Posts Tagged ‘macro’

Flowers blooming mid-winter

Posted in Bee-loving flowers, Log hives, Natural Beekeeping, Uncategorized, Videos, Warre Hive, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 22, 2013| 8 Comments »

Could this be pollen from the laurel bush? It's been blooming since Jan. 22.

Could this be pollen from the laurel bush? It’s been blooming since Jan. 22. I know that you can’t tell by color alone, but at this time I don’t have the microscope or capability to properly identify pollen.

This is the first year I’ve had bees into winter.  I was curious about all the types of pollen showing up on the bees entering the hive.  I was sure some of it was gorse since we seem to have so much of it growing thanks to Lord Bennett of Ireland.

I made a 9 minute movie showing the bees on different types of flowers and Shigeo of the local bee association demonstrates how to transplant an Echium.  I realize that some people can’t spare the time, so I’m offering ‘screen saves,’ as well.

Laurel blooming by Bonnie's house

Laurel blooming by Bonnie’s house

Bee on laurel, tannish-colored pollen

Bee on laurel, tannish-colored pollen…January 22, 2013

Bees on rosemary, at City Hall, February 8, 2013

Bees on rosemary, at City Hall, February 8, 2013

Pussy Willows blooming near our hives...sun comes out...bees love it.

Willow catkins blooming near our hives…sun comes out…bees love it.  February 8,2013

Gorse pollen is orange...I had been hoping it was the yellow pollen I had seen going into the hive. February 13, 2013

Gorse pollen is orange…I had been hoping it was the yellow pollen I had seen going into the hive. February 13, 2013

The video shows this bee in slow motion working the pollen back to it's pollen sac. I didn't see it at first until a more experience bee keeper showed me. February 13, 2013

The video shows this bee in slow motion working the pollen back to it’s pollen sac. I didn’t see it at first until a more experience bee keeper showed me. February 13, 2013

Bee on heather, 2-14-13, right up the street from Tom and Karen's house.

Bee on heather, 2-14-13, right up the street from Joe and Karen’s house.

Bee on acacia, 2-15-13...Shigeo showed me this place to get some video. By the time we got to it, the bees were returning to home so I only got a short clip of it.

Bee on acacia, 2-15-13…Shigeo showed me this place to get some video. By the time we got to it, the bees were returning to home so I only got a short clip of it.

Shigeo shows how to transplant an Echium Tree.

Shigeo shows how to transplant an Echium Tree.

Echium for 2013...I'm hoping this plant will shoot up 10 feet (3 m) starting about April or May.

Echium for 2013…I’m hoping this plant will shoot up 10 feet (3 m) starting about April or May. The tarp protects against freezing weather.

These are the plants that Shigeo demonstrated in the video, how to transplant. They are my hope for 2014

These are the plants that Shigeo demonstrated in the video, how to transplant. They are my hope for 2014

We planted this in late October 2011. It just stared blankly at us for several months. April or May we noticed it had grown about 10 feet. The bees worked it for 3 solid months.

We planted this echium in late October 2011. It just stood still for several months. About April or May we noticed it had grown to about 10 feet. The bees worked it for 3 solid months.

The video shows the bees in action on the flowers.  I used the Canon SX-50 (50x optical zoom) on the laurel as well as the willow catkins.  My little pocket camera, a Sanyo Xacti performed admirably for the rest of the close ups…I love the ‘super macro’ feature.

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A Walk on the Wild Side…Looking for Mushrooms

Posted in Mushrooms, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on November 24, 2012| 10 Comments »

Gary showed me where these amanitas were. I think he felt bad for harvesting the beautiful King Boletus that I had planned to photograph that very morning.

Walking the dogs in the morning gives us a chance to observe nature.  I’ve been itching to take my camera sans dogs and shoot some photos of the different types of mushrooms.  I got my chance on Thanksgiving Day during a brief break in the rain.

If the sun hadn’t been shining, I would have walked right past these without noticing them.

I found it interesting that these little brown mushrooms grew in a circle around a Eucalyptus tree in someone’s front yard.

At first these blended in with the gravel. My wife says, “They look like gravel.” I says, “They are gravel,” and scraped them with my boot. Ooops.

Another type of mushrooms growing on old gravel road.

Chanterelles…the only type of wild mushroom we will eat, except for the King Boletus, but in my humble opinion, the Chanterelle is the best.

