Month: June 2017

Homestead Update

/ cahall63 / Leave a comment

Since Ed updated you on the bees I thought I would  update you on the rest of the homestead.

A couple months ago, I found out I had an umbilical hernia. While we waited for the insurance company to decide if I could have surgery, and then get said surgery scheduled, my doctor gave me one order: No lifting and no straining. Great.

I had visions of spending another summer completely out of commission. I am now happy to report that I had the surgery, it was a success, and I have just been given the go ahead to gradually increase the work I am able to do. Yes, I am obeying the “gradually” rule because I really want to get better.

Since I didn’t know for sure if I would be able work outside this summer, I decided to not have a garden. For the first time in years, I did not buy any seeds or plants. I keep feeling like I’m forgetting something. I am going to use this summer to plan next year’s garden, and work on getting the ground ready.

My camera got knocked off the table with the lens open, and suffered some damage. Sometimes, it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Chicken Girl took these pictures, and had trouble getting consistent focus.

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Thyme growing inside the tire. If you look closely at the right side of  the picture, you might be able to make out the blue flowers on the Borage plant.

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Love in a Mist

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Wild grapes

The thyme survived the winter, and there are some volunteer sunflowers.  Last summer, I planted some Borage and Love in a Mist, but they just decided to come up now. Gotta love those unexpected blessings. I’ve found wild grapes growing in one of the fence rows, and some of the mulberry trees are producing like crazy. The blackberries we planted last year survived for the most part, and a few plants even have some green fruit.

The lawn and weeds have taken off too. Unfortunately, one of our weed eaters, and both lawn mowers are out of commission. Ed will probably want to tell you about that. I did pull a few weeds yesterday, but I got tired quickly, and decided I probably shouldn’t over do it.

The dogs have finally decided to stay put. Ed is two thirds finished with a new dog house, and they have already moved in. Libby is still digging like crazy, but she has found other places beside the fence. We just have to watch for the sink holes!

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Meeko and Chicken Girl “helping” Ed build the new dog house.

My mom’s best friend decided that Chicken Girl needed a better chicken coop, so she bought one and had it shipped to us. Moony and his girls are living there, and Sunny and company were finally moved from the oldest coop to the new one that we built. Everyone seems happy for now, and the eggs are coming steadily again.

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Moony and the girls in the new coop

Chicken Girl and I finished the school year, and we were both ready. Several months ago, I told you we were getting ready to start dissection in Biology. She did one crayfish, and begged me not to make her do any more. I didn’t, but I adjusted her grade accordingly. Oh, she just had a birthday. She’s seventeen. Time sure flies.

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Chicken Girl and the unfortunate crayfish.

Last week, we had three days in the 90’s and three nights of some intense thunderstorms. We didn’t have any serious damage; just a few limbs down off the big elm tree near the garage. One of those mornings, I stepped out on front porch just to take a quick look around. The weeds all survived. So did this guy.

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Frog just off the front porch.

This morning about 5:00, Ed and I heard a dog barking in our front yard. It wasn’t one of ours. We got up, looked, didn’t see anything, and went back to bed. When we got back up later, I realized two of the cats were outside. Captain came in, but Adora didn’t. We found her this afternoon. She was alive, and she didn’t have any marks we could find, but she was obviously not good. The vet couldn’t find any marks either at first. She has super thick fur. When he finally did find them, there were three or four bite marks and they were on her back end. So, he gave her fluids, antibiotics, steroids, and liquid nutrition. He said to bring her home, keep her warm (her temperature was below normal), and call him in the morning to let him know how she’s doing.  Now she’s covered up in a box in Chicken Girl’s room.

This is a picture I took of her a few days ago: A living bookend. I thought the glowing eyes were funny. IMG_2114

Well, that’s all the news for now.

Connie

 

 

 

BEEginning Again Part 2

/ soldat1950 / Leave a comment
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This is a packet of bees.

So, as a complete update, I have my two hives installed. One is doing better than the other but they are both coming along with capped brood and honey present in both hives.

This time I decided, since I had all the equipment, to buy packages of bees rather than nucs. Nucs are basically a mini hive with five frames of honey and brood, bees and an active queen. Packages are simply the bees and the queen. Unlike the nuc, the package’s queen and her new subjects are not formally introduced yet, and this can cause you some problems.  The queen and her retinue come in a separate container.

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A queen container with queen and her attendants.

So we rode over to Chillicothe, Missouri to see Bill and Tammie and pick up our bees. We decided to go in the car and we loaded two packages of bees in the back seat. Would you like to know what will make you a defensive driver? Knowing that, if you break those boxes, you are going to get REALLY busy.

Arriving home we pulled the bees out and looked at them. Here is a look at one of the boxes as seen from above where you take the bees out of.

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Top view of the bee packet.

So here is the trick, I need to get all those bees, the queen and her attendants in a hive without causing major disruption, losing bees (especially the queen) or getting stung.

Step one, the queen: The queen in her little container, is supposed to hang down between the middle frames. There is “queen candy” in one end, which she and her attendants are supposed to eat out, and then the queen should emerge to a grand meeting by her new subjects. Hopefully.

An alternative method is to tape up this hole and hand release the queen about five days after you set up the new hive. I decided, on good advice, to try that. I will tell you the outcome later.

Next, I set up the lower hive bodies and got the hanging feeders ready. We used 4 lbs of sugar to 1 gallon of water. This is the mixture that best stimulates comb making.

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The black thing with two holes in it to the right of the picture is a feeder.

So I set up the two lower hive bodies as shown in the picture above. Please note, almost dead center between the third and fourth frame counting from the left the plastic queen container. They either love her or hate her, hard to say. To that I added another empty hive body. Shaking bees into a hive body is not as easy as it may at first seem and it never sounded that easy to me in the first place. I try to treat the girls like ladies you know.

So I took some advice from Bill George and set them up like this:

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Bee packet upside down over frames.

This allows the bees, who now have food and water available, to crawl out on their on. Thee days later I opened the hive, took out the box and the vast majority of the bees were enjoying their new home.

The queen? I went back a couple days later to free the lady and to put one more set of beetle traps into each hive. When I checked on the queen containers in both cases the bees had already freed the queens. I found the tape lying on the screened hive bottoms when I moved the hive bodies to clean out and put in these traps. Apparently duct tape is not all its cracked up to be, or bees are smarter than we give them credit for.

A tip based on my lessons learned here. When you are only using a small number of frames in a hive box make CERTAIN they are close together. If not you end up with a situation like this:

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Frames too far apart.

The bees have built comb out attaching the two frames together. I lost some brood because of this and I am jealous of my baby bees.

So I checked them again yesterday and the bees are still great. As I said, one hive is behind some but is still doing well. I enjoy fooling with bees and taking care of them, but that isn’t all I have been doing.

New dog runs and new chicken coops have been happening. I will talk about them later.