September Hive Inspection

We attempted to do an inspection of the hive today. This was to be the first full inspection since we put the supers on and removed the honey. There was some good news and some bad news.

The hive presently has two deeps and we removed the honey supers 2 weeks ago.

First the hive seemed very strong, even on a hot, calm day when many of the bees were out foraging, the hive was very crowded. We also found pollen stores, brood, larva and even spotted the queen in the post-inspection review of the photos. (She's in the photo above.)

The bad news, after combing more than a dozen close-up pictures later, we did spot one bee, tending the larva with varroa mites on her back (center in the photo below). This means we must start treating for the mites.

Even after our first freeze and several frosty mornings, we still have many warm days and many flowers still quite active in our garden. On warm days we see many bees on the late blooms including: aster, butterfly bush, spirea, russian sage, salvia, stonecrop and other hearty perenials. The photo below shows one of the workers on an aster, taken yesterday.

Apple Blossoms?

Here it is later summer, after the first freezing temps of the season and I'm out looking over the impact in the garden and what do I see? Apple blossoms in full bloom! This tree is confused.

First Frost: Sept 17, 2006

We had our first major wind-storm of the season yesterday, with gusts topping out at 45 MPH and steady winds of 35 MPH for several hours. This of course wrecked havoc on the garden. One of the bean towers was toppled, many of the tomato and pepper plants had torn limbs or were otherwise tossed about by the high winds.

This was followed by clear skies and calm winds overnight, which allowed the temps to dive to an "official" low of 34.4º F which is measured at 5' above the ground. However I recently installed an additional sensor at ground level to detect frost, which recorded a reading of 31º F. This sub-freezing temp was confirmed by the fact that this morning all the leaves of the squash, pumpkins, cucumbers and a few tender annual flowers were frost-bitten and dead.

2nd Honey Harvest

We harvested the second honey super today and tried the escape board this time. While it seemed to be no more effective than the BeeQuick on the fume-board, we varied the process slightly which seemed to help. This time we loaded the super on the trailer, quickly covered it with a towel and I jumped on the tractor and high-tailed it out of there.

After moving a safe distance from the hive, we removed each frame and bumped and brushed all the remaining bees away. Since we were far enough from the hive, the swarming was not quite as bad. Once again we avoided any bee stings.

We also let the frames warm-up a few hours before we started the harvest, which also made the process go much more quickly. After we measured the last bottle we had a total of 21.5 lbs from this super. Not as much as the first one, but more than we expected.

This brought our first-year hive total to 48.5 lbs of honey. From everything we've read and heard, this is a very impressive yield for a first year hive. The hive seems very strong right now and again no signs of any pests at this point. We will do a full inspection in a few weeks and see what we find.

Honey Harvest

One super-frame filled with capped honey.















The uncapping process
















The extraction process
















Some of the first honey oozing from the extractor















Filling the first honey-bear.














One pound of our first honey crop.




















A sample of the 27 lbs of honey we harvested today. We left one on the hive that was not yet capped off, so we'll check on it in a couple of weeks.

Drying Onions

In previous years, we dried our onions by tying them up in the barn. While this method was mostly effective, we got quite a few that spoiled while drying and ended up mushy.

The first photo shows the original method.







This year we tried a new method. After suspending a wire shelf from the rafters of the barn, I place the onions on the shelf after cutting the tops off flush. Since they begin dripping almost immediately, they have to placed with the cut-off top facing down, so the drippings don't run all over the onion. See the picture below that shows the onions dripping from the new shelf (click to view it full size).











Here is a sample of the payoff. Beautiful onions, dried and ready for storage, with no softies. The only downside, is if you walk under the shelf for the first few days, you might need an umbrella!

Honey!

The first picture is our realization that the first honey super is FULL of HONEY!















The next picture shows the end frame with fully capped honey! Time to put on the next super.
















The last picture shows my son Kenny who assisted today with second super on the hive. Gosh, we're going to need a step ladder to get the honey next month.

Celebrity Tomatos!

One of the fun times with summer is being able to walk into a supermarket and laugh at their produce knowing full well that everything in my garden is better looking and better tasting. I find that I especially do this with tomatoes. There is not a tomato at the store, no matter how pretty it looks, that matches a garden tomato. Of course, that does not stop me from going over to the produce section just to check out what they have and make comparisons. I find that I am subconsciously making comments under my breath like, "You call yourself a tomato", or "You probably aren't even juicy". It isn't the nicest thing to do but I justify it by knowing that it is all true.

