Thieves!

So I mentioned (in my Honey post, about our extraction party) how we noticed that our bees were being robbed. Bees from surrounding hives were taking advantage of weakness in our hive and robbing them blind, leaving them honeyless for the winter. It didn't help that we took seven pounds from them - but better us get some than those nasty thieves! We assumed this was most certainly a death sentence for our colony. It still might be, they might be done for, but we are trying to take a stand against those bees. So how can you help a colony that is under attack???
Lessons we've learned:
1) Entrance Reducer: we did not have an entrance reducer on our hive - we had left the entire width of the hive open, leaving roughly 18 inches of space that the guard bees have to defend. It's just too hard for a hive that is already in jeopardy. Our hive kit came with a wooden entrance reducer that allows us to select various sizes of entrance - we chose the smallest size, approximately an inch, thus giving the guard bees a significantly smaller space to defend.
2) FEED!: we need to replace that honey that they've lost. It's not as simple as giving them back their honey (plus, we want to enjoy the fruits of their labor)...so we need to give them a replacement food source. The easiest way to give them instant food is making a 2:1 sugar/water mix. We put 4 cups of sugar in a saucepan with 2 cups of water and dissolved the sugar. Once the mixture cooled a bit, we poured it into a ziplock bag and took it to the hive. We added a super on top of the hive and placed the baggie of sugar water on top of the frames below. We jabbed a few holes into the bag, so the bees can access that food and hopefully calm them down a bit.
3) Continued Feeding: Since we don't have an actual "feeder" we ordered a hive component that is specifically for feeding (to replace the baggie, a more permanent/reusable option) - hopefully that will arrive shortly. Additionally, we need to find a food source that isn't just sugar/water. Bees need a well balanced diet too, while they may survive on carbs (like we would with bread and water), they won't be as healthy as they could be. We've found a couple of recipes - I'm not sure what the best option would be.
We are thinking of doing something like this for the water:
:: 5 cups water
:: 2 1/2 pounds of sugar
:: 1/8 teaspoon lecithin granules (used as an emulsifier)
:: 15 drops spearmint oil
:: 15 drops lemongrass oil
Additionally, they need a protein source. I've been looking online and I think we are going to try something like this:
Makes 6 (1 lb) patties:
3/4 C. pollen
2 1/2 C. hot water
5 1/2 C. sugar
6 1/3 C. brewer's yeast
Perhaps add some Vitamin C to the mix? I'm not sure. But we should be able to mix this into a thick substance and roll it into patties. We can put one on the hive and save the rest in the freezer, until we need it.
We want strong, survival of the fittest bees - we want to help them come along, but they should be able survive without medication etc.
We'll let you know how things go and if they survive the winter then we'll be looking for a strong hive for next year. If they don't make it, we'll know that we gave them a fighting chance and will start again with a new colony (or three!).

HONEY!

