Tom's Bees - Tom Curren Companies

Pollinator-Friendly Gardening Tips For Homeowners in Greater Boston

smagpiong — Sun, 07 May 2023 00:19:25 +0000

Spring is the best time to awaken your dormant yard and embrace the season of resurgence. There are many ways to get your yard ready for Spring while keeping the pollinators top-of-mind.

Prepare to welcome buzzing bees, vibrant butterflies, and delicate hummingbirds by transforming your outdoor space into a haven for pollinators. Here are a few activities to try in your backyard:

1. Build a Pollinator-Friendly Garden:

Constructing a garden with a fence serves as an excellent way to create a designated space for pollinators while protecting your plants. Choose a sunny spot and plant a variety of native flowers like lavender, coneflowers, and bee balm. These blooms provide a rich source of nectar and pollen, attracting bees, butterflies, and other essential pollinators to your garden haven.

Do not build a garden if you’re not going to protect your plants with a fence. Ask our team for more information about having a custom garden fence built in your yard.

2. Plant Pollinator-Friendly Window Boxes:

Maximize your outdoor space by installing window boxes filled with pollinator-friendly plants. Select colorful varieties such as marigolds, zinnias, or snapdragons. These vibrant blooms not only add charm to your windows but also beckon pollinators closer to your home, supporting their journey and ensuring a steady supply of nectar throughout the season.

3. Create a Refreshing Bee Bath:

Give weary bees a place to quench their thirst by crafting a simple bee bath. Fill a shallow dish or basin with clean water and add a few small stones or floating platforms for the bees to land on. Place the bee bath near your garden, ensuring it remains filled and refreshed regularly. This small gesture provides a much-needed source of hydration for pollinators, especially during hot and dry spells.

By incorporating these three practices into your yard, you’ll not only create a stunning landscape but also provide a thriving habitat for the essential pollinators that contribute to our ecosystem’s vitality.

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Together, We Can Put a Ban On Pesticides

tomcurren-admin — Fri, 09 Oct 2020 15:52:17 +0000

We are encouraging your help in supporting a proposed Massachusetts legislation that, if passed, would limit the use of pollinator-killing pesticides.

As one of nature’s major pollinators, bees are an integral part of our agriculture and food production. It is estimated that worldwide, pollinators are responsible for one third of our crops. That equates to nearly $20 billion of crop production in the United States alone, with over 100 of those crops planted being pollinator- dependent. We have seen a steady decline in bee populations across the world, with studies attributing the increased use of pesticides as a major cause.

The Pollinator Protection Act is set to restrict the use of pollinator-killing pesticides known as Neonicotinoids. Neonicotinoids (neonics), specifically, have created a lot of buzz around being an impactful source of our pollinators decline. Neonics are a widely used insecticide that are directly toxic to bee health. Indirectly, these pesticides negatively affect foraging capabilities, reproduction and even hive survival by unknowingly bringing in contaminated pollen. These toxic chemicals are persistent and create long-term damage, with some residue levels remaining in our plant and soil systems for years.

Pesticides negatively impact the health of pollinators and our community, alike. Together, we can make a positive change to reduce toxic pesticide use in our neighborhoods!

Please take a moment learn more about the Pollinator Protection Act and to show your support:

http://bit.ly/pollinatorprotectionact

Here at Tom Curren, it’s our business to create healthy and beautiful home environments, inside and out! We realize that our lives extend beyond our front doors, so the health of our local community impacts our homes and vice versa. We understand that even small actions will have a lasting impact on our environment and upon one another.

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Honey Supers, The Beekeepers Harvest

tomcurren-admin — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 16:02:33 +0000

Every beekeeper looks forward to the day when they are able to reap the rewards of our hives— honey! Local honey that will soon be enjoyed by friends, family and of course, our loyal clients. With summer nearing its end, it is time for our final harvest of the year.

Anatomy of a Hive

Before jumping into the harvesting process, let us first explore the anatomy of a hive.

The lowest area of the hive is the bottom board, with the entrance to the beehive. On top of the bottom board, sit deep hive bodies – wooden boxes each containing 10 removable frames of comb where the queen lays eggs. This part of the beehive is called the ‘brood chamber’. Throughout the season, we add ‘supers’ on top of the brood chamber. ‘Supers’ are wooden boxes with frames of comb where the bees store honey. A super is typically half the depth of a brood for practical purposes- it would simply be too heavy to lift once occupied with the honey overflow! Each honey filled super can weigh as heavy as 50 pounds.

