Dogs

Argos is a big boy now. Eric and I think he is close to 85 pounds. Shelby tolerates him but just barely. She is approaching ten years old and has no time for his foolishness. Shelby suffers from occasional neck problems she had us all freaked out last Saturday night when she could not walk. Half a muscle relaxing pill from the Vet and she was doing much better.

Rooster

This is the yet to be named Rooster. I think Abby needs to name him. He is now the head rooster in my flock of 10 birds.

Bee Inspection 11-14-10

Looked at the hives one last time for this year. #1hive is the one on the left in the picture below.

Hive #1  is still a hot hive. Not happy to have me looking at them. Lots of honey stores and bees. Need to move it into the sun this winter as there were loads of small hive beetles (SHB) in this hive. Inner cover had close to 50 of them. Tapped off the bees and tried to snuff out as many SHBs as I could.

Hive#2 decide to leave them alone. Previously  looked at them at the end of October and they were doing fine. They are still a bit on the weak side. They have a full medium super of honey. Just going to keep my fingers crossed and hope they make it till spring.

Hive#3 is the strongest hive in the yard. They have two full honey supers above them. I decided to leave an extra super on for emergency feeding in the spring.

Hive #4 is doing good. I had thought of combining this one with the #2 hive but decided against this after looking at them yesterday. Both hives 2 and 4 have a new well mated queen in them. Previous inspections revealed good brood patterns being laid. These are the queens from Wayne's stock.

Brown Yard Hive is doing good. Currently feeding this hive some more 2:1 sugar water. They have plenty of room for more. They are still taking it and hope they get it all in the next week or so before it turns too cold.

Nice October Days

 We have had a nice fall so far this year. These are from a Saturday outing to local garden center.

We made a trip to the Blue Ridge the next Saturday.

10-23-10 Beautiful Blue Ridge Day

Fair Day 9-2010

Spent a nice day at the fair with Terry, Eric and Abby.



Bee Inspection 9-10-2010

Did the following today:

Hive One - Removed a full super of honey and replaced it with an empty drawn super. This hive has a strong and rather aggressive population of bees. Bill and I think there may be some Russian blood in these. This hive has good brood in the brood box and a full super of honey. Not feeding at this time.

Hive Two- Placed a new queen into the brood box and the full super of honey from hive one on top. Blue dot queen is from Wally's Wayne's Bees Stock. Drove the bees from the super from hive one out of the box with a fume board of Bee Gone. Entrance reducer in placed to the narrow opening. Added two quarts of 2:1 sugar water.

Hive Three- Looked for the queen on Wednesday and did not find her but did see a good amount of brood , pollen and honey stores. Currently has a brood box and full super of honey.

Hive Four- Decided against combining hive two with this one, which I had done on Wednesday. This hive is strong and has good brood in the hive box. The queen looks like she might have been released already. She is a marked blue dot queen that is from Wally's Wayne's Bees Stock. Added 2 more quarts of 2:1. They had consumed both quarts from the feeding on Wednesday. They had also tore all the newspaper from the combine on Wednesday. Seems really fast. Hope to find the blue dot queen when I look again in seven days. Entrance reduced to large opening.

Hive Inspections

Removed the queen excluders and several boxes in preparation for the winter. Hive two is still small and weak. Will need to combine them with another hive. All of the other hives are very strong and full of honey. Will do a mite count shortly to see if they need to be treated. Due to lack of a flow right now all of the strong hives were a bit aggressive. Considering this normal for this time of the year.

Honey Harvest

Bill and I harvested some honey from our hives. Hives one and three yielded up about four gallons.

Idaho/Utah Summer Trip

Spent the last two weeks of July in Idaho for Ryan and Ashley's graduation from BYU-I.

The Blue Angels were performing at the Idaho Falls airport, this was Mom's first airshow. She really enjoyed the day's activities.

We also got to spent a day in Yellowstone.

This is from our last day in Utah. Ryan and Ashley are in Provo for the next two years while Ryan is pursuing his Masters at BYU. I could not resist buying our grandson an outfit. 