Another reason to have a garden, it relieves stress. I often find myself in the garden, at the end of the day, picking vegetables or watching the bees. It has a calming effect. If I really need a "pick-me-up", I just pop a few sungold cherry tomatoes in my mouth and that always does the trick. David has also discovered this. He often sneaks off to the garden after work and if I look real close, I can see the evidence of tomato juice on his lips. Whatever the reasons, I always come in from the garden happier than when I went out. 

Cucumbers Galore!

The garden is in full swing. Just before we left on vacation, I took a head count of all the squash, tomatoes, cucumbers etc. I carefully made a mental note of what would be ready to pick when we got home, in just over a week. We had already had some zucchini and yellow squash and I thought we would have some giant ones to pick when we got home, (and we did). The cucumbers however, were small and I could only find a couple of starts on either plant, but leave a garden alone and it will do crazy things. When we arrived home, we of course ran out to the garden to see what was growing. The cucumbers were everywere on the plants. I think that I picked atleast ten that night and another seven tonight.

I don't want to sound like I am complaining. I would much rather have a plant over produce than struggle but now I am going to have to think of new ways to eat cucumber and new friends that might want to adopt one or two. I have never had a cucumber plant that is so prolific.

Lots of other things are going on in our garden. We did get some bok choy, despite the very hot June. We will be picking cabbage soon, that is a first for our garden. We are just starting to pick our first tomatoes and the bees seem to be enjoying all the varieties of flowers and vegetables they have to choose from. And finally, we are now collecting honey for ourselves. The bees are doing very well. We put our first honey super on a couple of weeks ago. I can't wait to taste the honey at the end of the season.

Busy Bees

1. A worker bee collecting pollen from a poppy

















2. The Queen Mother (with the white dot)















3. An air-conditioning bee fanning the hive















4. That's the beekeeper after installing the first honey-super

The Snow Peas are Here!

After much anticipation, the snow peas are finally here. I ate my first one right off the vine yesterday. That is a privilege I look forward too, especially with a plant that is new to my garden and highly anticipated. There are several more ready to picked today. I can already taste the stir-fry, that is if I can manage not to eat them all before I get back to the house.

The rest of the garden is doing relatively well. I transplanted all of the plants from the sunroom to the garden. The major difficulty we are facing this year is the lack of moisture. I can water and water but plants just do better if they get a healthy dose of natural rain water. It has also been unusually hot for May and June. We are already into the 90's. This causes all of the spring vegetables to bolt quickly. I am having a much shorter season for spinach and swiss chard. The only good news about the heat is that the peppers really like the dry heat.

The bees are great. I find that I have a new interest in bees. I have never paid attention to them before but now I find that I just stop and watch what they are doing. They probably think of me as the stalker lady. Luckily with the bees, they seem to know what they are doing because I still feel clueless as to what my job is. Maybe it is just to be an observer and to grow a great garden for them to play in.

Second Deeps go on hive: May 26, 2006

The second set of deeps were installed last Friday, (5/26) just before we left for a camping trip. The first deep was filled with brood on 6-1/2 frames and some of the outside empty frames were moved inward. The top feeder was refilled and a new pollen pack was added.

When we check them this week, we'll need to open up the entrance reducer a bit. There seems to be a traffic jam most of the time at the front door. 

Lupines today, no frost!

I just wanted to show that the lupines suffered no harm from the last frost, and are doing very well today. 

Amazing Bees

Bees are amazing creatures. Truly one of God's finest creations. I guess you figured out that I spent some time with the bees this past weekend. I was more nervous about this encounter than I was installing them. I think that it had something to do with the few blunders I experienced while trying to introduce them to their new home. It would not have surprised me to see them laughing at me when I peeked inside. Luckily, this did not happen. In fact, the bees look busy and happy. Well, I am not sure about happy but they did look busy and by the looks of things they had spent the week doing bee things. They only seemed mildly upset at my interruption of their work. The hardest part for me was to stay focused on what I was supposed to be doing. I needed to check on the queen and see if she had started laying eggs but all I wanted to do was watch them. Luckily I had David there to keep me on task. I can't wait until I can visit them again.