A ‘queen excluder’ is used to separate the brood chamber and the supers, refraining the queen from laying eggs outside of the brood chamber. However, the small worker bees are able to fit through the separating grate- allowing for additional honey storage in the supers throughout the season. On top, the hive has an inner cover and an outer cover. The inner cover keeps the hive tightly closed on top and the outer cover serves as extra protection against the weather.

Honey Supers, The Beekeepers Harvest

A honey super not only allows for the abundance of honey to harvest, but it is an important aspect of maintaining your beehive’s health. Less congestion in the hive ensures our bees are healthy, happy and as productive as possible. Once the brood chambers are sufficiently stored with honey, the hive then works toward storing excess in the above supers. A beekeeper only harvests from a super, as the storage within the brood sustains the bees throughout our cold, New England winters.

The number of supers is dependent on several variables, such as the size and strength of the hive and environmental factors that season. We currently have four hives, two of which newly arrived this Spring. Throughout the summer, I have been tedious to check the supers. When your first honey super is about ⅔ full of honey, it is ready for another super to be added on top of it. While a good hive typically provides 1 super, this year our mature hive provided our harvest with four supers. A strong queen with good genetics allows for the entire hive to follow suit.

With summer coming to an end and the supers overflowing, it’s time to extract. While I have done a fair share of honey extractions in my time, I have now enlisted the help of our dear friends at New England Beekeeping to ensure this delicious reward lands on the doorstep of our clients in a timely manner. With the help of a smoker to distract the bees, the capped frames are removed from the supers. The term “capped” means all the honey in the honeycomb has been capped off by wax, indicating it is ready to be extracted. These frames are taken off site by NE Beekeeping to be uncapped and the honey removed. With the help of our busy bees, we are expecting to gain over 130 pounds of delicious, golden honey from this last harvest.

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The Queen Needs a Name!

Brandt Greene — Fri, 29 May 2020 14:29:29 +0000

Everything seems to be buzzing around town. Kids are being home schooled. Our crews are hard at work painting and fixing things at our clients’ homes. And of course, the bees are industriously building and stocking their hives. And just in time too, the Queens have arrived! But here’s the problem, with two hives and two queens, how do we tell them apart? By their names of course! And that’s where we need all the kids to lend a coloring hand.

Their Royal Highnesses need names fitting of their station in life, after all, they each reign over a colony that may have between 10,000 – 80,000 female worker bees, a few hundred male drones and of course the Queen who lays all the eggs for the next generation. Right now, Tom’s bees are known as Queen 1 and Queen 2. To take the sting out of those boring names we need sweeter names, honey sweet we’d say!

Each week we’re going to post a picture of a bee that needs to be colored in and then named. We invite all the kids to download the PDF picture of the week, color it in and include an idea for a Queen’s name. You can then post the submission on our Facebook page, email it here at info@tomcurrencompanies.com or simply snail mail it to 225 Riverview Ave Suite B1, Auburndale MA 02466 and we’ll create an ongoing gallery of all the bees and name ideas. And when the contest is done, a royal committee of judges will select the best names and the best coloring jobs. Two bees will be crowned with new names this summer. Sorry for droning on, but you should know each week we’ll be awarding prizes for the top submissions, “Queen-sized” prizes will be awarded to the kids who submit the winning names at the end of the contest, and to take the sting out of not winning the grand prize a little something will be awarded to the 10 runners up. And of course 10 prizes will be awarded for the best bee coloring submissions.

By the way, each weekly Bee page will include fun facts about our fascinating honeybees and how to protect them since they are so important to pollination and the food chain. Coloring will be determined on creative use of color, after all, we’re in the painting business!

Week 1: Download PDF picture of the week

Week 2: Download PDF picture of the week

Week 3: Download PDF picture of the week

Week 4: Download PDF picture of the week

Week 5: Download PDF picture of the week

Week 6: Download PDF picture of the week

Week 7: Download PDF picture of the week

Coloring Submissions

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Preparing Our Hives for Winter

smagpiong — Sun, 08 Dec 2019 22:29:59 +0000

Winter is coming! Although many of us are still enjoying all that Autumn has to offer, for diligent beekeepers it is a time to prepare their hives for the harsh New England winter right around the corner.

