Upstate: Sunday, May 29, 2011

Here's a landscape photo Jim took of the house.

The Gardens, May 28, 2011

Frank and I spent the weekend finishing up all our summer plantings for our veggie and flower gardens. Here’s a rundown of where we stand and what’s happening:

Vegetable garden

Bok choy has begun to mature. Some insect damage, but not too bad. Peas continue to do well and should begin producing in 2 weeks. Swiss chard should start maturing in about another week. Beets, which we thinned this weekend (hoping to avoid the overcrowded mess we had last year, are also doing well. The zucchini and string beans are both doing well, having just emerged from the ground. However, after seeing fairly extensive damage to the string bean leaves, we decided to fully cover it in row cover. (A week before, we covered half the garden and found the covered half doing better than the uncovered, with each leaf brighter and healthier.)

Just planted: eggplant, lima beans, hot peppers, tomatoes (small plants, which we bought from Marc Christo).

Waiting to see if the calendula, which I spread throughout the garden, will have an overall good effect on deterring certain pests.

Squash garden

Just planted: watermelon, butternut, buttercup, melon, pumpkin. Chose no row cover, as we found it not particularly effective at deterring “weeds.”

Flower garden

Calendula and bachelor button both continue to grow. Just noticed the gomphrena emerging. And planted lavender, which began to bloom almost immediately. Liatris is moving along, having reached three inches in height.

Just planted: Sunflowers (3 varieties), hyssop and borage.

Fruits

Honeyberry Blueberry

Pear, plum and peach trees are all producing fruit this year, which was a big surprise. The pears are doing the best, with the most fruit. The biggest surprise was the plum tree, which needed a pollinator. Seems our bees found a good match for it, so now we have about a dozen fruits growing. The peach tree has about 7 peaches on it. Nearly half of the blueberry bushes are producing fruit, and so are our honeyberry bushes.

The grape vines are growing, albeit some more slowly than others, but we’re not expecting any fruit this year.

Bees: Sunday, May 29th, 2011

This is Alpha Hive after we removed the entrance reducer.

Last weekend before heading home Jim and I found some abandoned pallets and decided to use them under the Nasty Hive and Hive C. My dad stayed up there and earlier in the week he was kind enough to load the pallets on his little tractor and dropped them off near the hives for us. Apparently he left the motor running a bit too close to the Nasty Hive so between the racket the engine was making and the exhaust it was spewing out, the Nasty Hive did what it does best and got NASTY. A few of them made a BEEline right for his face. The other thing that annoys bees in general is anything that swats which my dad continually did. He said one darted at him and got him on the nose.

Today we suited up and had a number of things to do, one of which was to lay the pallets down and carefully move the hives onto their new location. Our first stop was the Alpha Hive and we wanted to check to make sure the new queen was laying brood. We opened the top and the girls were wonderful as always. Jim and I think they play games with us because when we open the telescoping lid, a few of them peer out of the top cover and we have a staring game.

Once we removed the top cover, the honey super was full of worker bees all doing their thing. We estimate about 50% of the honey super was being worked on. Jim suggested we go deeper into the hive to find the queen or at least find bood. Removing a few frames of the brood supers was difficult because it was FULL of capped honey. We did find the 2 supersedure cells we left a few weeks ago and according to some websites we researched, we did find that the queen Jim spotted last week did indeed tear into the 2nd supersedure cell and killed off the other queen before she emerged. Unfortunately Jim, who is excellent at spotting laid eggs, couldn't find any. We believe because of the 2 weeks of torrential rain and wind, that she wasn't able to leave the hive to mate and she could possibly be laying unfertilized drone eggs. We'll check early next Saturday morning and if we still don't spot any brood, we'll hike up to Greenwich NY to purchase another queen and introduce her in the colony. Finding the virgin queen and killing her will be a daunting task.

The last adjustment to the hive was removing the entrace reducer. This was a great move because it allowed them all to come and go at a much faster pace. Other than the missing brood, the hive is behaving fantastic with their nectar and pollen collection.

Onto Hive C... we removed the feeder that's been on there for a few weeks. This hive was a bit disappointing because they haven't really drawn out enough comb and we couldn't find any trace of egg laying. Having pulled out a few frames, we were surprised to find several swarm & supercedure cells on some frames. We believe that there wasn't proper ventilation with the top feeder on and think that this was the cause for those cell creations. We ended up closing her up and moving her onto the wooden pallet was a breeze.

The Nasty Hive was another surprise...they were much calmer. Could it be that they're getting used to us or was it the smoking we gave it? All indications point to the smoking which we'll need to do going forward when we have to go into the hive. The 2nd surprise we had was how much comb was drawn AND the nicely laid eggs. Jim, of course, spotted them. There were some empty frames on the Nasty Hive so there wasn't any need to add another brood super just yet. We closed it up content that this one will survive wonderfully. Moving the hive onto the pallet wasn't as difficult as I thought. Since this one faces North, in a completely direction than the other two, we decided to slowly rotate her every weekend until this hive faces the same direction as the others. We believe this will help the hive survive the winter since the opening will face the rising sun and keep them warmer.

