp up  production. As the earth tilts toward summer, the season of nectar, their little insect genomes know that strength is in numbers and numbers mean a surplus of stores to sustain them over the winter...for winter always comes. The beekeeper can assist the bees in their mission by feeding the hive a light sugar syrup, simulating a honey flow and thus stimulate the colony to increase its numbers.

There are two or three methods by which the beekeeper can monitor a colony's strength. The most obvious is breaking into the hive itself, checking the removable frames for brood and numbers of clinging attendants. Spring weather here in the Valley is fickle, so one must wait for a day of mild temperature to avoid chilling the vulnerable brood and larvae; "going into the bees," it's called. The invasive measure calls for the beekeeper to fire up the old smoke engine, suit and veil up, time consuming to the point that doing so takes longer than the inspection itself--unless, that is, one has a number of hives to inspect.

Or you can choose to be rude and a bit bold, as I like to do, and have the bees themselves conduct a show of force. For optimum performance the beekeeper waits until the spring evening cools when the flight of the field force has dwindled. Twilight time is best. (Airborne bees become crawlers in the dark.) Then you step to the hive entrance and give the bottom box two or three sound raps with your boot toe. In mere seconds a colony with a strong--even medium--population will pour from the entrance, quickly clog it, and mill about the face of the hive. At this point the prudent beekeeper steps back a few paces lest he be repaid for his rudeness by a host of irate insects, each armed and in defensive mode.

Nothing is more disappointing to me than after a tap-tap-tap, and a half minute's wait, only a few bees trickle out to investigate. In this era of beekeeping I call "post-varroa," the spring dwindle sadly seems to be the rule rather than the exception. As is my case this spring, I couldn't even coax a trickle from five of my wintered colonies.

Another simple method to check colony strength, less harassing than rapping on the bees' front door, is to interrupt briefly their access to the hive. Midday or early afternoon I step into the path of the returning bees for a minute or so. The bees, whose flight suddenly is in a holding pattern because a big mass of something not there a moment ago is now blocking their access, mill about confusedly. Then I quickly step to the side a pace or two and watch the thwarted bees resume their trip to deliver the goods. I'm delighted when a tsunami of bees, a sign of healthy colony strength, rush the entrance, anxious to deliver their goods.

The second method, a temporary inconvenience more than anything, is the kinder way of assessing a colony's strength. This I readily admit, yet I still can't seem to resist the temptation to give the bottom super a good, sound boot or two, step back watch the queen's guard rush out to see who comes knocking at our door.

The Spring Blues...

                                       
It is a blue-butterfly day here in spring,
And with these sky-flakes down in flurry on flurry
There is more unmixed color on the wing
Than flowers will show for days unless they hurry.

                          "A Blue-Butterfly Day" 
                          Robert Frost                                                    

Spring came to the garden last weekend. Or perhaps I should call its appearance symbolic, a harbinger, if you will, of the loosening of winter's grip, its dreary hold on our emotional well-being. It alighted on a blooming weed and opened its wings to the sun under a spring sky as azure, as iridescent as its wings: a small blue butterfly commonly known, and aptly so, as the "spring azure." Frost's spring butterfly was most certainly an azure as these little shards of blue herald spring from coast to coast across the northern states.

Blues belong to the family Polyommatinae as in "poly"for "many." Washington State is home to approximately sixteen different species of blues. On a late spring day in some locales in Eastern Washington as many as five different species can be seen flying together.To my knowledge
this little vernal messenger is the only blue butterfly that flies in our Valley.

This year's sighting was early (third week in March). Celastrina argiolus (the scientific moniker for the azure, a big name for such a small bug) usually flies here in May. I've seen them on warm afternoons drifting along our arborvitae hedge like windswept scraps of blue tissue paper. By June their cycle is usually finished, but during last year's uncharacteristically hot, dry summer, I observed an azure in late August, albeit a bit tattered and frayed, lazing about the rows in the vegetable garden.

Fluttering in on blue wings, spring--or at least the insinuation of it-- has come to the garden...at last.

(Note on photo: a pair of azures, male above; female below

Flower Filching in the Valley

Between showers this morning Gladys and I decided to ride the Loop. Besides, what are a few raindrops anyway? Just water, aren't they? We had turned the corner onto the upper Loop road to begin the return leg when a box truck heading down Valley slowed as it passed. The driver waved and I saw Va's familiar face.

Va is the Valley's Eliza Doolittle, Tualco's flower girl. Hers is the flower patch closest to the Riley Slough bridge. Last spring I stopped and chatted flowers with her. Our conversation led Va to ask if I grew calla lilies. I told her, yes, I did. She wondered if I had extras to share. It just so happened we had a clump of lilies that needed dividing as they were encroaching on other plantings in the flower garden. I told her next spring I'd divide the patch and set aside a nice shovelful of roots for her.