In order to improve our hives chances for survival, it is our job to ensure the bees are fed, warm and protected until Spring.

FEEDING:

Our bees have rewarded us with their sweet honey all year long, keeping some for themselves in order to stay fed throughout the Winter. If we notice a depleted amount of honey during our Fall inspection, we will feed our hives a sugar water mixture. A rainy Fall, like the one we’ve had this year, can interfere with their winter food storage. This 2:1 sugar water mixture will ensure the hive has what it needs in order to thrive during the cold winter months.

HIVE CONFIGURATION AND INSULATION:

Reorganizing and consolidating our hives allow for an easier space to keep warm during the winter. Helping the hive conserve their energy is crucial, as any unused space robs bees of valuable heat required for winter survival. Additionally, examining the hives and reducing any ability to let excessive moisture or cold air in from cracks and holes are key.

SECURING HIVES:

Securing hives from both the elements and other critters can provide the bees a safe habitat through the winter months. Harsh elements and winds can be disruptive and detrimental to the health of the hives. Not to mention, bees aren’t the only ones in nature longing for a warm, safe home during the cold months. Mice and other small critters looking for a new home can wreak havoc on the hive. Installing entrance reducers and mouse guards allow for great pest prevention.

With the bees being tucked away for the winter, all we can do now is wait until we are reunited in the Spring. Preparation and diligence is a key component when caring for bees, but this hard work is well worth it.

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Taking Inspiration from the Bees to Build a Better, More Beautiful World

smagpiong — Fri, 15 Nov 2019 22:27:44 +0000

For more than three decades, Tom Curren Companies has been a recognized name in the home remodeling industry. We’re well-known among Massachusetts homeowners for our high-quality, beautiful home renovations and award-winning service. Our team’s dedication to hard work, excellent communication, and integrity has served as the foundation of our company’s values—and is a reminder of what we can accomplish when we work together towards a common goal.

There’s no doubt that our company’s identity is directly inspired by our founder, Tom Curren—whose thirty-year pastime as a beekeeper has greatly influenced his role as a business owner and a human being. In fact, it’s safe to say that Tom Curren Companies’ core values are a direct reflection of his experience observing and working with the bees—whose cooperation, diligence, and persistence blend together in perfect harmony.

Community Support for Our Local Bee Population

One of Tom’s greatest lessons after three decades of diligent beekeeping been the importance of community. The bees demonstrate every day how our actions as a group can impact our lives in more ways than we can count. By working together, we can accomplish amazing things that better our homes, our community, and our world in incredible ways.

Tom’s work with the bees has had a profound impact on the way he lives and operates his business. It’s also served as inspiration for Tom’s Bees, a program we’ve created to spread awareness about the dwindling bee population. Our team at Tom Curren Companies is enthusiastic to share important resources and tips with our friends and neighbors in Auburndale and the surrounding areas about living in peace with the bees, while helping them thrive as a species for the sake of a better world.

Learn More About Our Massachusetts Home Remodeling Company

There’s a lot to learn from the bees in our world, whether you’re a child, a university student, an accountant, a homemaker, a chef, a physician, or anyone else. For our team of expert home remodeling contractors, the bees are a constant reminder of what working together in harmony should look like—and the kind of results we can achieve as a team to build better, stronger, and more beautiful homes in Massachusetts.

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Thanksgiving Recipes with Our Favorite Ingredient – Honey!

smagpiong — Fri, 01 Nov 2019 22:35:02 +0000

It’s that time of year again! Autumn in New England brings crisp air, beautifully changing leaves and our seasonal Fall favorites like apples, pumpkins, cranberries and squash; many of which bees are responsible for pollinating.

As we look forward to the next few weeks and prepare our holiday menus, we wanted to share with you some delicious honey-inspired recipes that are sure to be a hit.

However you end up using Tom’s Local Honey, we thank you for BEE-ing a valued client and hope you have a SWEET holiday season!

https://blog.williams-sonoma.com/

1 Honey-Glazed Turkey with Sage and Roasted Garlic from Williams Sonoma

http://www.wellplated.com

2 Homemade Cranberry Sauce with Orange and Honey from Well Plated

https://hostthetoast.com

3 Honey-Glazed Hasselback Butternut Squash with Parmesan Breadcrumbs from Host the Toast

https://www.injennieskitchen.com/

4 Honey Pumpkin Pie from In Jennie’s Kitchen

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