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.