I ordered my honeybees! They’ll be the Italian variety. Benissimo! They say the Italian bees are very docile and gentle and great honey producers. They will arrive on April 27-overnited from Honeybee Genetics in California. I will get a topbar style of hive.

What do bees have to do with vegetable gardening? Everything! With out pollinators we would have no produce. We have many pollinators-hummingbirds, moths, butterflies, native bees, some beetles and of course the honeybee.

I already have some bees on the property but they belong to a friend of mine. I have learned from him about them and excited to get some of my own. Last year I put in some bee flower gardens to provide more food for them (I will continue putting in more this year as well) and of course they have the vegetable and pumpkin gardens to get pollen and nectar from as well. I was amazed how well the bees did out here considering we did not have a good year as we only got 2 rainstorms all summer and they were late in the season as well. But after we got the rain, lots of native plants blossomed and they were ‘busy as bees’ collecting their food in the fall until winter came. Now they are mostly holing up in their hive-much like we are.