Last year, I watched dozens of bees visit the New England Aster my mom had planted in her city front yard, and before I left, I'd begged some seeds from her bee-beloved plants.  I scattered the seeds in the forest garden, then ignored them as they came up through weeds this spring.

When four plants made it to the blooming stage, I watched with baited breath, expecting a three ring circus.  But our bees rolled their eyes at me and went back to feeding on the wild asters growing here, there, and everywhere around our homestead.  My guess is that honeybees like asters in general, and that the New England Aster was such a big hit in my mother's yard just because so few people in the city grow asters of any sort.

Despite frosts, our bees are still hard at work gathering nectar and pollen from our asters, so I had planned to leave off their mouse guards until activity began to slow.  But when I checked on the colonies this week, I found a mouse nest in the back corner of one of the hives.  The mouse wasn't present, but it had clearly spent a lot of time ferrying in leaves and dried grass to make its home.

I raked out all of the leaves and even shook the bottom board off to clean it.  (The bees didn't seem to mind my housekeeping all that much.)  Then I put the hive back together and installed an entrance reducer to keep out further squatters.  The bees will just have to work those asters through the small hole from now on.