Towards The End of May, and Dearth

It's dearth time- lots of garden flowers - but only Horse Chestnut, and Scotch Broom. Scotch- I'd forgotten and have been reminded by another beekeeper- that bees that look like the below are called Cheeto bees - covered with Scotch Broom golden pollen- and here's a hive in the evening , with all the bees in for the night, their pollen packets dropped off and packed- but their backs still dusted. Other bees are starting to clean them off-  I assume gathering the pollen and packing it into cells.

This is the same hive- how I pull it apart, look at each frame. look for the things that beekeepers are supposed to look for, and put it back together. It's a pretty strong hive- a queen I raised last year, and she's going great guns- filling frames up with eggs. A few days later, I Demareed this hive- a great invention from 1876, where you find the queen and place her with a single frame of brood and bees into a box with only empty frames in it, and she starts layng like crazy. It stops swarming- one of the primary frustrations of every beekeeper hoping for a decent crop of honey.

Today- out with these hives, on a farm south of here, along the river and amidst literally miles and miles of blackberry. It's endless- the entire river is borderd by it, and the hills around. None of that's a good thing- and they pay young college kids to tear it out and plant rows of native plants- but in the end, it all comes back. A lovely honey, an amazing berrry (druplet I think, actually), and terrible at the same time. 

Looking south from the same location- the river winding to the right- and every inch of the way, is blackberry. Hard to see maybe in the photo, but it has budded and near to blooming. A week? Maybe two? Now is the time to put supers on- to get them primed and ready. There's maybe 3 weeks of flowering, and then- the season ends. Pretty much the entire year of beekeeping is all for that brief blossoming. There are others- but nothing like this.