The beauty of ornamental kale.

Kale after a frost.

Kale bolting.

Ornamental kale. It fascinates me. It is a relative of cabbage (both are brassicas) but it doesn't form a head. Yes, you can eat it, but it is more bitter than the "edible" kale. It is a great plant for the winter, providing beautiful color when little else is even alive (left photo), much less thriving. But kale will be there, in all its glory.  I took the photo on the right this morning. This is kale blooming (beginning stages). A biennial, it is going to seed and then will have completed its life cyle. If it is anything like turnip (another brassica), it will be great forage for my bees and they will go hog wild for the blossoms. The kale blossoms, in fact, look very similar to a turnip blossom.  I can't wait to see what the bees do with this. Every year I find something else to strew around our property. Turnips, clover, dandelions, buckwheat, sorghum. This fall, I feel quite certain I will be adding kale.

Staving Off Starvation

We had had a week of some pretty nasty weather. Icy, windy, sleety, rainy. Near zero temperatures, an all-around nasty week.

When I wrote this, it was 39 out at 8:00 a.m. Not bad weather for you and me, but honey bees tend to stay bundled up and inside at that temp. The high was forecast to be 57. And sunny! That meant the bees would surely be out. Though I knew it was a little early for them, I had peeked out to see if there were any brave ones by the feeding bowl. Not yet. I would be leaving shortly to go to work, but I was waiting, with baited breath so to speak, to see if a girl might arrive before I left. Four years into beekeeping and I still am almost as excited by my bees as the very first day I became a beekeeper.

In these parts, in the winter, when it's going to be warm enough for bees to fly, bees can expend a lot of energy looking for nectar that simply isn't there. So I put out barely-moistened sugar for them to eat. Just like those who put out food for humming birds, I set out sugar for the bees. Many bees starve in the winter, for various reasons. This is my way of helping to stave off that starvation.

I did get lucky before I headed to work that morning. Two girls donned a bee coat at 41 degrees to sup some almost-nectar. It is now my day off, another warm day, and they are coming like crazy. A very welcome sight.