Arbor Day aids my procratination

Trees and shrubs - protected from the dog with milk crates!

As it was already 97 degrees in the greenhouse by 9:00 a.m. this morning, I decided to move our trees that are awaiting planting to their outside spot under the sprinklers.  All too often, I forget to open the greenhouse windows in the morning, so the poor plants end up baking -- now that we're back to dark mornings, that's been more of a problem this past week. 

So, I managed to put off grading for an hour or so while I played with plants, potted the blue-berry bush I bought yesterday, and started some trays of tomatoes and peppers.  I honestly planned to get comfortable and grade after that, but when I took the trash out I found a box of trees from Arbor Day on the front step.    We didn't receive our entire order, but there was enough planting to do for me to postpone grading another hour.   Then I ate lunch.  Now I'm blogging!

Yes, it's that time of the year when it's hard to stay indoors.   It's neither too hot nor too cold outside.  It seems that every day another variety of daffodil blooms in my garden.   The bees are buzzing contentedly and the grumpy ones are 270 miles away at the farm!   I do love teaching, but it's also the time of year when I am just tired of reading essays!   Spring break is late this year, and most of our spring days-off became inclement weather make-up days for the third year in a row.  Students are ready for spring break.  Teachers are ready for spring break.  We are knee-deep in state mandated standardized testing, and I just want to take the dog for a long walk.

But enough complaining.   The trees and shrubs we received so far this year from Arbor Day have really good root systems, unlike some of what was shipped last year.    The Catalpa and Red Maple trees are a good height and I actually had enough potting soil at home to plant them all.   The arrival of this box is a reminder to grab another bag of potting soil next time we're at Lowe's, and my Lemon Grass and Mandevilla  both survived winter in the greenhouse.  The Mandevilla is even blooming already.  The two varieties of Chocolate Vine on the arbor are filling the yard with a jasmine-like scent, and spring break is only three weeks away.  As always, life is good.

Spring is back - maybe?

Farm hive, March 2017

We were so happy to see that our farm hives are winning the battle against small hive beetles when we were down there last weekend.  The Beetle Blaster traps are working well, although I still struggle to remove them without spilling at least a few drops of oil in the hive.   Our bees are propolizing like crazy right now, so the traps end up firmly glued in.  If I don't loosen them up enough, they get stuck and then spill.  If I slide my hive tool along the sides too deeply, I tear a hole in the side.  Maybe I just need more practice.  

All of the hives at the farm have gained strength now that the bees are not spending all their time chasing beetles and there is a plethora of nectar available to them.  We took one of our older hives from the city down there to see if the bees are any happier there.  The hive has served us well and the old queen laid many eggs when food was available to the hive.  The problem is, they have become increasingly mean.  Inspecting them was no fun at all and once in a while one would "get a bee in its bonnet" (bad use of an idiom, I know) and chase us into the house.  I don't know if they feel threatened by my long hair, but angry bees often became tangled up in it, which made both them and me more angry!  We decided they could no longer live in the city.   The hive replaced the queen a couple of weeks ago, so bees from the new queen could well be more friendly.  If not, we'll replace her with a queen from one of our gentle hives.   If hubby had had his way, the old queen would have been replaced in January, if not last fall.  I am becoming more practical and believe I will eventually be able to see an aging queen as disposable, but I'm wasn't there in January.  After being chased across the yard a few times over the last few weeks, I may be there now!

Our city hives came through the most recent cold snap well.  Only a few were using the feeder buckets last weekend, but the buckets were crowded yesterday.  Once it warms up, I'll put hive top feeders back on our new NUCs so that they can rebuild their stores.  The first swarm capture was a little low on bees last weekend, and we had queenless and broodless bees in one of the queen castle sections.   We combined them by stacking a second NUC body on top of the first and adding the lonely bees so that they could keep the beautiful new brood warm and have a queen to worship (or boss around.)  The NUC with the bees from the second swarm capture had 3 full frames of bees last weekend and the queen was busy searching cells.  There wasn't any capped brood last weekend, and I have a hard time seeing eggs with my bi-focals and the veil, but she's healthy and active so we expect to see something when we do our next check. 

We also have three batches of bees in the queen castle that had hatched queen cells last weekend, but we didn't see the queens.  It was a beautiful day, so they may have been out mating.  I so much want to go look, but it's not warm enough yet. 

Hubby will check the farm hives tomorrow, weather permitting.  He's helping his brother with some projects today while I'm stuck here with a crate full of essays to grade!   So much of what I planted in fall is coming up right now that I really want to go to the farm every weekend, but sometimes we just have to stay home and get chores done! 

A Sweet Reward

Swarm

Today was one of those awful days that ended a rather stressful work week followed by a text from hubby to remind me to get the oil changed in my car on the way home.   Geeeesh ... didn't he know I wasn't in the mood to do that.  Or maybe he knew I was even less in the mood to have to ask him to take the car in for me.  Either way, surprise number one was that I do indeed have a cabin air filter in my car.  We've been told multiple times that I don't, and the dust keeps piling up on the dash and the air conditioner blows warm air at the rate of a soft summer breeze.   Now the air from the vents almost blows my hair back out of my face!

