Slowly Moving West

April 29, 2018April 29, 2018 Lazer Creek ApiaryLeave a comment

We have started taking plants and boxes of household goods to the farm — just what will fit in the vehicles each time and what we have had time to pack. Most of the bee stuff is down there now, which makes getting around in the 40-foot container challenging! Still, the bees are rapidly going through the frames we’ve built, so empty totes come back to the city with us in time to be refilled.

Building the shop has become a priority so that we have more space to put things and so that we have a clean space to sling honey this summer. As we want to sell in Georgia, we need to be certified in Georgia. Hubby spent most of the weekend leveling the shop site and was working on trenching to install conduit last time I talked to him. (I came back early to get laundry done for the week.) Our neighbor has been a great help, both in terms of giving advice and helping on the tractor. His company will be pouring the slab next week and then the construction can start. It’s exciting!

Spring border — Daffodil, iris, crinum lily, and other spring transplants.

Even though there was a lot to get done, hubby was still willing to help me get spring bulbs transplanted. They’re all looking rather sad right now, but I know from experience that they’ll look great next spring, if not before. The grass and wildflower seeds are doing well, and I added some clover seed and fertilizer yesterday. If we can just get enough growing to slow down the erosion, we’ll have a less muddy driveway when we get those Southern downpours! The drainage ditches hubby, my brother-in-law, and I have cut are making a huge difference, and plants will just be the final touch we need.

Of course, we didn’t neglect the bees this weekend, even with all the other tasks we needed to accomplish. We had to replace the bellows on one of our smokers, and we love this new Pro Bellow from Mann Lake. There’s a nozzle at the bottom that blows air directly into the smoker, and that has made it easier to get the smoker lit. I’ll let you know how it holds up, but for now I’m sold!

I intended to just check the queenless hives, but we ended up checking all the hives for space after seeing how much nectar the bees have brought in over the past week. Two hives have already started capping honey, and I only saw three small hive beetles all day. There were no new wasp nests started in lids, but there were enough cockroaches on top of inner covers to keep the hair on the back of my neck standing up! Talking of hair — if you have short hair, don’t pull your hat too tight — hubby got stung on his head through his cap yesterday!

Bricks on hives to indicate which hives have queens, and which do not.

We continue to use a combination of methods to track what’s going on in hives. A flat brick indicates that the hive has a laying queen, and an upright means that the hive is queenless. In addition, I write notes on the lids with a Sharpie. We have three hives with queen cells that have hatched since last weekend, but I didn’t see a queen yesterday, so I like having that history at my fingertips when I go to recheck. Then we have a spreadsheet in which we track hive inspections, treatments, and mite counts. That’s becoming quite time-consuming and I’m working on automating some of the reporting and tracking, although I probably won’t get much done until summer. As my new school starts the new year 3 weeks earlier than South Carolina schools, and we need to get this house on the market, and build the workshop, and move my work clothes, I may not find much time to refine the database while keeping up with a growing apiary! It’s a good set of problems to have!

We’re looking forward to May’s Mid-Carolina Beekeeper Association meeting on Tuesday. Has it really been a month since the last meeting? Time flies in spring, which is why we all have to get hive equipment ready in winter!

Enjoy the (finally) warmer weather and take time to smell the roses.

Lazer Creek Apiary · Natural Food Sources · Nature · Pests - Bees · Queen Bee

The Return of the Hives!

April 21, 2018April 21, 2018 Lazer Creek ApiaryLeave a comment

One good thing about this time of year is that I can perform full checks of 18 hives in just a couple of hours! While I’d hate to see so few bees and no honey come June, it sure is nice to be able to knock out half the bee yard before lunch without even breaking a sweat.

My feeling about the blackberry bushes is the reverse. Right now, I’m happy to see all the flowers because they are such a good nectar source and our bees are bringing in lots of lovely nectar and pollen right now. However, as soon as the blackberry bushes stop blooming, I’ll get hubby to hook the cutter up to the tractor and I’ll mow down all the ones that are growing like the weeds they are along our trails. They are quite welcome to keep growing off the trails for now — at least until after I make another batch of blackberry-apple jam.

The bees are doing great and so far there are very few small hive beetles in the new yard. Most of the hives are beetle free, but 3 had wasps starting nests under the lids. Two were yellow jackets and one was a red wasp — I’m not sure which I like least. Well maybe I do — I like the ones that are gone!

