Happy People: Happy Bees

Last night, as we were deciding which trees were ready to fend for themselves at the farm, hubby spotted another swarm of bees in our yard.  Once again, they were behind the trealis and a fence post. The poor honeysuckle is still recovering from the last swarm extraction, and this time the two grapevines got to share the pain!   (I should know in a couple of weeks whether or not grapevines can be rooted from "cuttings"!)

Swarm - April 7

These bees were quite cooperative.  Hubby scooped a couple of handfuls into a NUC, I squirted some Honey B Healthy onto the inner cover, we gave them a stick to use as a bridge and they pagenented right on in.  By the time we'd checked the other hives, only two lost bees were still wandering around on the fence.

One of our other splits now has the fattest queen I have ever seen, so that NUC made the trip to the farm and the bees are already bringing in loads of white pollen.  We moved them up to an 8-frame so that they could get over all of their confusion about the new location at once and they seem to be as happy as clams.    The queen cells in the sister NUC have hatched, but we didn't see a queen.  Hopefully she will find her way home in a couple of days.

The other hives at the farm are all active, but we didn't check them today.   Hubby is digging more tenches for water lines and I planted some tomatoes and thyme.   We are really curious to see whether the diatomaceous-earth we sprinkled on the ground two weeks ago has had any impact on the small hive beetles.  It's supposed to kill them when they go back onto the ground to pupate.   Now that the hives are stronger, we aren't seeing as much of a problem as when we came out of that really cold snap, but we'd love to see no beetles at all.   It still seems like having the hive in a sunny spot works wonders, but that is going to make hive checks challenging in July.  

The dog is chewing on a pine-cone, hubby is working hard, and I'm enjoying sitting out in the 72 degree sunshine.  It's amazing to sit here at this time of day and see just how many insects are flying around at any given time and at how many spider webs are catching the sunlight.   Even with the sound of the Ditch Witch, the farm is so peaceful and just a good place to be.   We are just so very lucky and happy to be here.

Living on our land.

RV moved onto our land.

Thanks to BIL, BIL's friend, and BH, our RV is now on our land and we went to sleep and woke up looking at tree tops -- our tree tops!   Having never moved an RV before, I don't know if it's always such a bear to get one set up, but I do know that the new scissor jack that looks prettier than the others but refuses to work makes everything more complicated.   We also thought the pad was more level than it actually is, so if we ever do this again I'll actually break out the level and see where we may need to add more gravel before parking the behemoth.   We've enjoyed sitting outside drinking our morning coffee and sitting outside at the end of the day watching the sun set.   It's easier to notice all the wild life when we just sit still for a while.  We've also withstood our first thunderstorm, so we know that the fibreglass remained intact over the leaky roof bits.   We still have the other roof coating to put on, but it requires 24 hours of dry time, which means that we won't be able to run the A/C once we paint it on.  The plan is to put it on when we have a dry morning before heading back to the city.   The plan may turn into putting it on when it's cool enough to not need A/C.   After working outside in 98 degree heat the last few days, that sounds like a better plan to me.

Checking the English hive

Being out there first thing in the morning made it easier to check on our bees.   All of the hives except one are doing okay, but the dearth is definately upon us.   The queens are not laying and there is very little nectar in the hives.   There's still pollen coming in, but no nectar.  We found the same thing happening when we got back to the city, although one queen is still laying well.  The new queen in my English hive is very active, but has not laid any eggs yet.  We put some sugar water out and hope that jumpstarts all the queens.  

We had opened the English hive shortly after our new queen had hatched.  It was clear that she had dispatched most of her sisters, but there were two queen cells intact that we had hoped we got to before she did.   No dice.   The two-frame section of the queen castle in which we installed the cells with a couple of frames of bees from another hive contained only a few dead bees, some hive beetles, and wax moth trails.   We were disappointed and took the frames over to the shed so that we could put them in the freezer as soon as we took the suits off.   Hubby put the smoker and hive tool up, took off his jacket, turned around to pick up the frames, and, lo-and-behold, there was a brand new queen searching the frames.   Of course, all the queen isolation stuff was in the garage, but we did manage to get her into a queen cage and installed into the castle with a couple of frames of bees, larvae, and honey.     We're pretty sure we have a drone congreation area in our yard as we have found an abnormal number of queens and I've even had mating bees clinging to my tshirt!

Figs, July 11, 2016

Finding the queen would have been enough excitement for one day, but we also picked 3 pounds of figs that ripened while we were gone.   I currently have mason jars sterilizing in the dishwasher and will start making jam just as soon as I finish my second cup of coffee.   I want to try using honey instead of sugar (or using a mixture of the two) this year, but I'll do that with a small batch later.    Honey-whiskey ribs are already a big hit in our house.   I have an entire book of honey recipes to try, so we'll keep feeding the bees in hopes that they will feed us in return.  

A castle fit for a queen...