Surprise number two was even better.  I made my usual evening walk around the yard and said hello to all my bee-buddies.  On the way back to the house, I noticed that the Major Wheeler Honeysuckle had new blooms on it.  That thing hasn't stopped flowering all winter, but it is now adding buds like crazy -- or was before we chopped a whole lot of it off about an hour ago.  While I was walking toward the fence to admire the flowers, I noticed something odd.  That something odd turned out to be a swarm of bees.

Swarm in the lattice

Swarms can be really good because they add genetic lines to the exiting apiary.   They are also good simply because they make me happy!  There were as many, if not more, bees behind the lattice as in front of it and almost all are now tucked away safe and warm in their new home.   We have not yet found the queen, but the bees did start to pageant into the NUC after a while, which is normally a good sign.  Temperatures are supposed to drop to the low 30s tonight, so we're glad we caught them when we did.

We bent the lattice back and cut many of the vines to get the bees out of there.  Some that started flying around settled in another clump in the middle of the next sheet of lattice while others hid behind the fence post.   We got what we could with a bee brush and smoke and then tried a bee-vac on the remaining couple of handfuls.   We're still not sure about the bee-vac -- some bees got tangled up in the felt that they are supposed to bounce against and some appeared stunned, cold, or dead.  While we hate to lose any bees, trying to get a handful out of a tight corner was a better experiment than trying to suck up a full swarm.   We'll have to find some non-living things to test levels of air-flow with.
 
Still, a day full of annoyances turned out to be an incredibly wonderful day after all.  This is the second swarm we have caught in two weeks -- one just moved into the queen castle while we weren't looking and started setting up house.   Our bees at the farm were bouncing back after their fight with the hive beetles last weekend, and we'll soon have some more hives to take down there.  

Spring is Here - sorta

We checked our city hives 10 days ago, and one queen is laying like crazy while the other one still appears to be on winter vacation!   Both hives have lots of bee bread, so brood is imminent.  So, is it that much cooler in the corner where the "lazy" queen is or is she just running out of eggs?  We'll take a peek in the hives again on Sunday if it's warm enough.

I hate the idea of replacing a queen we have raised from an egg and who has served us so well for over two years, but it's a fact of life that we may have to dethrone her and find a replacement.  We have three queen cells on frames in the queen castle, but we won't know if they are viable for a few weeks so the old queen still has time to prove she's worth her keep.  She has been a fantastic queen -- lots of eggs and friendly bees.  I'm hoping she starts filling up those frames by Sunday!

I checked my hive at the farm, and the bees have barely started making bee bread.   It's odd, because some plants around the farm like Forsythia are ahead of the ones here, but other plants still look dead.  Why can't spring give clear signals?   It was a little too cool to go into the hives that were not in the full sun, so I guess we'll check those next trip.

Hubby bought pollen to try to jump-start the hives, but the bees don't seem to like it.  At least, they don't like it at this minute!  We know that bees want what they want when they want it and select the flowers that provide the micro-nutrients they need at any given time.   They might want our pollen next week, or they'll crave something that's blooming.

After buying the pollen, we read about the downside of trying to create queens early in the season -- it doesn't matter how many queens we produce if there are no drones with whom they can mate.  Bees kill drones when going into winter as their only job is to mate with queens.   So, no drones, no fertile queen -- and the bees will kill a queen, or at least kick her out, if she doesn't start laying eggs as quickly they think appropriate.   Our strongest hive had many drone cells 10 days ago, but are there enough from other hives for a successful mating flight?

As I've found out with seedlings over the decades, you can't rush nature.   It helps to get a little jump-start with the greenhouse, but trying to move nature's time-table up by a month isn't in the cards.  Once again it all comes down to patience, which I may learn eventually!

Candy Boards - Feeding Bees

Candy boards are a great way to feed the bees in your hives without feeding all of the bees in the neighborhood.    The above video from Brush Mountain uses cooked fondant, which is what we have been doing successfully for two years now -- we just poured the fondant into paper plates and placed those on top of the frames.  We had pollen patties in the fridge, not pollen substitute in powder form, and experimented with putting pieces of that in with the fondant, but the bees never seemed interested in eating that.   We were hesitant to leave the remaining pollen in the hive as pollen patties have a reputation for attracting small hive beetles.   While we don't have much of a problem with SHB in the city, but we do in our out-yards.   Some of the blogs I've read about them attracting SHB state that they simply provide another place for the critters to hide.  

Fondant is all well and good when cooking for a small number of hives, but when I don't have time to cook for us, I certainly don't have time to cook for our winged friends.   Hubby cut down some of the shallow hive bodies that we had and has started making candy boards as described in the video below.

