Our Black Phoebe friend

I've noticed more wild birds visiting our garden this year--this one in particular, the Black Phoebe, is a flycatcher attracted to our bees. She used to come and just perch on the fence next to the bee hive, waiting patiently and swiping a few as they entered or left the hive. I wasn't too concerned, as I figured she was culling the slow ones. And she did also eat the dead ones. In June when I photographed her, she was focused on the insects living on the flowering fennel by the greenhouse. I saw her munch a few cabbage moths (they are white, and do some damage on brassicas).
Here is another shot of her on the apple tree. I learned her identity from a UC Berkeley student, Joanna, who came to the garden to do observations a few times this past spring.
When the garden is lush, many creatures find a home here--it becomes an oasis of life in an otherwise barren paved landscape. We too need this island of beauty...

Bee Swarm

On June 11th, our beehive swarmed. I went to the garden to water and feed the chickens, as usual on a Saturday, when our neighbor Nema came out of her house and called to me. "Your bees SPLIT yesterday," she said, her eyes bulging. "They were everywhere, 50 feet in the air," she gestured. "Oh," I said, "They must have swarmed." "That's it! They swarmed. I was reading about this last night. The bees will be gentle as they look for a new home. Scouts will be looking around for a new place to go. I'm an expert on bees now!" Then she pointed up into the top branch of one of the plum trees. "There they are!" I looked up, and sure enough, a large swarm of bees hung to the upper branch.

Of course, I had somewhere to go right then, but first I stopped home to call Nora and Alice, a local beekeeper and someone who had helped us before. When I arrived back at the garden at 12:30, a small crowd had gathered to watch Alice, standing on top of a 15 foot ladder, knock the bees into a box. She then took them over to an empty hive box with frames she had brought over months before, and shook them into their new home. Later, I helped Alice as she deconstructed our old hive, pictured above as it looked in late June. The hive had been living in several boxes without frames, so the comb, honey, brood, and bees were in a very "natural" and difficult to manage state--pretty much it looked like chaos in there. Alice patiently cut the comb, put honey comb in a bucket, and reconstructed pieces of comb into empty frames, with rubber bands to hold them in place until the bees could secure them.

We got three bottles of honey from Alice, some of which we enjoyed at the last work day.