Since then I have passed Va a few times but could never seem to catch her at work in the field. My frantic waving as she went by caught her attention. The box truck slowed at the Loop intersection, turned around and rolled to a stop next to me. I reminded Va about the callas, wondered if she still wanted some, told her I needed to divide the clump before the stalks began to sprout. Yes, she would like the callas, she told me. I gave her my address and phone number, and she promised to stop by for them soon.

Va went on to tell me she's recently been a victim of theft: flower thieves. Her sister who farms a plot on the south end of the flower fields told Va she saw a small car approach Va's rows of tulips and daffodils, slow, and stop. Someone jumped out of the vehicle and proceeded to pull clumps of budding bulbs from the end of the rows and make off with them. Apparently the thieves were interested in the bulbs only; in the case of the daffodils, they left behind flower stalks.

Va climbed down from the truck and pointed out the disturbed soil where the bulbs were yanked from the ends of the rows.The brash thieves struck in broad daylight, too.

If you have purchased flower bulbs, you know how expensive they are. Va told me her six rows of tulips and daffodils cost her $4,500 this season. She sells the blossoming stalks in bunches at local flower stands and works hard for the income her plot provides. And now some petty thief has cut into her profits. But aside from that, I'm sure she now feels her property and efforts are at risk. Sure, Va lost only a few flower bulbs from the end of three or four rows. But she's also lost her peace of mind: I know a theft of any kind leaves the victim feeling so violated.

I told Va she needed to mount a surveillance camera on the power pole across from her field. She laughed and shook her head. If you're out and about in the Valley, be on the lookout for flower poachers. Seems to me if they'll stoop to stealing flower bulbs, those thieves are apt to steal anything,

Cribbage, Anyone?...

The other day I rounded up the pruning gear and went out to do battle with my summer apple Lodi tree. Despite the fact the old tree is ravished by an apple canker disease that haunts the Valley, some sort of infection that raises arthritic nobs and gnarls on the branches and restricts the flow of sap, it still manages to produce a prodigious amount of new wood every year. Much of the new growth is willowy and withe-like and requires considerable snipping and heading back to keep the tree from becoming one big, interwoven mat. Pruning the tree was particularly challenging this year because I did not prune it last season.

When I leaned my pruning pole against one of the tree's two leaders, I noticed a good half of the trunk riddled with holes a quarter inch deep, not random drillings but repetitive horizontal patterns circling the trunk. The perforations gave the appearance of one large cribbage board. When I first saw these markings, I was reminded of a beetle infestation that killed my two pie cherry trees years ago. Unlike the bored holes dribbling sawdust, these indentations have scabbed over and the tree appeared to be no worse for the poking.

I've seen these holes before on our walnut tree but hadn't noticed the intricate dotted artwork on the apple tree prior to this year's pruning. The holes are the artistic work of a species of woodpecker: the red-breasted sapsucker (Sphyrapicus ruber). With engineer-like precision the bird does its artwork, then returns to slurp the sap and dine off any insects that might be attracted to the syrupy watering holes.

After a bit of research I learned a sapsucker's sap mining can be so aggressive the host tree dies. Even though this stately old apple is a canker victim and now riddled with hundreds upon hundreds of holes, it's a survivor. Come mid-summer I have no doubt the tree will again bear enough fruit to fill this winter's applesauce quota.

This sapsucker business has me puzzled. It must have taken some time for the bird to perforate the bark countless times. I assume the species is not nocturnal, and therefore it seems I should have seen it drilling away as it circumnavigated the trunk row after row. Yet I've never seen its redheaded eminence bobbing about the trunk. In fact I've only seen the species once, and in the attached photo it clings to one of our fir trees out front. One more thing: the bird is a "sapsucker," right? Therefore it must do its work when the sap flow is most abundant, which, I assume is in the spring. Thus the window of time for sapsucker watching must be limited to just a few short weeks in spring and still, I've yet to see the perp.

So now in addition to having a food source growing out back, I also have an entertainment center. If you're up for a game of cribbage, let me know. I'll furnish the cards, but you'll need to bring your own ladder.

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder...

On this glorious late February day here in the Valley, I rolled Gladys out of the garage where she's been hibernating most of the winter and took her for a spin. We cruised on past Ed and Ginnifer's new construction and remodel. The two story breezeway between house and garage is framed in, the windows installed, and the metal roofing in place. I noticed the entryway has been reconfigured and roofed as well, the west entrance canted now to the southwest. During the tear out and construction the Broers family has been living in Ed's shop, and I imagine their homecoming can't come any too soon for them.

