At Ovid, though our main focus is on our vineyards and winemaking, we also believe in biodiversity. Toward that end, we have a number of additional farming projects, including making olive oil from the olive trees in our landscaping, farming an orchard with a variety of fruit and nut trees, and keeping native bees. Our bees act as pollinators for some of the fruit and nut crops and also help the overall health of the native plants and grasses and the cover crop for the vineyard. They are also really interesting insects that we are loving learning about. The bees are fascinating creatures, and they are both amazingly specialized and highly organized.
For general information about honey bees, click here. If you’d like to read a compendium of interesting information about bees in the Napa Valley by one of our local bee gurus, check out Rob Keller’s site at Napa Valley Bee Company. Below are some pictures of recent activities with Ovid’s bees. We will continue to post news about living with the bees throughout the year.
To view larger images and their captions, please click on the photos.
Regina is moving the bees to a temporary bee box. After all the bees in the hive were collected, they were transported to Napa so that they would lose their local orientation and not return to the house. They have since been moved back to another location on the Ovid property, where they are thriving.