The new bees that hubby bought in Jesup are very friendly. Some of the hives are outgrowing their space, while others are just plodding along. The packages he bought all still have their queens and they are laying, but some of the queens he bought separately are nowhere to be found. We’re pretty sure that not being able to install them right away contributed to those losses, but at least the remaining ones are making up for lost time. We tried introducing a NUC with an weak queen from last year to a hive that had become queenless this spring, but that failed. The hive itself is incredibly strong, but no queen — unless she’s out on a mating flight. It seems to me that they would have preferred a weak queen to no queen at all, but bees don’t always make sense.

Yellow Columbines — Columbines grow so much better in the clay here than in the sandy soil back in the city!

It’s nice to be back and see the grass seed sprouting along the driveway along with what might be wildflowers from the seed my friend sent for my birthday. I also have spring onions growing and one lonely squash plant. Last week, hubby thought something had been snacking in the temporary vegetable beds, so that plant might not be even there next weekend — or it may be surrounded by other plants. We did get to eat one strawberry each this afternoon and are looking forward to more in years to come.

It still seems a little surreal that I will be here full time soon. For now, we’re bringing one or two boxes of stuff with us each time we drive down. I don’t think either one of us wants to think about packing up the house until we get to the end of the school year, but when the mood strikes I do gather stuff to take to Goodwill. We are both pack-rats, but as we’re downsizing some things just have to go. Maggie, the dog, is just so much happier here so I’m sure she’d pack for us while we’re at work if she knew how.

It’s been a productive and tiring day, but I’ll be going to sleep stress free and with a big smile on my face. Every trip reaffirms that buying this land was the perfect decision for us and our future. Happy spring, everyone — it seems like it might be sticking around this time!

Gardening · Lazer Creek Apiary · Natural Food Sources · Queen Bee · Supplemental Feeding

Cooking with Gas – April Updates

April 5, 2018April 6, 2018 Lazer Creek ApiaryLeave a comment

Today we got a very large propane tank to power our tiny home! This will be the tank that provides propane to the house eventually, but it’s worth it even now — both for the convenience of having a reliable source of heat and hot water and for the cost savings. We ran out of propane one of those well-below freezing nights over winter break, and we don’t want to make a habit out of that! Getting up in the dark and the cold to drive 10 miles to get a tank of propane is not fun. Well, it wasn’t bad for me as I turned the electric blanket up and waited for hubby to return, but it was no fun for him.

We’ve made other great progress this week. Hubby has leveled the site for the future workshop. He had to take down some trees and scrape off the top soil to get down to clay, so I now have temporary raised beds made from those trees and the soil for this year’s veggie garden. I’ve also planted more grass, clover, and wild-flower seed to reduce erosion along the driveway while providing for the bees. The bees are still very interested in the syrup buckets, so I’m impatient to see some nectar plants start supplying them with what they need.

For some reason, the well filter keeps clogging, and I wonder if the tree clearing across the creek has anything to do with it. We ended up removing the filter after the third after-dark trip to the well house one night, but now silt clogs the sprinklers so they don’t turn off. That made for an interesting shower last night — five sprinklers were running and I got to wash shampoo out of my hair with the left over trickle. After that, walking across the slick clay to turn off all the faucets in the dark was a challenge, but then I looked up at the beautiful night sky and the challenge turned into a blessing. It’s been too long since we walked down the driveway after dark. I love the electric gate opener, but I didn’t realize how much I missed our evening walks to go lock the gate.

The really good news is that most of the bee packages and splits we made are doing well. Bees moved out of one of the hives that took a long time to release the queen, but the rest have eggs and/or brood in various stages and all of the queens are fat and active. The hives in the old location are still battling small hive beetles, so we’re trying beetle traps made of Borax and Crisco paste in CD covers for the first time. We’ll let you know how that goes. The hives in the new, sunnier location have far fewer problems with beetles so far.

More good news is that I received a job offer for next school year, so I’ll be living at the farm full time after June. That moved the workshop up the priority list as we’ll need somewhere to put all the tools from the garage, but at least we’ll no longer be moving carpentry projects up and down I-20! I’m enjoying spring break, so I’m trying very hard to not think about packing up everything else in the house and getting the house on the market. It’s much less stressful to think about being able to monitor the bees on a more consistent basis.

Blue bells – another childhood favorite of mine.