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Rootflux Bee Co.

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United States
Pawling, NY
Rootflux Bee Co.

Rootflux Bee Co. offers beekeeping services, goods, and education within the Hudson Valley, NY. Prac

07/13/2022

reflections

07/09/2022

A honey bee & borage blossom. I hope you are able to rest, to nourish your body and soul, to find balms of hope and joy in the small things.

06/19/2022

What a day! I drove up to Massachusetts yesterday to join Queen School for the day and learned so much from the instructors about cell builders, grafting, & more. Got my first hands on experience with the comfort/box hives - tiny magical little beasts which solidified my need to build some ASAP. Many good conversations and stories about the never ending learning experiences that the bees offer us. And to be able to hug Melanie after not seeing her for 8 years! You can still grab a day pass for July/August!

🐝

06/14/2022

🍯

06/12/2022

Been a good minute since I showed my face or introduced myself. So here’s the beekeeper behind the screen, with a smoothie stained nose and tired eyes from a bear getting a taste of my hives last week. (All is good so far!) My nickname is Kaat (she/her) and I was born and raised in the Hudson Valley of New York (Munsee Lenape, Mohican, & Schaghticoke land). I fell in love with the art of beekeeping when I was 12 years old. I was the 13 year old in a tank top and flip flops inspecting my hive with a screwdriver & paint scraper. 😅 When I hit 18 years, I took off traveling the USA via hitch hiking, bicycling, public transportation, and an 1981 Toyota pickup that I dearly miss. I spent 5 years living out of a backpack and wandering all over the country and worked with several small farms and beekeepers along the way. After witnessing the true cost of our current conventional agriculture systems, I began to look at local regenerative food systems and communities for inspiration, hope, and fuel. I tend to 20 something hives of my own and care for several client’s hives as well. My bees are primarily hearty local survivor stock and I’ve been introducing queens from breeders that focus on hygienic, gentle, and productive traits. Bee genetics and breeding fascinates me so naturally queen rearing is something I’m slowly working towards. I am currently in - undertaking the Cornell Master Beekeeper Certification and just started the Penn State, Northeast SARE funded EPIQ (Education, Production, and Insemination of Queens) program. & I work full-time as the beekeeper-perennial coordinator . To unwind, you can find me in the garden, curled up with a good book (Barbra Kingsolver!), or learning a new homesteading skill. Cheese making is the latest. 🧀 Now it’s your turn to tell me what brings you joy & calm!

05/18/2022

Get on your camera lens and call it

05/17/2022

Red pollen pants! Online sources say it’s from either henbit or horse chestnut but neither I or Maggie () have seen honey bees on those so a bit mystified about the source of this beautiful crimson pollen. Anyone local have clues?

05/15/2022

LILAC HONEY : : : gather a big bowl of lilacs. Channel the patience of saints picking off every bit of stem. Stuff blossom in a jar and cover with honey. Taste in a few weeks.

05/08/2022

As the mother of the colony, the queen bee is responsible for laying all the eggs the colony needs to produce its workers, drones, and virgin queens. She is capable of laying up to 2000 eggs a day in the peak of the season! The queen has a retinue of worker bees circling around her, grooming, feeding, and tending to her. She emits a blend of pheromones that the retinue picks up and passes along to the rest of the colony which communicates that the queen is alive and well. Despite the name, the queen does not actually rule the colony. The honey bee colony is a superorganism, containing anywhere around 30 to 50 thousand bees that all work together cooperatively and functions as a whole. One single bee cannot survive on her own. The queen depends on her daughters to build and defend the nest, bring in food, rear the young, fight parasites and pests, and so much more. It takes a community.

05/07/2022

April’s rainbows 🌈 This is pollen that was gathered by forager bees then packed down into the combs and mixed with a bit of nectar and saliva to ferment into bee bread. The added saliva and enzymes helps break down the pollen into a digestible and stable source of protein. Diverse colors = diverse nutrition.

05/05/2022

A symbiotic relationship: The bee collects nourishment in the form of pollen and nectar. The blossom is fertilized as the bee visits her. The human bites into a juicy peach in late summer.

05/04/2022

Death battle of the virgins! Last week I inspected this colony and found several capped swarm cells as well as the queen. Knowing that they were on the verge of swarming, I caught the queen and made a split with 3 frames of brood (baby bees) and 2 frames of food (honey/nectar and pollen). Over the weekend, the queen cells started hatching and the ultimate battle of life and death between the hatching virgins began. The first virgin queen that hatches presses her abdomen to the comb to make a ‘piping’ sound. The other virgin queens still in their cells respond to this piping, alerting the emerged queen of their location. The emerged virgin then runs around and stings the trapped queens to their death. If there is two emerged virgins, they too battle until one is dead. Likely what happened here, with this dead virgin queen dragged out to the porch by the undertaker bees. The last surviving queen then goes on her mating flight which can take a multiple flights over few days for her to mate with anywhere between 20-50 drones. Once her spermatheca is full, she starts laying eggs. Next week I will inspect this hive again to see if the surviving virgin queen successfully mated by looking for eggs. The world of honeybees is fierce!

Address

Pawling, NY
01351, 01376

Website

facebook.com

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