Click here for more photos

Bee Inspection 7-20-2010

Inspected all the hives today. Added back the top feeder to the Brown hive and filled it to the top with three gallons of 1:1.5 sugar water. Cleared the tall grass from in front of mine and Bill's hive with Clarence’s weed whacker. Smoked my hive before doing so and should have smoked Bill's as well as I got stung from one of his bees. Also added a medium super to the Brown hive.
Added a super to hive one at my place because the top supper was full of capped honey and they have been bearding the front of the hive so they need the room. Added more sugar water to hives two and four. Hive four goes through 2 quarts in a 24 hour period. I am going to put the top feeders back on as we are leaving for Idaho on Wednesday. Hive three still has not drawn out the top super but I elected to leave it on for a while, at least till we get back.
I have also been feeding the bees sugar water on top of the compost bin lid, there are 100s of bees taking the feed and it goes very fast. I make a simple home made solar wax melter, it works very well in the hot summer sun. The bees also enjoy cleaning the honey from last winter harvested comb.

Bernie and Doug's Excellant Adventure

Terry's dad and I made a trip to the bee yard yesterday. Bernie had a great time. I was able to show him quite a bit about beekeeping. My main objective was to add two quarts of feed to hives two and four.
I even showed him how the bees sting but could not talk him into experiencing it for himself. It has been good to have him with us for a while.

Bee Inspection 7-5-2010

Bill and I visited our hives yesterday. The Brown hive had scores of new bees doing orienteering flights. Popped the lid on this hive and saw that the bees and queen had moved up to four frames in the top brood box. That was all that I needed to see so we put the hive back together. This is a very good hive and should be quite strong going into the fall. Inspection at the home hives yield similar results for hives 1 and 3. Might get some honey off of these two hives. Hive two and four are still a little on the weak side but saw good queen activity and laying patterns in both hives.
Will add feed to hives two and four later in the week. Decided that the top feeders are not the way to go for me. I will be switching back to mason jars. This is my favorite method of feeding as the feed stays fresh and does not drown any bees , something the top feeders are prone to do. The feed tends to go bad as well. So I end up dumping a lot of it out.
Next inspection will be in two weeks to see if the honey supers are fully capped and ready to harvest.

Bee Stings

I am running a little experiment. My left fore finger at the joint closest to the palm of the hand has been sore off and on for a long time. Think it is related an arthritic condition. It flared up again today so I decide to try a little bee sting therapy. I caught one of the biggest female worker bees from hive 3 and made her sting me in between the third and second joint of the finger. Did not remove the stinger right away so as to get a maximum dose of venom into the site. Seems to have had an effect but it too early to be sure. Since I have been stung dozens of times now the reaction to the stings are minimal.

Grapes

Looks like a bumper crop this year. Only had to water once so far this year as the heavens have provided the rest.

Argos at Six Months

Argos continues to grow. Now 55 pounds. Looks bigger with Terry than with Eric who towers over us all at 6'4". 

Had him fixed a couple of weeks ago. He recovered with flying colors. He continues to be a very good dog and is very obedient. We are scouting the local lakes so we can start his retrieving from the water training.

He has discovered the raspberries and eats the low hanging ones. We keep trying to get to them before he does. So far the blackberries seem to have escaped his attention, but am sure it is only a matter of time till he discovers them as well.

Tomatoes to the Roof

Tomatoes plants are up to the ceiling of the hoop house, so it would seem they love this environment. Lots of blossoms and set fruit on all six plants. Plants look very healthy.

More Chicks

Second broody hen hatched out five chicks over night. I have not been able to totally access their health yet but they seem fine. Will leave them in the coop for a month or so. So out of six eggs 5 are hatched out not a bad success rate. Plan on giving two of the chicks to the Hamiltons. I had given them one of my other broody hens but she did not hatch any of the clutch she was sitting on.

First batch of chicks are getting big. Argos caught another stray the other night and once again it survived the ordeal. Eric and I need to clip their wings soon.

Another Broody Hen

Had another hen go broody so I put her and six eggs in the pen Ken Burke and I built a few weeks ago. Eggs should hatch out on June 17th.

Hive Inspections

Inspected hives two and four today. Hive two is still the weakest one of all of them. Added a gallon of feed for them. Hive four's queen is laying a nice brood pattern added a super to this hive and one gallon of feed. Just to keep my experiment going I made two bees sting me today. This time I squeezed all the venom into the sting sites.  I am starting to believe that my resistance to bee venom is increasing each time I get stung.

