Nature is awesome!

While Ryan and I were enjoying some of our new homemade goat cheese, we saw a colony of bees swarm in our big oak tree out front. Since Ryan is without the use of his left arm, we have a bee guy in our back pocket. He's going to get them down for us, and we essentially get a free colony of bees. :)

It was amazing to see how quickly the swarm was assembled into a thick ball of bees. It took a matter of minutes. And they are absolutely silent. No buzzing whatsoever. Hopefully, they aren't our bees swarming, but our bee guy is pretty positive they aren't. I'm keeping my fingers crossed there's an active hive when we check our hive shortly.

Busy as a Bee

I guess the old saying is true.  Our bees have been very busy.  Very, very busy.  These pictures were taken a couple days ago.  We will have had our colony for 4 weeks on Saturday.

The day we brought them home.  There are 9 to 15 thousand bees in there.

Honeycomb they are building in the hive.  There are 6 or 7 combs total after 3 weeks.

Individual honeycomb

Hybridizing Iris

I pollinated my first iris today. It's a lot easier than I thought. So, in two years I will see the fruit of my minimal labor. That's how long it takes new iris to bloom from seed. :/ If they are unique, I can submit them to the American Iris Society as a new variety of iris. Very cool stuff!