Lovely Day

I set off to see John"s magnificant deep purple iris. Truly spectacular, but difficult to photograph.

These yellow roses are near the main entrance.

Peck's skipper on heal-all, Prunella vulgaris, in the meadow.

I had 2 red admiral females in my garden most of the day. They were looking for a place to lay their eggs. I finally found this one egg, but I am sure there are more. They are very small.

Red admiral egg on false nettle, Boehmeria cylindrica

Native Pollinator Survey

Our beekeeper has placed a very simple native pollinator survey device on the grounds of Foulkeways. The white, blue and yellow cups, known to be attractive to specific pollinators such as bumble bees, leaf cutter bees, alkali bees, etc. Each survey period is only 24 hours, but will be repeated at two week intervals all summer. There are signs by the cups identifying their purpose and giving a phone number to call for questions.

I don't know about bees, but this certainly was attractive to Peck's skippers.

Still Life

The topic for this week was "still life", so these are some of the things I found over at central.

Fern Garden

A few of the things that I saw today in the fern garden

Chrysogonum

Jack-in-the-pulpit

Yellow trillium

Japanese painted fern

Large-flowered trillium

Rattlesnake weed

Hellebore

Solomon's seal

Mayapple

tiarella

Pinellia ternata

This is Pinellia ternata, which is Betty's most hated weed. It is both invasive and stubborn.

It has leaves of three similiar to other Araceae family, like Jack-in-the-pulpit.

It has a spathe. and inside are seeds.

So pl;ease do weed it out, getting that bulb, but do not put it into the compost, as all parts of it will generate new plants, and it will spread, spread, spread. Put it in the garbage.

For some unknown reason the blog has been turning these photos. Sorry about that.

Queen Bees

Yesterday's new queen has been accepted, so Vince will pull the plug on her cage.

See the blue dot on her back - this year's queen wears blue.

Workers and new queen come in a small box with "candy" to feed on.

Vince takes the workers out.

Putting a new queen in a hive.

Plug and candy on the queen box

Shake the bees

Going back in, we hope to make honey.

Three Hives

Our beekeepers came to create a "shook swarm" in the strongest hive to make comb honey. However, the queen had swarmed, so in our strongest hive they placed a new queen, on top of this a queen excluder, and above this two boxes containing "Ross Rounds" for comb honey.

Looking for the queen

Shaking the bees

Boxes with Ross Rounds

Mite on drone larvae