Garden Harvest
Laura and I take some feedback, pontificate spring preps, talk about gardening, beekeeping, and other springtime activities. Laura would like to apologize for mistakenly referring to the Brandywine Tomato as a “Rutgers”.
Links from the show:
Roy’s Alaskan Homestead Blog
Ison’s Nursery
Murray McMurray Hatchery
Music: James Larson, Gaia Consort
PodCast Call in Line: 740-5-MYFARM
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A longer look at doing some hive manipulations. In this BubbaTube, we open up a hive with all intention of swapping brood supers, but get a surprise in the process. We also replace some hardware that has come to the end of its life.
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Today I’ll be swapping around supers at the Brooks and Woolsey beeyards. This is a swarming control technique that supposedly keeps the colony from feeling crowded. The idea is that bees constantly move up in the colony through the winter as they consumes their winter stores. By the spring, the bottom of the colony is basically empty. By swapping the top and the bottom supers, we open up another super of space above for the colony to move into.
I’ll also be putting honey supers on these hives. It takes a while for the bees to “get” that their hive has changed sizes and move up into the super. We’ve already got a light nectar flow going, which will quickly pick up in the next few weeks, so I want them up in there drawing comb ahead of the game.
My supers have top entrances too. I’m a big fan of top entrances for two reasons. They provide additional ventilation, but the air isn’t pulled up directly through the broodnest, and it gives the foragers a direct route to the honey stores – meaning they don’t have to walk all the way up the inside of the colony to get where they’re going.
For those of you that always wanted an observation hive but for whatever reason couldn’t make it work out, I give you Drapers Bee Cam. It’s a live cam of a bee hive just like it sounds.
Honey Harvest
This one goes out to our beekeeping friends. A full hour on springtime beekeeping practices and even a small taste of swarm management.
Links
Alaska Urban Farmstead
Increase Essentials by Dr. Larry Connor
Northern Kentucky Beekeeper
Beekeeper Linda’s Excellent Blog
Gardener Apiaries
Music: James Larson, Gaia Consort
PodCast Call in Line: 740-5-MYFARM
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Here’s a combined write up for the PTC and Woolsey hives and what the findings were when we conducted our quickie spring inspection. This is not the full spring inspection. I conducted the inspections very quickly to avoid chilling the brood. The idea was just to get a general idea on how the hive was doing and to identify any obvious problems as early as possible.
PTC Hive
This hive is in awesome shape. It had been a month since I last visited this hive and the bees had hardly touched the Megabee patty or the sugar syrup. This is good because it tells me that they have a viable food source. Indeed they were storing honey on both sides of the brood nest. The only thing blooming right now is Red Maple, so I’m assuming that there is ample forage available.
The brood nest was good sized spanning 6 frames with brood in all stages of development. Brood pattern was pretty solid as well. Forager traffic was high considering the temperature (low 50s).
I removed one of the division board feeders and changed the syrup in the other one. I also added another megabee patty.
Woolsey Hive
This hive is also in great shape. Both feeders were empty, and the megabee patty was completely consumed. Broodnest was a good size (spanning 5 frames to the depth of the super) with numerous eggs and larve in solid patterns across both sides of three frames. There were also new honey stores over the brood nest, indicating that this hive had also found early forage.
I removed one of the feeders and added another megabee patty.
Spotted 8 small hive beetles in this one. I’ll be adding a beetle trap on the next visit.
Note: Many beekeepers would question the approach of adding pollen and syrup while the bees have available forage, but it is not unusual (especially during the spring build up) for a hive to completely consume its stores over a few days of bad weather trying to feed the expanding brood nest. We still have nights in the 20s so I look at taking these steps as insurance. If they don’t need it, they’ll just leave it alone in favor of available forage. But if they do need it and it’s not there, the hive could suffer.
Here’s a short video that shows you a quick spring inspection of the Woolsey hive. This is not a full springtime inspection, but rather just a quick peek under the hood so to speak to check on food stores, brood production, etc. A full spring inspection is much more comprehensive and would be done in warmer weather. The video is crappy. I shot it with the video camera on my blackberry kind of as a spur of the moment – hey this might be cool – sort of thing. Enjoy!
PodCast Call in Line: 740-5-MYFARM
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Rest in peace, Manna. We will miss you.
Today we did what every horse owner dreads having to do.
Manna, one of our mares, experienced an acute intestinal blockage yesterday. The vet came out and gave her some mineral oil to loosen things up and Banamine (an anti-inflamitory) to help with the pain and told us to keep an eye on her. He called back several times to check on how she was doing. I slept outside with her last night to keep an eye on her condition. Around 3 or 4 she seemed to improve and cleared a large bowel movement. For the rest of the night she seemed to be comfortable and content to stand instead of laying on her side as she had been.
This morning she was walking around as normal and we assumed things were on the mend.
Later this afternoon she began to run a fever and again became agitated and short of breath. The vet came back out immediately and determined that her bowel was again blocked and had become severely distended. The only treatment in such a scenario is emergency surgery, but with the condition being present for so long and her age (late 20’s), her chances of survival were not good. Even in the best of outcomes, she would have had several months of recovery. The situation was complicated by the fact that toxins from her intestine were now leeching into her bloodstream. It didn’t look good. The vet confirmed this with four words, “I’m sorry. It’s time.”
We cried. We hugged on her. We told her how much we loved her. We thanked her for being a wonderful horse and a patient teacher. And we cried some more. I know that in the end we did all we could. There was no pain. She died quickly, with dignity, and surrounded by love.
Red Maple Flowers
I somehow talk Laura into doing another show where we throw out some updates on the dog, seed starting, and the bees. We take some great feedback, including an actual voicemail! We finally wrap the show up by reading some of the better ads out of the market bulletin.
Ison’s Nursery
Georgia Framers and Consumers Market Bulletin
Music: James Larson, Gaia Consort
PodCast Call in Line: 740-5-MYFARM
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It’s nonsense like this that really gets me going in the morning. Please if you have some time, contact Burgh Bees and see how you can assist.
Proposed changes to the city ordinance dealing with the keeping of agricultural animals on city properties has agitated bee and chicken keepers.
Burgh Bees, a 375-member nonprofit, has put out a “call to action” via e-mail for attendance at a public hearing before the city planning commission at 2 p.m. Feb. 16 “to show how many beekeepers and beekeeper supporters there are” in the city. The hearing is at 200 Ross St., Downtown.
Legal wording currently is confusing and leaves room for abuse of privilege, city officials have said. But bee and chicken raisers say the proposed changes could create unintended ill-effects.
The hearing is the public’s chance to offer input, said Joanna Doven, spokeswoman for Mayor Luke Ravenstahl.
“We support urban farms and groups like Burgh Bees,” she said, “but we have to make sure we are balancing their interests with the safety needs and concerns of other residents.
“There has been a disconnect between what is and isn’t allowed, so we need an ordinance that clearly outlines how we should proceed.”
Under current law, residents must get a variance to raise chickens on properties of less than 5 acres or if their lots don’t allow 200 feet between the coop and a property line, but it’s vague as to whether a five-animal limit means pets are included. In addition, enforcement is driven by complaints.
A proposed 15-foot setback from any property line and 2,500-square-foot minimum per hive would in effect ban beekeeping in many of the city’s dense neighborhoods, “where our members have been safely keeping bees for years,” said Meredith Grelli, founder and director of Burgh Bees.
Full Article – http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10039/1034293-53.stm