Broody Hen

I have a mix of ten chickens. The single rooster in the flock is a Buff Orpington. For about one week now one of my hens has gone broody. She is Dark Cornish. Yesterday I set up area for her to sit on eggs in peace and quite from the other chickens just below the main nesting boxes.


She seems to have taken to the new nest box and is sitting on 6 eggs from some of the other hens. One or two of the eggs are from her.






So if my calculations are correct she should hatch out the clutch in 20 more days around the 17th of April. Curious to she how she does. If this goes well then we can expect to have some chicken for eating in 3-4 months from now.

Queen is Released

I was able to work with another very experienced beekeeper today, Kurt Bower. Kurt was one of the instructors I had when I took my first beekeeping class in 2008. We checked 25 of his hives. I gained a wealth of experience and knowledge and 3 stings. It is true that you need to smoke the sting site as another bee got me in the same spot right after being stung the first time. Needless to say I put my gloves on for the rest of the day.

I had been under the impression that one should not go into the hives on a cool day like today. Kurt has a different take on this he goes right to a center frame in the top hive body and checks for brood. If he sees some then he will put the frame back in and remove the upper box. Then looks for brood in the next box if he finds some then he will repeat this process for as many boxes are on a hive. If the bottom box, if installed, is empty the he will place this one on the top, a process called reversering. On cool day like today when the temps are in the 55-60 degree range the goal is to get this done as fast as possible to keep the bees from getting chilled. When we found a queenless hive we would combine it with another strong hive. This is done by placing a sheet of newspaper on the box with a queen. Next step is to place the weak or queenless hive on top of this hive. The last step is to cut some slits in the newspaper and close it up.

After working his field hives Kurt and I returned to his house where he taught me how to split a hive. He made it very simple to understand when to do this in the spring. When you find a hive with lots of queen cells you know they are getting ready to swarm. The only way to stop this process is to separate the queen from her field bees. Without a queen field workers will not leave the hive and visa versa. First step is to find the queen. Once you find her then you need to place the frame with queen cells in a new brood box and add some frames of bees without brood to this new hive. Be sure to scrap away any remaining frames left with the old queen. Close it up and check back in 10 days.

After working Kurt’s bees decide to check on mine. The queen had been released. I did not look for her. I removed the queen cage and put the frame back into the hive. Will check back in 10 days to see if she is laying. Also placed a pollen patty in the hive which should speed up the process of building up this hive.

Hive Taking Feed

New hive has almost drained out 2 quarts of 1:1 sugar water in two days time. Hundreds of bees were around the jars. Will check for queen release on Sunday if it is warm enough.

New Puppy

This is our new chocolate Lab Argos (Eric named him).


This picture was taken about two weeks ago. He is now twice this big at just 12 weeks old. I had forgotten what a pain puppies can be but he is already showing signs of being a great family pet. He loves to retrieve and seems like he will be easy to train.

Hoop House

Hoop House is almost done. Covered the house with Sun Master 6 MIL 4Year 65% White Greenhouse Film from Farmtex.

Set out broccoli that was started from seed 2 weeks and 1 week ago. Carrot seed planted this past weekend. So far the broccoli is growing well. Humidity is high in the house. The roof of the hoop house is covered with nat like insects. Not very concerned about this for now.

New Package

Today marks my 3rd season of beekeeping. Lost my first years hive to mites. Lost both of last year’s hives as well. Again I think mites are to blame. This package of bees came from Georgia via Larry Tate of Winston Salem. Best package I have seen so far. Less than 50 dead bees in the bottom of the package.
I will be taking a different approach to beekeeping this year given all of the prior year’s failures. Will be using medication this year to control pathogens and mites. Also will use more Integrated Pest Management techniques, such as drone frames and small hive beetle traps.
This appears to be a big problem nationwide.