5th and Final Hive for this Year

Started another colony of bees. Bought a complete hive from Wally on Monday of this past week. I placed this hive next to a hive that Bill Hansen has at Clarence Brown's house. We inspected the hive yesterday and found they are strong. This is a two deep hive with the bottom box full of honey. Added two gallons of feed.
Bill and I requeened one of his hives today.  I would estimate we had 10-12,000 bees flying or on the ground during this process. We both managed to not get stung.

Hoop House

The hoop house has proved to be a good investment. I was questioning my choice of covering but so far I think it was good one.

Broccoli is doing great we have started harvesting it last week. Terry made a great stir fry with it tonight. Tomatoes in the center are starting to bloom. Set out the pumpkin plant last week. Not sure what's going in after the broccoli is done.

New Hive

Quickly checked the new hive today. Queen was released. Will check again in 7 days to verify queen is laying eggs.

Argos at 19 Weeks

Argos is still growing at a fast pace.  Looks small next to Eric but he bigger than this picture shows.

He was able to catch one of the chicks the other day due to fact they wander in and out of the chain link pen. He did not kill it just held it gently in his mouth as a good lab will do. The chick, mother hen and rooster were all very upset by this but the chick is doing just fine. Chicks will be too big soon to get beyond the chain link coop.

Fourth Hive

Installed a new package yesterday. Placed a frame of honey from hive one and a frame of brood and  honey into the new hive. Hive 3 is producing a lot of honey so added a second medium super on it. Will check for queen release on Wednesday.

Trees

Spent the day taking down four more of the giant leaning pines that were going to come down on their own sooner or later. Hired a pro to help as these trees were way too big for me to tackle by myself and were close to other trees and buildings that one wrong cut would have led to certain damage. Three of the trees were in the 70-80 foot tall range. Tree man topped out the trees and left the really hard work for Eric and I, that being the clean-up. We got two of the trees done or at least ready for burning this fall.

Great Weekend

Busy weekend. Picked up two packages of bees for the Warrens yesterday morning. Harold Marshall helped me install one yesterday. I installed the other today. Was going to wait till tomorrow to install them with Kelly Warren but the bees were under a lot of stress due to the hot weather. Hive inspections on Friday revealed 3 strong hives with lots of brood. Added supers to the first and third hives. Might even be able to harvest some honey off these two hives.

Yesterday was Lily’s first birthday. She is already walking and is such a sweet child. Anytime I get too spent with Abby and Lily is time well spent. Laura and Chris finished most of their move to the new house.

Hive Inspection Results

Decided to look at all three hives today. Rain is forecasted for the next few days. Hive #1 is doing fine, medium super that was added last week is being worked. Still have 4 open frames with little activity taking place. This hive has no sugar water on it.

Second hive is not doing as well as I had hoped one frame had a capped supersedure cell on it. I did find the queen, she is easy to find because see is marked. Did see some developing larva so for now will just watch this hive. Did not remove the queen cell. I am thinking the workers may have built this cell when the queen was delayed in her release.

The third hive is growing fast which is to be expected for a nuc. Added a medium super with nine frames of drawn comb. Also need to add more sugar water tonight to hives #2 and 3.

Third Hive and Chicks

Got a third hive started yesterday. Hope is if I can get four hives strong this season then there is hope of getting a couple of hives through the winter. But as I learned in a recent real life experience you can't count your chickens till they hatch.
Four of the six eggs hatched out. One egg had been pushed out of the nest by the hen. More than likely this was an accident on her part as she was turning them. The other did not survive the hatching out process. Think the hen smashed her.

Argos at 11 Weeks

Pup is getting big. He is almost out of his biting stage. Not chewing, he still does that with abandon!

Eric has been working well with him. Seems to mind him better than me but it’s a close second.

Chicks

Chicks have arrived a day earlier than I thought they would. Eric and I modified the coop so they can get outside and be separated from the older hens and rooster. Not sure the mother hen could defend her brood from all the other hens.

This picture was taken Easter Sunday Abby loves to see the chickens every time they come over. I sure am a blessed man!