As we approach the Werkhoven Dairy, I see a lone figure striding briskly in our direction and assume it's either Steve, Jim or Andy en route to the next farm chore. We meet at the intersection of Sargeant Road where the pedestrian takes a right hand turn onto Sargeant. To my surprise I recognize Sargeant Bob, once a familiar figure in the Valley. We'd pass each other so frequently in our Valley outings we formed a sort of bond and would sometimes walk together and share bits of information about our personal lives. A bizarre incident on July 4, 2010, and subsequent encounter brought our"friendship" to an abrupt end. Both incident and post encounter were the subject of a July 13, 2011 post ("Strange...Very Strange Indeed").

It's been nigh on six years since that fateful collision and today was only my third encounter with the Sarge--post incident. Absence, they say, makes the heart grow fonder, but when Bob and I passed, made eye contact, the spring-like warmth of this beautiful day dissolved in the vitriol of his glare, and Gladys and I were thrust back into mid-December, a day of chill and frost. And yet again Bob gave me the cold shoulder and so much time has passed I can't remember which injured shoulder it was.

Edible Litter from the Valley...

Afoot in the Valley over the years I've come across many a strange item lying alongside the Tualco Loop Road. Most castoffs have been tools. I've brought home screwdrivers, pliers, a wrench or two (mostly metric), one of which, a hefty box end, could well have been used in the assembly of a 747. Just lately a sturdy paint scraper,... nuts and bolts and other assorted hardware. Nails, tacks, and screws I toss far out into the field to spare a motorist the hassle of having to haul out a spare tire to fix a flat. Stolen mail, condoms still in sealed packages (and others that were not), coins in denominations from a fifty cent piece down to a penny, thirty-seven of which I found littering a yard-long stretch of shoulder several years ago. And believe it or not, some years back on the First of April I found $1,000 in a muddy zip-loc bag.

Day before yesterday what to my wandering eyes did appear but a Snickers candy bar lying in the grass just off the shoulder. At first I thought the wrapper was one more item of litter tossed there by a passing litterbug. On closer inspection I found a fully wrapped, intact Snickers bar, regular size, lying there in the weeds as if it had fallen off the candy shelf at the grocery. "Hmmm," I thought, "this wasn't here yesterday.

Snickers bars and I have a history. In my other life, when I did my best to teach sophomores English as a foreign language, I used Snickers bars as leverage: I dangled them over a struggling student, "If you pass this test, this Snickers is for you." I mostly used them to build rapport with my students in friendly wagers on sporting events, major league baseball match-ups, championship and World Series games in particular.Whenever a student in one of my classes had a birthday, I gifted him or her with a bite-sized Snickers bar in a pre-wrapped gift box ("I need the box back," I'd tell them). Although in all honesty I prefer a Payday candy bar over a Snickers, I picked up the lonely bar for nostalgia's sake, stuffed it in my pocket and carried the roadside gift home for further scrutiny.

Both ends of the wrapper were neatly sealed, as was the seam, and in spite of its lying in the wet grass (a day or two? Overnight? Since morning?), the paper wrap was barely moist. The contents were not squashed, nor was the bar broken in half. Regardless if the sweet hunk came from Wal-Mart or Willie Wonka's chocolate factory, its contents: 250 calories, 12 grams of total fat, 4.5 grams of sat. fat, 27 grams of sugars, and 120 milligrams of sodium, remained well-sealed.

The question of the day: should I eat litter found lying alongside the road? But the the bar was still sealed in cellophane...not like it was opened, half eaten with a stranger's bite marks on the truncated remains. Not the same as fishing an uneaten slice of pizza out of a dumpster, was it? But still, the candy bar was lying in the wet grass just beyond the muddy shoulder of the road.... Do candy bars have expiration dates? That could be the all-consuming factor. Yes, they do. And yes it was....  Don't expiration dates principally apply to eggs, meat, and dairy though? And aren't candy bars sealed to keep freshness in? I rationalized the question to the point I could almost taste the caramel. However, I wondered, what if some sociopath injected the Snickers bar with some poisonous substance, a narcotic or worse yet, a laxative? A flimsy wrapper is hardly tamper-proof.

At this posting, the Snickers bar is cooling its heels in the freezer where it will remain until (it's my hope) I'll have forgotten all about it. And then, what a sweet discovery!

(If in the past three days you lost a Snickers bar in the Valley and would like to claim your property, stop by anytime. To prove ownership, though, you'll have to tell me the bar's expiration date. But for now, it's finders, keepers.)