Best Bees Ever

The bees are very active this week. I've been watching them come and go every day and it is amazing to see all the take offs and landings happening, and all without a control tower. You can't quite see it in this flower photo, but a bee is just inside one trumpet gathering nectar. I also found one on the squash blossom when I was checking the garden. It is pretty cool to see the bees actually doing their thing up close.

I did a hive check on the bees today. It was hot and still around noon when I got the smoker going and put on the gear, but by the time I got the hive open the wind had picked up. Nice. Thanks a lot, Ma Nature. When it is windy the smoke won't go where you want, it just blows away. Plus, the bees seem to be hanging around the hive area more. It was looking like Atlanta airport at rush hour. The bees didn't seem upset, though, just worried about the possible forest fire I was creating with all my smoke.

The last few evenings starting around 5 o'clock the bees have been gathering en mass at the hive entrance. Yesterday Barry was looking out the window when he suddenly yelled, "Sally! The bees! Look at them on the hive!!!", which of course I imagined to be a swarm picking up and moving out, or some other tragedy. What really seemed to be happening was evening rush hour, or happy hour on the veranda, I'm not sure which. As they all start coming in for the night a backlog of bees collects on the outside of the hive which looks a bit scary, but is only a whole mess of bees hanging out either staying cool or waiting their turn to get into bed.

I opened up the hive and had a look and I am very pleased and surprised at how much work the bees have done in such a short time. They are pulling comb on almost all the frames in the top box, and sealing up many of them which have been filled with honey.


This picture is a frame that the bees have gotten them comb ready for honey.




This one is of a frame that they are starting to close up the comb, which means the honey will be sealed up until they need it for the winter, or until some big human comes in to steal it. The top part that is white is the sealed comb. If you've every bought "comb honey" you've seen this, just not on the frame.


This photo is looking down into the box of frames. You can see they've built out honey comb on most of the frames. Six of the eight are filling up, so I went ahead and added a floor to their bee condo so they wouldn't feel over-crowded. I briefly checked the brood box (the big bottom one) and didn't see anything that shouldn't be there (extra queen cells, empty eggs cells, small cats--no, just kidding about that last one).

While I was out there and geared up I trimmed all around the hive since the grass and weeds like to grow quickly in this heat. The lack of water doesn't help the gardens, but the weeds don't seem to mind. Even with all this heat and no rain, I have to get out there every day and do things. The garden is prolific and I'm just hoping we get some rain to keep the corn and potatoes growing.

That's all for now, see you on the farm!

Buzz Buzz Cluck Cluck Slurp Slurp

It has been a busy few days around the farm this week. Summers probably will always be like that, but since this is our first full season here there seems like a lot more things on our 'to do' list. The place was a bit neglected before we bought it. It has been empty for a few months, which means general up keep was lacking. The people who had it before us had tried raising various animals over the years. We've seen evidence of rabbits, goats, and pigs, but they never stuck to anything. (Actually, we met the pigs a year before we got the house, but that, and buying this place, is a story for another day.) They also had a large hound-rescue kennel here, and that (and raising three kids) must have taken up all their time, because the house and yard had gone to hell in a hand basket. So we are trying to slowly bring things up to where we want them to be.

The first photo is of our field of potatoes and corn that we planted last week. The six rows of potatoes are on the left side and the seven of corn are on the right. The corn is just now peeping its leaves through the soil. Barry is quite excited and can stop worrying 'if the corn will make it'. It will.
I took this photo as dusk was coming on us. I love the way the sky looks over the barn.






SLURP SLURP!

Peaches! Here is our first batch of non-green peaches. If any one would like some totally organic, fresh from the tree peaches, just let me know. They are smaller than store peaches, but really tasty. We did a taste comparison last night: Publix peach v. Our Peach. Our Peach is sweet, juicy and slightly tart. Publix's was super sweet with no tartness. We decided we liked the little bit of tartness better as it really set off the sweet but wasn't cloying or over-sweet. I think I'm going to make peach jam from what we don't sell or eat.

Barry is planning to build me a little sales cart for the front of the driveway so folks can drop over and buy stuff. I've also looked into Locallygrown.net and Conyers has quite a few farmers and consumers. Basically farmers log into the website on Sunday and list what they have for sale; Monday and Tuesday the consumers log on and tell them what they'd like to buy. Friday afternoon the consumer picks up their products at a place in downtown and give a check to the market manager who then pays the farmers. Cool, huh? Once our egg production gets going I hope to get some new customers that way, and I can be a consumer for my neighbors, too.


CLUCK CLUCK!

Here are some pictures of the chickens growing up. When Barry fills up their feed dish they are like pirhana on legs. You sharp eyed folks will see Barry in the back left fighting with his tractor. He got out his lawnmower to move the chicken house and it failed to start, so he fired up the big tractor to try and charge the battery on the small one. The smoke from the old girl (Massey-Ferguson, 1959) was crazy! The chickens hate the mowers.



Go chickens! Run from the camera!














BUZZ BUZZ!

I got in to check on the bees yesterday. They seem to be doing fine. They are building comb on the upper story of the bee hive. Shot down into the frame from above...










The frame next to it is starting to get capped. All those white areas on the bottom of the photo are full of honey to store for winter. Mmm...honey...













And here they are on one of the original frames. They just can't stop working on this one. It is getting way too wide but they keep doing it. I love this single bee standing there looking at me.














My cucumbers and strawberries are coming along. The strawberries are taking a lot longer to get going than I hoped. They should have started producing fruit by now, but we've only gotten one tiny berry--delicious, but doesn't count as dessert.








A few more chicken pictures, because I just can't stop!















Remember that little 'gift with purchase' chicken we got with our Silver laced Wyandottes? Here it is. Bigger than the others, so either a large, heavy breed or a cockerel (future rooster). It's a mystery we'll have to wait to solve when it is older.
All for now. See you on the farm!

And now....The Bees!

Today is a hot one. It registers 87 degrees in the shade, but the humidity makes it very heavy. I can tell when it is really hot because the dogs just flop down on the wood floors like rugs and you can't move them.

I also found out that today was hot for the bees. I went out to see them this afternoon (no rain today, yippee!) and found them happily making honey and hatching baby bees. Bees fan their wings when they are trying to cool down the hive (or heat it up in winter), and when I opened up the hive I saw several 'cooling bees' doing their thing. There weren't a lot of them, but enough so that I propped open the top of the hive a quarter inch just to keep the breeze moving. I have a screened bottom board (the very bottom level of the hive), so there is good ventilation, but I wanted to make sure the veranda was good sitting weather for them.

Here they are being the busy bees they naturally tend toward. Yes, that saying does ring true. "Busy as a bee" is busy.

The dark holes are where worker babies have hatched and are now going about their business, usually cleaning the cells and hive of trash. These two pictures are of the brood frames where the queen lays eggs and little bees grow and are born.



This is a photo looking down inside with two frames removed. They really like working on the four frames they came with, rather than my frames. Many experienced bee keepers tell me it is because they are plastic, which may be true, but I also don't want unknown beeswax to start my hive because you never know what is in it. So I'm trying plastic frames. Next year I'm going to try totally frame-less, so I'm really bucking the system then.






This frame is going to be filled with honey when completed.

Here they are working on one of the new plastic frames. The actual plastic is black, so you can see they are doing a good job of 'pulling out' the comb. They make it themselves from glands on the undersides of their thorax. I can see some bees walking around on the hive with what look like pale water wings on their legs. That is the bees wax they are getting ready to deposit into comb. Fascinating creatures.