The garden is also a great pleasure. We have had several warm, sunny days to work outside and play in the dirt. We have also started harvesting spinach and lettuce. There is nothing like a salad that was just picked! Hopefully, I will be able to put the warm season vegetables in the garden this weekend. My tomatoes and peppers are sunning themselves, even as I type, on the deck. The only downside to this is that my sunroom is starting to look vacant as I move more and more plants to the outside for the summer. Oh well, I would rather be sitting on a bench outside enjoying my plants anyway.

Installing the Bees

I can finally call myself a beekeeper. The bees arrived on Friday and I installed them on Saturday. That was quite an adventure. I was not too nervous and I look forward to my next opportunity to open the hive and see how successful my bees have been at establishing a new home. I did discover that reading about installing bees and actually doing it are two different things. I had read several books beforehand, to get ready for the big day, but I still managed to mess it up. Luckily, I don't think I messed it up too much but I am not sure how confident the bees are in my abilities.

The first problem that I had was getting the food can out of the box. This has to be removed to get the bees out. I was so preoccupied with trying to wrestle the can out that I forgot to hold onto the tab that was holding the cage with the queen. The queen box ended up in the bottom of the box, covered in about 10,000 confused bees. I was left trying to figure out how to get it out. I dumped some of the bees in the hive and then had to stick my hand in and grab the box. I tried hard not to think about the fact that I was sticking my bare hand into a box of bees. There was a moment of thinking I might have chosen the wrong hobby. Luckily, I got the courage and finally got the queen and the bees into the hive. I may have done a few of the steps out of order but hey, I got the bees in the hive. I figure that is worth something.

You can now find my husband and I standing at the window, with a pair of binoculars, looking at the bees going in and out of the hive. I am sure the people driving by think we are perverts or something but there is some sort of thrill watching bees. Next time you see a honeybee, take a moment to watch her closely, it is really quite interesting.

The Bok Choy Debacle

I have heard, or read, somewhere that you can't consider yourself a gardener until you have killed atleast one of each variety of plant in your yard. Once again, I have proven that I am a great gardener. You know the rule that carpenters have, "measure twice, cut once"? We need a rule like that for gardening that would be something like this, "look twice, pull once." Last week, I was feeling a bit stressed so I decided to pull a few weeds. That usually helps and I am never short on weeds. I quickly assessed my spring box, trying to decide what was weeds and what was new sprouts, then I got to weeding. At the end of the box I started to feel better until I looked closely and realized I had just pulled all the baby bok choy sprouts. I immediately panicked. I looked in my weed bucket hoping to see the little sprouts laying there and I could quickly replant them. I know, stupid idea but I wanted my bok choy back.

After sitting in mourning for a few minutes, I decided I had better let David know what I had just done. He wasn't too happy. It wasn't that he was mad but I could almost see him thinking of the Singapore Stew, Stir Fry, and garlic bok choy that would be missing from our spring menu. We both had a few moments of silence trying to come up with a plan B. He wondered if a nursery sold bok choy sprouts that we could plant. Now I don't know about what your nursery sells, but I have never seen a bok choy plant. We scratched that idea. In the end, I replanted the seeds but I am not sure we have enough cool weather left for them. I might have to retry again in the Fall and pray that we don't get an early snow. I will let you know what happens.

On a happier note, we will be able to start eating early lettuce this week. The snow peas are about ready to start climbing the trellis and I have my first carrot sprouts shooting out of the dirt. The bees also are set to arrive this Friday. I am so nervous. I feel almost like an expectant mother. I think David has spent more time helping me get my hive ready than he did assembling our first baby crib. I am pretty sure though, installing bees will be easier than giving birth!

Why Bees?

Why Bees?
(Guest entry by David)

Many people have asked us “Why bees?” So here is my answer.

Last fall we began talking about increasing our livestock. We’ve always liked goat cheese and thought a few goats would help keep down the weeds in the yard, reducing the need for the John Deere. There are also a few goats breeds that can be raised for meat. With just 2 acres and a nice barn, we could easily take on a few goats.

Sheep were also a consideration. The neighbor’s boys raise sheep and have won numerous prizes in the county fair for their little lambs. The wool could be used or sold , or we could sell the offspring

Similar to sheep, we also considered another trendy animal – Alpacas. They make very gentle and loving pets and have valuable wool and a breeding pair can provide a significant income.