I

Another chanterelle. This mushroom is so tasty, if you know where to find them, you don’t usually tell anyone else. I protected my spot by harvesting all I could find.

Mushroom growing on very old tree trunk

King boletus, a few days old

You can tell how wet it’s been here.

A big bunch of mushrooms growing on a log. I wish I knew if I could eat them.

More mushrooms on a log

It’s amazing how many kinds of mushrooms there are if you just open your eyes in a wet wooded area.

Salamander climbing over a branch

These mushrooms appeared abundantly in an area logged about a year ago.

Ironically these cultivated logs have been staring blankly at me for over two years.  I don’t know how many 5/16″ holes I drilled, tapped spore plugs into, and melted a wax seal on, but it was a bunch of them…I had to keep letting the drill bit cool down.

There are Terry’s successful mushroom logs. He probably followed the directions.

A real beauty

A look at a shitaki from the top

Looks like these logs popped out a bunch of tasty mushrooms.

My daughter introduced me to Terry after meeting him and his wife at the coffee shop she worked at when she lived in the San Francisco Bay area.  “Dad, this guy is into Top Bar Beekeeping AND mushroom logs.”  (A rare combination, I thought.) “I’ve got to meet him.”  He often sent packets of bee information to me.  One of those packets contained Slovenian Beehive art.  The photo of bees crawling in and out of a carved face as a front of a hive led to my Bee Beard log hive.

For more very fascinating mycelium check out the hugelkulture bed.

Terry mentioned Paul Stamets.  I love the guy.  Okay, I don’t really know him, but give a listen to this TED talk and you will love him too.

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Wasp on (in) Web

Posted in Garden spider, Videos, Wasps, tagged , , , , , , on October 27, 2012| 6 Comments »

Web Design, Bee Beard Log Hive in background

When I first saw the insect in this web, I thought it was one of my bees because it’s in the flight path to the Bee Beard Log Hive.  I was much relieved when I realized it was a wasp.  Over the next few days of checking her web I was able to capture some very close up video of  “Fang” wrapping her victims and injecting them with her venom.  Here’s a creepy video accompanied by some creepy music provided by my brother, Elliott.

If you hate wasps, you’ll love this video…if you hate spiders, you’ll be happy they are smaller than we are.

Hmmmm…I wonder what the male is up to.

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Going deep for gold

Posted in Bee-loving flowers, Natural Beekeeping, Videos, tagged , , , , , , on September 29, 2012| 6 Comments »

In years’ past, we grew dozens of sunflowers of all types.  This year…very few.  Of the few that we planted, only four decided to grow.  Of the four, only one was big enough to draw any visitors.  This is the one.

My best sunflower this year

This might be the bug/beetle which appears in the video taken two days previous. It was on the flower part but jumped to the leaf while I was getting the camera switched on and focused.

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Bees Buzzing in Poppy Pollination

Posted in Bee-loving flowers, Gardening, Natural Beekeeping, Videos, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on September 20, 2012| 16 Comments »

Growing poppies is a long term affair.  We planted these under lights in the house.  After two to three weeks in a plastic bag to keep it moist, the very fine seeds have sprouted.

Poppies ready to be transplanted into bigger pots.  The plants in the foreground are St. John’s Wort (Hypericum).

The poppy seed was planted in February.  It is just now blooming in September.  I think we’ll start earlier if we want poppies in spring or summer for the bees next year.

Here’s the beautiful result of our labor of love…

The poppy has finally opened up. I wonder when the bees will find it.

A couple of days after this first one opened up, we had a bee doing something strange (to me).  It faced away from the center of the flower, beating her wings rapidly, vibrating the pollen off the stamen and onto her body.  After getting a layer of purple pollen, she landed on the outside of the flower and groomed herself with her middle legs, pulling the pollen off her back and into her pollen baskets.  It was incredible.  I had my little pocket camera with me and got some video of it.

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Butterflies!

Posted in Bee-loving flowers, Butterflies, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on September 13, 2012| 3 Comments »

An added bonus to growing flowers for the bees is attracting different pollinators.  Dozens of butterflies fluttered onto our flowers.    The Wallflower, Erysimum has been blooming all summer and today it was visited by an American Lady.  Will Cook was kind enough to answer my late night email inquiry and identified it.

An American Lady shows off her two eye spots on the underside of her wings.

An American Lady sipping nectar

This short video shows the butterfly probing the flower with her proboscis.  Sometimes it takes a few tries before the nectar is located.

For more information about butterflies, check out this web site.

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