Goats Milk, Lavender, & Oatmeal Soap
The Ocho!
On this BubbaCast we go over some tech-geeky stuff that you can do to help the political freedom fighters in Iran. We take some emails, talk about what’s been going on, celebrate the launch of the new store front, and talk about basic cold-process soapmaking.
Music: James Larson
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Vegetable Garden
Here’s a pic of the vetable garden starting to grow in. The Brooks beehives can be seen in the far background.
One of the perks of keeping bees is that your plants get heavily pollinated. Here’s a blackberry bush that sits about 100 feet from 7 hives in my back yard. It never had a chance. We’ve already picked pounds of berries off this plant, and it looks like it’s not giving up anytime soon.
I’m thinking blackberry jam! Yummy!
Synopsys
I continue to have numerous problems with hives going queenless causing me to have to pull brood frames from other healthy hives to allow them to raise a new one. This practice is not sustainable. I don’t know why all these queens are failing – hives look completely healthy otherwise. I’ve setup 2 Nucs at the Brooks yard – split from two of the better hives to suplement the queen rearing needs. PTC and Woolsey yards seem to be most affected by this phenominon – which is funny because they are in very rural locations and have abudant forage.
I’ll be running a bucket of sugar syrup & mega-bee out to PTC and Woolsey tomorrow to supplement the forage and hopefully encourage the queenless hives to do a better job replacing their queen.
PTC 1
Looks good. 4 Frames of bees – lots of brood. No SHB. Treated with powdered sugar.
PTC 2
Not so good. 2 Frames of bees. No Brood or eggs. More queen problems. Pulled a frame of brood from PTC 1.
PTC 3
Again – no brood. Pulled brood frame from #4 Not Cool.
PTC 4
Looks ok. Not going gangbusters, but there were brood and eggs.
PTC 5
Looks ok. Brood and eggs, but spotty pattern.
Fayetteville 1
Doing great. Lots of brood and eggs. Treated with powdered sugar. No SHB.
Fayetteville 2
Good eggs and brood. 3 frames of bees. No SHB. Treated with powdered sugar.
Fayetteville 3
Good eggs and brood.
Brooks 1
Most of the brood that was in the honey super has since hatched out. Looks like I lucked out and the queen was in the bottom deep when I put the excluder on last week. The bees are moving into the honey super and reusing the old brood cells for honey storage. So far 4 frames are drawn out, but none capped over yet.
Brooks 2
Ready for 2nd deep. Pulled 2 frames brood and honey and split off Nuc. Replaced frames with foundation.
Brooks 3
Looks good. Bees have moved up into the 2nd deep and have begun to draw out comb.
Brooks 4
No real change. Some activity in honey super, but no comb drawn out. Bottom deep is full of bees.
Brooks 5
This is probably the most enthusiastic queen I’ve ever seen. Pulled 2 frames and started Nuc. Replaced frames with foundation.
Brooks 6
New nuc colony for purposes of queen raising. Split from Brooks 2
Brooks 7
New nuc colony for purposes of queen raising. Split from Brooks 5.
Chicken Tree House
Important Note: Seems that I made a goof up and uploaded the wrong file yesterday (thanks to Net for pointing out the error of my ways.) The feed has since been corrected, but iTunes subscribers may need to unsubscribe and resubscribe.
My sincere apologies for any inconvenience.
I prattle on seemingly without end about the latest energy pyramid scheme, bee-talk, fencing, your emails, and finally about building a solar generator.
Links:
- A much better tutorial on building the solar generator
- An excellent tutorial on using a micro grid-tie inverter (even though the unit has it’s own internal kill switch – you still need to install one)
- Kencove and Electrobraid Fencing Products
- Info and more info about worms and chickens
Music: James Larson
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Woolsey Hive 1
This hive was the strongest in this yard, but now has no brood. Could not find the queen. This has really not been my year for queens – although I’ve heard that package queens are frequently superceded. I’m hoping things will settle down and the girls can get to work. Pulled a frame of eggs and brood from Woolsey Hive 3 in the hopes that they will raise another queen. Oi.
Woolsey Hive 2
Not many bees – only 3 or 4 frames, but it seems that they’ve raised a new queen since the last inspection and she is laying like crazy. With a little luck this one will recover quickly.
Woolsey Hive 3
This hive is doing as well as can be expected considering I pull brood frames out nearly every time I open it. The queen looks good and what brood frames were left housed copious amounts of brood and eggs.
Synopsys
These three hives have been pretty high maintenance, leaving me to almost wonder if there is some other factor at play – pesticides, etc. No way to really know for sure. The new homebrew hive beetle traps seem to be working extremely well. Each one had a few beetles, but none were spotted in the hives.
So I spent much of today banging in metal “T” posts – so called because they’re formed kinda in the shape of the letter T. This goes a long way to getting the back and final pasture fenced in. Now that these are in, I only have to hang the insulators and run the fence. For the fence we’ll be using 3 strands of electric rope that we get from Kencove. I would prefer to use Electrobraid, but the price difference between the two products is insane. Done for the day on this stuff.
Brooks Hive 1
Queen has gone nuts in the honey super. There was brood on two frames all the way to the top of the frames. Dammit. I tried to find her, but couldn’t. Put on a queen excluder and will see if there’s more eggs in the honey super in a few days (indicating that she’s still up there).
Brooks Hive 2
Looks good. 5 frames of bees with brood. SHB trap looks clean.
Brooks Hive 3
Packed with bees. Added deep and moved two brood frames up into the 2nd deep to get some activity going up there.
Brooks Hive 4
Finally some comb being drawn out in the honey super. Added queen excluder.
Brooks Hive 5
Full of Bees and already needs a 2nd deep. This queen is a tramp. SHB trap looks clean.
Notes:
I would have dusted with powdered sugar, but was fresh out. I’ll swing by the store before headng to the other yards tomorrow.
These girls made the ultimate sacrifice
I snapped this picture while inspecting one of the Woolsey hives.
Whenever someone brings up the out-dated argument that women should not be in the military, I think of the bees. These girls gave their lives fiercely defending their home from this invading carpenter bee. The dedication and sacrifice of a soldier transcends gender. We truely have much yet to learn from these amazing insects.