We're keeping our fingers crossed this week that the lagging hives will pick themselves up and be active by the time we see them again.

Bees: Saturday, May 21, 2011

Weather: 60's, overcast, cool, periodic showers

When we arrived last night there wasn't any electricity at the house and my dad said there were thunderstorms throughout the day. While sitting around in the dim light of a few candles my dad recounted the days events since he had arrived. He said one thing that concerned Jim and I which was that one of the hives wasn't active while the other two were busy. We were concerned because we knew we had left 2 supercedure cells in the hive and also knew that they hatched sometime during the week.

What we didn't know was whether half of the hive swarmed away with the old queen, whether the old queen killed the new queen or whether the colony killed the old queen and the newly hatched queens could have both fatally injured themselves leaving the hive queenless hence no activity! Since there wasn't any electricity to do research online, we decided to go to bed and get an early start in the morning.

Bees: Saturday May 14th, 2011

Weather: Overcast, some showers, mid 60′s, hardly any wind

Let me start by saying we finally have a name for Hive B and it’s now going to be called Nasty Hive. Yesterday Jim and I decided to check on the top feeders on the new hive because last week they seemed to be getting cloudy. We decided since we were only going to check the feeder that we didn’t need to suit up. WRONG!!! We were 2 minutes into the process when a bee landed on my t-shirt. Jim told me not to move and saw that it was trying to sting me but the way the shirt was folded it wasn’t getting me. Jim grabbed it and threw it away. It was a that point that the bee came back with a vengeance and was going for any part of Jim that it could. Jim quickly ran out towards the open field however this bee followed and stung Jim on the shoulder. Although Jim and I have been stung quite a bit, you never really get used to it. A throbbing lump quickly started to swell on his shoulder. Hence the name NASTY HIVE. We called it a day at this point.

On Saturday we suited up properly and decided to finish checking on the hives. We first changed Hive C and all went well. We removed the feeder and replaced it with a clean one we had in the barn, quickly filled it up and sealed it up….nothing worth mentioning occurred. We then moved onto Hive B which did have cloudy water but we didn’t have another clean one to put on so we decided to leave it for one more week. When we lifted up the feeder, the bees had begun to seal a frame to the underside of the feeder. We’re trying to figure out why and came to the conclusion that because we had accidentally left out a frame a few weeks ago, the bees had built comb similar to comb in a Top Bar hive…. in the empty space. Jim removed the frame and seeing they were all agitated at our intrusion, we put the feeder back on with cover and sealed it up again…but not until I got stung in the ankle.

We walked away but they wouldn’t let up. We walked a good 500 feet away and 5 minutes later they were still aggressive. We then moved onto Alpha Hive when things calmed down. Since this hive didn’t have a feeder and we put on a honey super the week before, we decided to check on those frames first. There was comb building on most of the center frames at the top, there was glistening nectar being deposited which made us feel great that these girls were doing the right thing. Jim had read some articles where some people had difficulties getting their honey supers going…not these girls.

Next we wanted to inspect each frame in the brood supers to see if anymore swarm cells were present. We also wanted to see how things were going since we had reversed the brood supers a few weeks ago. The top brood super had plenty of swarm cells and supersedure cells. I removed each of the swarm cells and we counted about 8 of them. Most of the frames had something going on…some capped honey, some brood but there were also some empty frames at the ends and also some wavy looking comb. We ended up leaving 2 supersedure cells on a frame until we understood exactly what our next step would be. More on that later. Overall the hive was extremely busy and I’d say crowded which makes sense why the swarm cells were being created. We haven’t seen the queen in quite a while. Also worth mentioning is that the bees in this hive have a great temperament. We closed the hive and left since we pretty much pulled their hive apart and they were all milling about outside waiting for us to leave.

We checked on the hives later in the afternoon and that’s when one of the bees from the NASTY HIVE decided to sting me on the cheek. I’m hoping the swelling goes down by the time I go into work tomorrow. I look like the Godfather on one side of my face with a puffy jowl. Jim’s a trooper and not complaining about his shoulder.

Last night Jim found some good articles on both swarm cells and the supercedure cells. We decided to let nature take its own course and let the supercedure cells hatch. Not having found the old queen, it’s possible that she’s aged and not giving off enough pheremone to keep the hive happy. We’re expecting them to hatch by next weekend.

Here’s one of our honeybees on our apple tree blossom

Garden: Saturday, May 14th, 2011

Flower garden: Calendula and bachelor button growing, but still at seedling stage. California poppies came up five days early. Liatris is growing as well, and possibly seeing the Verbena coming up — although too early to tell. Planted additional seeds on Saturday and Sunday — English Thyme and Lemon Balm.