 

The thing we like about this kind of candy board is, of course, not having to spend 30 minutes boiling syrup followed by another 30 minutes cleaning the kitchen.   The wire bottom also allows more bees to feed at one time.  We also know that every batch of fondant turns out differently -- see previous blogs -- and I've had one batch turn to rock while my back was turned and another batch turn into a gooey mess while sitting in the fridge.   Softer fondants are easier for the bees to digest but are also hygroscopic -- hence the mess in the fridge.  With the humidity we have here in the south, we are concerned about sticky goo damaging the wood and trapping bees if we use the method in the first video.   We'll let you know how these wire-bottom boards work out.  

We'll add some pollen to the candy board to get some brood started in our bee engines - our city hives.   The bees in the city and out-yards bring pollen in throughout winter, but they may need a little more to start producing brood.   With our crazy weather, it's hard to know when to do this.  We don't want to start too early as brood gives the bees one more thing to keep warm when temperatures drop, but we don't want to wait too long either.   We really want to build up our numbers this spring and maybe have some queens to sell to offset some of the costs of starting up our apiary.   We're going to use a Nicot System to get some queen cells started and hopefully save some time on getting new Nucs started as well as adding a revenue stream.  

It's still winter, but it feels like spring, and this is always a time of year that I find it almost impossible to be patient.   The daffodils are pushing up in the city and even some day lilies are sprouting new leaves.  It was below 20 degrees two weekends ago, over 70 degrees last weekend, and stormy this weekend.  Planting seeds this early is usually pointless, but I'll probably do it anyway.  I usually do.  When the sun is shining like it is right now, I just want to hurry spring along and get those home-grown tomatoes started!   I'll try, once again, to temper enthusiasm with some common sense and not bring more harm than help to the bees and trees in our care!

Hubby learns the true value Of Patience

Hubby here:
Patience? We all use the word directed at others when we want them to slow or wait for something. We also like to describe ourselves as being patient. Me personally, I have now added the word "patience" to my project design and time analysis over the last year. I've also directly related patience to time. Over the last year as we have grown in our skills and knowledge on the farm I personally, and very humbly, have come to realize if you analyze your project or task and determine for example that putting up barbed wire fencing will only take about 1 1/2 to 2 days... triple that or even quadruple that time!! Then figure out if it will be 100 plus degrees during the day or will the infamous biting ladybugs drive you to distraction. And worst, when you feel your age, exhaustion and that durn picket post-pounder has mysteriously gained 40 pounds by the end of the day that maybe you really do need to add a few more days to the project. "Patience"... my new word for the day.

Well house and other projects

One coat of stain

Two coats of stain

This time last year we were cold, miserable, and damp!  In contrast, today I was able to apply the final coat of stain to the well-house door well before lunch while wearing a tank top instead of several layers of flannel!  I'm torn between the look with one coat of stain and that with two coats.  I think somewhere in between would be perfect, but I suspect (hope) the wood grain will show through better by tomorrow.

Finished Door

The stain (Minwax White Pickling Stain) is easy to apply and clean up.  We've been able to keep the rustic look of the boards while having the door white enough to tie in with the trim.  I did not use the pre-stain treatment as one of the things it does it stop the wood fibers from curling up.  We'd want that on a kitchen cabinet, but not on this project.  We still have some trim work left, but the well house is almost done.  One more thing off the to-do list.

We spent most of the rest of the morning gathering rocks from around the property to build up the area below the old clay culvert that runs under an old road bed built around the early 1900s.  We cleared out some more brush around the area yesterday, and I planted some more daffodils and a weeping willow tree behind the bench.   Even though the Stratford-upon-Avon council cut down the willow trees  decades ago, I will always associate weeping willows with the banks of the River Avon.    Although the willow is still shorter than I am, our memory-bench is already the perfect place to sit and think about family members.   If the blue bells and daffodils flourish, it will almost be a little piece of England.  

Clay culvert

Some of the stacked stone around the culvert has crumbled away and there was a deep erosion hole below the culvert.   In order to minimize additional damage,  we've raised the level in the hole by about 2 feet and cleared the stream bed to facilitate drainage.  Eventually we plan to have rock all the way to the small pool that naturally forms 90% of the year.  I hear hubby throwing rocks in the cart now, but I don't plan on picking up even one more today.  We pulled some moss up from another part of the property and packed that around some of the stones further down than this picture shows, and I transplanted some ferns along the edge of the dry-stream.  We'll throw some wild-flower seeds out in spring and make the place as inviting to humans and bees as possible.

Talking of bees -- they too are enjoying a very warm Christmas day and the way the clover is growing bodes well for spring honey.    We'll soon plant fruit and Sourwood trees for them (and us) -- hubby used the auger on the Bobcat to make planting those a little easier once we manage to get the trees down here.  Even if the holes he dug collapse a little, digging them back out will be easier than digging hard-packed clay by hand.

So our non-traditional Christmas Day is drawing to a close.   The sky is turning shades of pale yellow and blue as the sun sinks behind the pines, and we couldn't be happier.   We've had a low-stress day puttering around the farm and supper is bubbling away in the Crockpot.  When I think back to all the Christmases I was unhappy because I didn't get the gift I wanted, I wish I learned earlier to look for happiness in other places.    Other than wishing we had enough money to retire now, everything we want is right here -- and not being able to retire now gives us time to actually build a house!