Part of what we are doing here at Fresh Egg's Farm is not only learning for ourselves, but sharing with others. It's so neat to open our home up to people that are interested in beekeeping themselves or just want to learn about the process. This past Sunday we had our first ever Honey Extraction Party!!! Including our family, we had about 20 people here, all seated around our dining room table (so happy our dining room can fit all those people!) - listening and learning. We brought out our gear and broke down a beeless hive. We talked about some of the problems that bees/hives/colonies can have, in general, and problems we've had specifically with our bees.
If you've read this blog or followed along on Facebook, you've seen some of the problems we've experienced with our bees...we started this Spring with two hives, two nuks - a "nuk" is a five frame mini-hive. Essentially, we purchased two somewhat existing hives in order to give them a head start - they were to have a working queen, brood (bee babies), built out frames and we were to add them to a 10-frame hive and start from there. We had started with what we called "the good hive" and "the bad hive". Needless to say the bad hive had a failure to launch. We tried to feed them, add bees and requeen and nothing seemed to work for them...and one day, they completely collapsed. Within a two week period we went from "maybe they have a chance" to dead, gone, robbed (by other bees). It was sad, but at least we had this other hive, the good hive, that seemed to be going gangbusters. They took advantage of the Spring honey/nectar flow and built out some of their hive with honey, instead of brood. They were strong. It was fascinating to watch the front of their hive - always bustling with activity. Just a couple of weeks prior to the extraction party, we pulled out these beautiful capped frames. The super (the top honey storage box that contains short frames, which makes for easier handling and extraction) was FILLED with honey, so much so that we put on another box, just in case. There were many deep frames that were filled with honey too. When I talked to the leader of our beekeeping club, he estimated that there would be 20-25 pounds of honey in the super and about 9 pounds of honey PER FRAME of the deeps that we had. He suggested that we pull out 4 of them and extract the honey out. Doing that kind of math, my eyes turned golden at the thought that we might be pulling 50-60 POUNDS of honey off this hive. What an amazing extraction party that would be - we'd have plenty of honey to harvest, store for ourselves, share with others and perhaps even sell.
I went home and put on a bee escape - which is essentially a board that has a circle on the top and a maze of sorts on the bottom - the bees are able to crawl down, but can't figure out their way back up (in theory). We went the next morning to pull off the super and those 4 deep frames and were disappointed. The bee escape seemed to work - many of the bees were out of the super and the job of pulling off those frames was fairly easy - but as we started to work through the super, we noticed that the frames weren't fully capped, as they had been. Almost like the bees had started to break into their honey storage already - which didn't make sense. This honey was just meant as reserves and shouldn't be touch unless the bees have gone through their winter storage below and are in desperate need of honey.
As we started to go through the deep - we noticed how light it was, each frame we pulled out was nearly empty. WHAT HAPPENED!?!?!? We were saddened and confused and oh...no...we were having an extraction party the next day and what if we had NO honey to share. We watched the front of the hive to see if we could see something, a clue as to what was going on. After closer inspection, we noticed strange behavior - there seemed to be a wrestling match on the"landing pad" of the hive. Bees were literally pinning each other down and throwing each other down and kicking some of the bees out of the hive. Our hive was being robbed. Jerks. Apparently there is a strong colony (maybe a feral one??) nearby and found our hive, that since they we are a newer hive (weaker hive), the stronger colony decided to take advantage of this "free honey source" and attached our hive. Ugh. Heartbreak. At this point, I don't think there is anything we could do. It's so late in the season to try to requeen (did I mention that the queen is gone from this hive too). We've learned some valuable lessons from beekeeping this year. I know some things that we'll do different next year. Yes, we've already decided that there will be a next year. We enjoy the bees. And now, more than ever, we realize how fragile these beautiful pollinators are. We plan on expanding our hives and building out three hives/colonies for next year (at least that is the plan).
We debated not having the party - but then thought, no, this happened for a reason. This is a way to share the message about how fragile bees are, to talk about the importance of these pollinators for our food. Without bees, we don't eat.
So friends, old and new, and even some strangers, who became friends, came to our home, on a rainy Sunday afternoon and talked animals, birds and bees (get your mind out of the gutter :-) ).
Here are some photos from the day:

Talking about the frames and breaking down the hive.

Here's a deep frame, with foundation only.

Notice the deep gouges in the wax? This isn't good - I'm not sure if this is from the robbing activity or if something else is happening. That a question for beekeeping club.

Uncle Dave and Cousin Rhett - checking out the frames.

My girl, Lissa. See the mess that something made on that frame. Frustrating.

Josh holding up a frame of foundation only and another frame that has comb and honey. Definitely a surprising difference in weight.

Lissa, modeling the capped honey frame vs foundation only frame.

Mark - making sure that the extraction is put together correctly. In the forefront, you can see some of hive tools, including our beloved smoker.

Super Model! I should have put this on and modeled my lovely beekeeping attire, but it was hot and frankly - I know it isn't a good look for me. LOL

 

Mark, modeling his classy member only/london fog 80's style jacket that he wears for beekeeping. SEXY!

Our beekeeping club has three different ways to uncap the cells - a heat gun, a heat knife and a standard serrated. They wanted us to test which way we liked best. This is me demonstrating the heat gun - it worked well. It uncapped without too much damage to the cells. The con: it's nice to have some cappings - why? it offers a nice taste of honey (kinda like wax bottles from when we were kids) and it you'd like to make candles etc. it provides you with a collection of wax to save up. It also uses electricity and our goal is to minimize our electricity usage. So while this is a good option, we probably won't utilize it.

A nice view of the heat gun uncapping.

Almost ready for the extractor.

Mark using the heat knife. This seems to be somewhat of the standard these days. We aren't fans. It doesn't really add anything to the experience for us. It cuts similar to the standard knife and if we needed heat, we could place the standard knife in warm water in between cutting.

Mark using the standard knife. Our favorite. It's natural. It's non-electric. It does the job.

Asking if anyone else wants to try uncapping - Emily (our new friend and photographer - THANKS EMILY!!!!) was the first taker.

Beautiful job Emily!

Look at those wax caps just rolling down the frame. MMMM!