My husband went to a class about producing queen bees on Saturday, and came back talking about a queen castle.  Of course, I had no idea what he was talking about, but now I do.  A queen castle is an oversized bee box with entries on every side.  There are slots on the inside that allow you to divide the box into four segments, each of which is accessible from a separate entrance.  It's probably a whole lot easier to look at the picture from the link above than to follow anything I might describe!  I'd show you the inside, but I forgot to take a picture before we put it in use. 

As this is a queen castle, I wanted to paint it in a way that was fit for a queen -- or for multiple queens.  For me that meant gold paint.  I really like the way all four sides turned out, but the design with the honeycomb is definitely impractical for frequent use.  I love it, but I used an entire tube of paint and it took far more time than I really had to spend on it.  Still, it stands out and it was both fun and relaxing. 

We decided to label each entry to make talking about what's going on with each section a little easier.   Now that we have pretty much everything painted for this year, we've decided to color code the boxes when we add or repaint, also to make communication clearer and easier.  

The first of the new bees will be here Saturday evening, and hubby is out setting up hives at new locations that are still close enough to home for us to maintain them, but far enough away to minimize competition for resources.   We'll need to drive back and forth from the farm and home next week so that we can keep checking on the new-bees.  It would have been a little easier had they arrived on their original due date, but nature has its own time table and we are learning to be flexible.

Another thing we are trying this year is planting vegetables in straw bales.  If this works, we'll plant our first veggies at the farm this way.  We may even try moving these bales to the farm at some point, but I suspect that will be impractical.  It will take us a while to soften up the packed clay and condition the soil on our future garden plot, and this appears to be a solution.  I don't want to go a entire summer without fresh tomatoes, peppers, or squash, especially now that I know how easy it is to make and can salsa!

Last week was also the week that our 43 trees arrived from Arbor Day, so I spent two evenings planting trees in pots and setting them up where they will get enough sun and plenty of water from the sprinklers.   The daylillies are burgeoning and the trees I am growing from seed are still hanging in there, although my tomato seedlings are currently bigger than my magnolia seedlings.  In retrospect, having to make multiple trips to and from the farm is not such a bad thing as we are rapidly running out of space to store all the things that are sooner or later heading south!

Putting down roots.

We planted two gardenias by the gate in November, but this weekend we started our orchard with two fig trees we received as a gift and two blueberry bushes.   The fig trees did great in the greenhouse over winter and we moved them outside a couple of weeks ago.  The first leaves opened at the start of this week, so this was a good time to get them in the ground.  The roots were less pot-bound than we thought and there was a good soaking rain overnight.  I think they will do well.  We are so looking forward to adding the trees we ordered from Arbor Day Foundation -- hopefully over spring break.

Our plans for the house change from minute to minute, but we know where the RV will go and we plan to watch the woods go through the seasons from there before we make a final decision on the house.  Every time we visit the farm, we see reasons to place the house in one place, then another, then another.....  It will all work out in time.

We cooked supper and breakfast in the RV and had my brother-in-law (BIL) over for both meals, which was fun, even if I clearly don't yet have the oven figured out.   It didn't help that I thought I heard BIL yell yesterday while he was using the table saw (he just sneezed), so I turned the gas burner and oven off and ran to check on him and then couldn't relight the pilot light on the oven because it was too hot.  So much for biscuits...   Then I burned the biscuits this morning, so I need to find the middle ground between barely cooked and black next time!

As usual, leaving was difficult.  Daylight savings time stole one hour of our day, and then we fiddled around doing bee stuff with BIL until 2 hours after our planned departure.  It was worth it to see how his hives are growing and then to see a series of beautiful rainbows on the drive back home.

Life is good.  We have redbud trees in full bloom down by the creek and more surprises to come, I'm sure, in the coming weeks.

Bee ready

It's official -- if we are going to expand the bee business, we need to build a workshop at the farm!   We have bee boxes everywhere, and we have locations to set them up when the bees arrive at the end of the month.  It's been a lot of work getting everything painted, but it's been fun and stress relief, too.

As you can see, we have no room in the garage and we still have boxes in the dining room.  We have to put foundation in a bazillion frames over the next two weeks, and I'm hoping we can do that sitting in front of the TV because it sounds like tedious work.   So tedious, that grading essays might be more enjoyable, especially as my students are writing very well right now.

The existing hives are doing well and we have had to add to each of them.   I like seeing some of the new colors out there mixed in with our original blue boxes.

We realized that we will need to make multiple trips to get everything we need to move down to the farm before spring break, so we're hauling a load of supplies down there later today.  It will be good to stand on our land and see the early signs of spring for the first time.    We've seen it late summer, fall, winter, and in torrential rain that was more befitting a hurricane coming in than a winter storm.    If we can fit them on the truck, we'll take a few plants down and get them in the ground too.

It will be a very quick trip there and back because we both have a bunch of deadlines for projects for our day jobs before spring break.  It's been too long since we sat around a camp fire with family, so a quick trip and a day dream is better than no trip at all.  Of course, I'm hoping to find that giant gold nugget in our churned up soil so that I can be a step closer to sitting in our workshop, painting hive bodies and bird houses to my heart's content.