Ostriches are also trendy in some locations, be we never seriously considered them in our climate. However we considered a variety of other birds including chickens, turkeys and peacocks (we have plenty of “free-range” geese already).

I’ve also dreamed of having horses for a long time. Last fall I even bought a couple of books on how to keep horses on small acreages. I began a brief self-study on the needs of horse keeping.

One of our criteria was that we wanted something that would be productive. We wanted something that could provide useful food or some other form of gain (riding also counts) for the trouble. Being the engineer I am, I began to think about the benefit to effort ratio of various choices. That got me thinking about the efforts.

As I dug into the horse books, I soon realized how MUCH work they are. Sure I have three strong boys, but none of them are begging for a horse, so adding more to their chore list didn’t sound like a good idea. I was also reminded how much I don’t like the flies that come with horses.

At one point during our consideration, Becky and I started planning our summer vacation. I suddenly realized how hard it would be to find care for most of the animals we were considering and how tied down to the house we’d be if we had goats, chickens, or alpacas.

In one of the gardening magazines there was an article about beekeeping. Becky asked if we could do that on our property and she was serious that she would even consider bees. I quickly went through the benefit to effort ratio for bees: There are no worries about buying feed or keeping them watered, you don’t need any fencing to keep them contained and best of all, there is no shoveling of poop!

On the production side, a single hive of honey bees typically produces about 100 pounds of honey per year. Finally the clincher was that we could still go on a vacation for a full week or two and never have to hire anyone to care for them while we were gone. They are very low maintenance and only need attention a couple of times per month during the flowering season and during the winter, no attention at all. Best of all Becky agreed to be the official beekeeper and I am just the helper.

The bees are due to arrive on Friday of this week, and I’ll be out there with the camera as Becky puts her bare hands into the box of 30,000 live honey bees. Let the buzzing begin!

Frost on the lupines

 
  

Garden Envy

This entry could also be called, "The grass is always greener on the other side of the Mississippi". I just returned from a trip back to Georgia, where I lived for about five years. Mid-April looks very different in Georgia than it does in Colorado. In fact, the gardens in Georgia look different than Colorado anytime of the year. I stood looking at the house I had once lived in and admired all the plants that I had so tenderly planted and nurtured. There are gardenias, hostas, ferns, iris and more that were lush and green. The smell of blossoms hung in the air along with the smell of fresh laid pine straw. There is something magical about the gardens in the South. Now I am back in Colorado and it is snowing. The only thing that looks lush and green is my sunroom that is growing the plants that will be planted in my garden when the weather is warmer. It is hard not to get discouraged, but years ago I got a wall hanging from someone that said, "Bloom where you are planted". That may sound trite but it is true. Sometime in July, I will be standing in my garden admiring my Dephiniums, daisies, dahlias, and sunflowers and it will be magical. It may not be my Georgia garden but Colorado has a beauty all it's own. So don't get discouraged, summer is right around the corner.

The Good Life

What could be better than the taste of a fresh tomato, warmed by the sun, or a sweet strawberry pulled right from the vine? This is what a garden is to me. Not only to feel the dirt on my fingers but to taste the rewards from a season of patience and work. Knowing this about me, you also need to know that I have a low technology I.Q. I would much rather be working with my hands than typing at a computer but I have been a journal keeper for most of my life and this seems like then next natural step to journal keeping. I have lately been asked to share some successes we have had in our garden and give some advice that might help other gardeners. I don't feel completely comfortable with that since gardening is a hobby of trial and error but at least I can share some of the errors I have made and hopefully tell you some success stories from our garden.

This is the time of anticipation in a gardeners life. We (my husband and I), have cleaned up the weeds, tilled the dirt and planted our first seeds. I have decided to try planting snow peas this year. I have not had lots of success with regular peas and thought that this would be a better vegetable for us since my family really likes stir fry. I planted the seeds and waited and waited. I watered them everyday, since it has been extremely dry lately, but nothing. I tried not to get discouraged but where were my seedlings? I still watered them everyday and said a silent prayer that they would grow but I must admit that my hopes were fading. Finally after more than three weeks of watchful gardening, the first of several plants started peeking through the dirt. Oh happy day! So my first advice to my fellow gardeners, be patient. Seeds like people, often develop and grow in their own time.