We collected the wax cappings in a bowl and shared with everyone around the table.

Lissa digging in and uncapping.

Here's a look inside the extractor - bits of wax stuck on the sides - but if you look at all that golden liquid on the bottom - that is PURE, RAW, AS LOCAL AS YOU CAN GET HONEY!!!! From our backyard!!!!!!

Another honey picture! Look at that rich, golden color. Isn't it BEAUTIFUL?? This is such an excited sight to us.

The bottom of the extractor has a gate on it - it allows us to easily pour the honey out of the extractor and strain it through two levels of strainer. If you are doing this on your own - make sure that the bucket you pour into is a food grade bucket.

This picture, excites me, makes me proud, makes me hungry :-) I love watching the honey flow out. It's just gorgeous!

Our new friends Emily and Little D :-) Modeling our takeway honey bears. He was so excited to have his very own bear filled with honey. CUTE!!!!

SO where did we end up? We got just over 7 pounds of honey. Not the 50-60 pounds that we could have had, but still seven more pounds of backyard honey than we had last year. Everyone that came to the party got one of these two ounce bears to take home and these are the leftovers. We figured we'd give one to each neighbor and have honey for us. I am thankful to the bees that worked so hard for this honey. I'm thankful for the roomful of friends and family that came and shared this experience with us. I look forward to next year!!!!!!

Because I want to remember...

It's seems like I haven't been in the mood to post lately. I think there are a few factors to this...work has been busier than normal...good busy, but busy nonetheless, home life is always a dance, balancing that work, family, and farm. I suggested to a friend/fellow blogger this morning that sometimes writing a blog post will help you/force you to remember the good things in life...and maybe it will help you move past some of the bad. I thought I would take a moment or two to go through some of the things that have been going on around Fresh Egg's Farm.

I feel like the farm offers us some consistency in our lives. No matter what else we have going on, the animals will need fed/watered/hayed, the garden grows and the lawn needs mowed etc. etc. etc. I'm thankful for that, although at times it's stressful to be in the middle of another project (or blog post) and realize that the goats are bahing for their food and to be let out. I force myself to make time for pasture, from time to time - because I realized that for a bit, I was more or less going through the motions of feeding and letting them out to pasture and not stopping to enjoy them. Now, I make sure that, when I can make time for it, I spend at least a few minutes in the pasture, talking with my animals, scratching their heads, giving them hugs and snuggles and laughing at their antics. They make me happy.

Our birds are FINALLY acting like real chickens! Each day, it's like an Easter egg hunt at our farm. While we have two nesting boxes, which they seem to want to sit in together and fight over, someone (ahem, Andy, our Blue Andalusian...I'm looking at you here), likes to find her way into the turkey's side of the coop and lay her eggs over there. I don't know if the egg laying sneaks up on her and she just doesn't think to get to the nest in time or what...crazy bird. I did have the opportunity to watch her lay an egg though. This time, she was in the nest, I thought something might have been happening and she kept getting comfortable and then wiggling around and repositioning and the next thing I know - she pushes out an egg! I've never witnessed that before. What an honor and an amazing thing to watch. We are getting lots of eggs now - which is AWESOME...but you know what...life has been so busy, we haven't even had the opportunity to TRY them. Can you believe it? My plan is to make some sort of lovely egg dish for dinner tomorrow, so we can all try them together. It's very exciting for us. The eggs are light brown, dark brown and white...hopefully soon we'll get some of the Easter eggers (they lay blue/green eggs) and can round out the look of our egg carton.

Our garden is better this year than it has been in the past - although we still got it in too late and I know some serious changes we need to make...I'm excited about future gardens. We got lots of tomatoes from the garden, although we could have gotten more, if we had staked up the plants like we should have...next year. We finally got some pumpkins - which will make sweet decorations and maybe a pie or two (yay fall), although we've learned about trellising and will likely trellis the pumpkins and squash...next year. We've also seen super cute trellis options for beans and such (I think Mark is going to be busy, building trellis options for our garden...I'll help, but he is super builder). Garlic and potatoes were great too, although we know that we could get a better crop with a few adjustments. Next year, our gardens will be different and better.

In extremely exciting news...we are getting ready to harvest honey for the very first time. We have decided to open this experience up to anyone that wants to come out. I hope we'll have a few takers that want to learn about the experience with us. The plan is to take off all the honey frames either the day prior or earlier in the day of extraction, so that the likeliness of someone (other than us) getting stung is limited. Yesterday we got our bottles - we decided to get a case of the 2# glass jars and a box of 50 of the 2 ounce little bears. The bears are more of a sample size and the 2# will be for us and if we have extra to sell. I have no idea how much we will even be able to pull off of the hive...I'm hoping for a billion pounds, but we'll likely get around 20 :-) I'll share another blog post after the extraction party.