Vegetable Garden: String beans are doing well, about 5″ tall. Bok Choy will be ready to start picking in about a week. Swiss chard still has a ways to go, still in its early seedling stage, as are beets, although they’re moving along quickly. It’s been a week and they’re about the same size as swiss chard, which had more time in the soil. Planted zucchini and string beans, using the Farmer’s Almanac lunar calendar (favorable time for planting above-ground crops and flowers). Added some tansy (mugwort) to the garden, and the calendula added two weeks ago is coming up in the zucchini area by the fence.

Fruits: Planted two honeyberry bushes. Small fruit on the bottom. Waiting to see what comes of it. Planted another blueberry bush, which had a lot of young green berries. Waiting to see how they mature. Of the two young blueberry bushes added a couple of weeks ago, both flowered — but not sure whether the flowers will turn into fruit. The flowers dropped off, possibly due to the low temperatures. Planted another plum tree so that the existing one could cross pollinate. And finally planted yet another grape vine, which had along green vines. The two existing ones are coming along, albeit slowly.

All the fruit trees, particularly the apple trees, have or are currently flowering.

Bees: Sunday May 6th, 2011

Weather: Sunny with some clouds, 65 degrees, 30 minutes of rain at one point in the afternoon

We decided to open the hives to check on the sugar water in Hives B & C and also remove the wooden cage from Hive B. Both hives had some sugar water left and the solution was turning murky. At some point next week we will either remove it altogether or clean out the feeder and add new sugar water.
When we opened Hive C we noticed that bees were still getting stuck in the pollen trap so we both decided to remove it, paint it and put it on at some later date. They handled the removal fine.

Hive B was a bit of concern because upon lifting the feeder the honey bees had built comb from the bottom of the feeder into the brood super. This all happened because we were one frame short in the brood super. Jim and I were trying to figure out how we had an extra frame in the barn and at that point realized where it belonged! We quickly shaved off the beautiful comb that they worked so hard to create and installed the correct frame in the super.

Jim then noticed on the Alpha Hive that we never removed a piece of plywood that we kept at the bottom of the landing board to protect the inside of the hive from the chilly evening weather. As we both lift the hive a bit and pulled the board out we noticed a WAX MOTH Larvae squirming around in wax and pollen remnants. We realized then that there really wasn’t anything to worry about because the colony is VERY strong and would have corrected anything wrong and there was also protective barrier made of a wire screen where nothing could have gotten into the main hive. We crouched down to view under the hive and Jim noticed some odd peanut shaped comb at the bottom of some frames. This meant that the colony in the Alpha Hive was crammed and they were preparing to hive. Although swarming is a good thing because it means the hive is very healthy and it wants to replicate, we don’t want them to swarm so we’ll have a nice honey stream this year. We then opened up the hive and shaved off each of the swarm cells. Inside were Queen pupae with quite a bit of creamy white royal jelly. We’ll continue to add honey supers and shave off any swarm cells but all it takes is to miss one and half the hive will leave with her.

Who knows what will happen next week….stay tuned!

Garden: Sunday May 1st, 2011

It’s been two weeks and the peas have begun making their climb up from the soil. The swiss chard has just begun to emerge, along with the bok choy. It’s been two weeks since Frank and I hustled to get the garden in shape for the summer. Here’s what it looked like three weeks ago. More to come.

You may be able to notice in the picture that the weed blocking fabric isn’t the best. It’s too thin and weeds are beginning to grow. Next year we’ll use this plastic weed blocking material since nothing grew underneath it. The dark rectangle path you see is made from recycled car tires and this too has weed blocking material built underneath it. We’ll hopefully be able to use this year after year and not have to worry about weeds.

Bees: Sunday May 1st, 2011

Weather: Sunny, high 60′s, hardly any wind

Today we woke up and the first thing we did was digging up the old lavender shrubs along the patio stone stairway and planted the new lavender plants Jim purchased over the past few weeks from the farmers market. He placed them perfectly and we’re making it a point to trim off the ends to prevent them from getting woody. We decided to plant the old lavender plants that were dug up and create a row of lavender plants by the bee hives.
This afternoon we decided to put the honey super on the Alpha hive. Jim read that we shouldn’t put on the queen excluder in order for the worker bees to begin building comb. At some point next weekend we’ll see if we should put the queen excluder on.
Each of the hives were busy this afternoon. One point that Jim and I noticed was that hive B wasn’t as active as the other 2 hives. We believe the reason was because the hive faced North and it took a while for the sun to reach the entrance; giving them the go-ahead to begin foraging.
Lastly, we also heard odd tapping noises, similar to the tapping noise a moth makes when it hits a lighbulb, coming from hive C. Upon getting closer we heard it was at the bottom of the hive. It could have to do with some bees being trapped below the pollen trap since there’s an opening there. Next week we’ll open the hive to check that everything is in order.