Tupelo has been cut over so much, that I tend to discount it as a honey
source, but there still is some around, and when it yields, it really yields.
 
   Saturday we went into a bee yard about 9 AM. and it appeared that one was
casting a swarm.  Another beekeeper was with me, and he got all excited.   I
went to work, telling him we couldn't do anything until they pitched, anyway.
 
   As we worked, the swarm didn't pitch.  Instead it built into a roar.
 Whenever I tilted a frame to find the queen, my shoes got soaked.  Boy do I
get high on the sight of bees with full bellies!   We simply could not shake
packages, as the bees would drown, if we did.
 
   Tupelo has been yielding all this past week, but I think the peak was
about Saturday.
Blackberry is just opening, while dewberry is still wide open.  Most of what
I've seen on the bees is pretty pure tupelo, with no fruity taste yet.
 
   Not all yards have been getting so much, but all seem to be working.  We
will be short of brood for nucs and splits, as they were so late, and the
nectar has now blocked the queens.  Many of the ones we had made into two
stories, still had only a frame or two of brood in the upper box, where they
usually would be entirely brood by the first of April.  Now they tend to be
one or two frames of sealed brood, and all the rest honey.
 
   Lots of folks have been looking for packages and nucs, but we can see that
we won't have enough now for pollination needs on cukes and melons.
 
   Whew!  What a week!    Just over a week ago, we had come closer to the
edge than I have ever come, with at least a couple hundred hives without a
cell of sealed honey, and us running around, trying to get a little emergency
feed into the desperation cases.  Now everything is plugging up.  I have seen
things turn around in a hurry before, but never this late, and this close.
 
   God has richly blessed me, with a wonderful wife to work by my side, and
now with productive bees, making the first serious honey we've made in
several years.
 
   We loaded out the first truckload to go for Northeastern apples on
Saturday night in a thunderstorm.  It crackled a few times just as we started
loading, then settled into a light shower.  My wife was praying for the
lightning to stay away (with us working on a steel truck bed, I appreciated
that!).  There was no more lightning.  The beekeeper, a young fellow was
determined to get loaded and on the road, no matter what.  After our clothes
were wet, the bees could poke us right through them, as if we were naked.
 Chuck took at least a couple hundred stings without a word of complaint.
 After forty or fifty, I start saying things I hadn't ought'er.
 
   Agriculture is an intensely seasonal thing.  When the time comes to do a
particular thing, it MUST be done, no matter how tired, or how adverse the
circumstances.  If it isn't, then the season is past, and the opportunity
missed.
 
   I am thankful that we still have people in agriculture who have the
committment to do what needs to be done, even if there is personal cost.
  There are many workers, who put in their time, anxious for the magic hour
when they can quit work and go to their preferred lives.  In agriculture, the
work has to be the preferred life.
 
   We are blessed to have people like that.  I thank God for them.
 
[log in to unmask]    Dave Green,  PO Box 1200,  Hemingway,  SC  29554
 
Practical Pollination Home Page
http://users.aol.com/pollinator/polpage1.html