So I've had to force myself to look at all of this good, because we also had something extremely terrible happen here. Our LSG (livestock guard dog), Ollie, passed away, extremely tragically and unexpectedly. He had been digging his way out of the pasture lately and we were afraid that he'd get into the road, so we made the decision to put him on a long lead, that would allow him to go between the barn and the pasture. Unfortunately, he tried to jump a portion of the fence that we'd been using as a makeshift barn door and got hung up and ended up hanging himself. The boys and I were coming home from picking up the boys from school and as we drove down the driveway, we saw his body hanging from the fence...we thought he was just struggling...but he was already gone. Our hearts are broken. His body is being cremated and his ashes will be spread under the bush where he liked to lay with his flock.

To end this post on a happier note, I want to remember this past weekend. Mark gave me a weekend getaway, for my birthday. He purchased a weekend pass, for each of us, to attend the Mother Earth News Fair, in Seven Springs, PA.  First, Mark and I have only been away, on our own - without kids, without it being for work etc., since we've been married - well, this is the third time. In 17 years. We even spent a portion of our honeymoon visiting with our older daughters (their bio-mom still had custody, at the time). So, when I say "We needed this time away" - you know I'm speaking the truth. Second, the weather was a perfect way to enter into Fall. The air was crispy and cool, with hints of the warm sun shining through. A thunderstorm and heavy rain made for perfect snuggle weather on Saturday. We watched the leaves turn colors over the few days that we were there from just a touch of orange here and there to bright oranges and reds streaking through the entire treeline. It's such a beautiful area. We were happy with the hotel and the food we ate. It was such a nice time...But finally, it was awesome because of the content of the Fair. It is a three-day event, at a ski-resort, in PA - there are vendors, both inside and out, showcasing their sustainable living goods. Throughout the day, they offer many breakout sessions with a WIDE variety of topics - from authors highlighting the content of their books to seed saving to live poultry slaughter/processing and everything in between. We walked away from the event with a renewed sense of excitement about our farm and our journey. We've been second guessing our poultry slaughtering methods - but when Daniel Salatin, yes, SALATIN, as in Joel Salatin's son, as in Polyface Farms fame - processes chickens, using the exact same method that we do, I think we are good. And when the person teaching how to make goat milk chevre cheese, is also using the exact method we do, again, we are good. In addition, it got us thinking about the future of the farm. We, as stated above, need to better set up our garden - perfect our seed starting and saving processes, perfect our planting/transplanting methods, add/take advantage of all our spaces by putting in cold frames and raised beds etc. While we are perfecting our gardening methodologies, we need to also perfect our "putting up" methods. When we were at Mother Earth News Fair, we had the privilege to listen to Niki Jabbour - "The Year Round Vegetable Gardener" author and Sherri Brooks Vinton - "Put 'Em Up" author and look forward to ordering their books. While we were there, we bought some delicious kettle corn and maple syrup. We bought Gage some tea - he's been getting into the idea drinking more natural herbal teas. For Cora, we got her a bunch of seed packets to get her started on her bee garden - she wanted a garden of her very own and I think that giving her the bee garden will help her understand pollination, beauty, bees, seasons etc. Drake was honored with a gift from a vendor. The gentlemen were so impressed with Drake's confidence (his willingness to crochet on the bus, without fear of being made fun of etc.) that they gifted him a skein of beautiful light olive green yard (50/50 mohair and wool)...he has already made a hat with the yarn and it's really cute...so "him". Finally, it was good for me to see some excitement from Mark, about our farm. He's so even tempered that I'm not always sure what he thinks of all this craziness, but he seemed just as pumped about most things as I felt. Which makes me even more excited.
...and these are just a few of the things that I want to remember.

Last Day of June Happenings

The summer just started and we are already in the thick of reaping some of the fruits of our labor. We've been trying to get our projects worked on to make our animals more comfortable, to feed our family and make this place more complete (ha! What does that mean...I don't think it will EVER be completely complete). We knew when we bought this house that there were many projects that we would want to do to make it ours. We love the bones of this place, the wrap around porch, the pocket doors, the amount of land (although we'd always love more) - the previous owners did a nice job of adding flower gardens etc. but that wasn't really our main focus. Although we want this to be a beautiful home, we NEED it to be functional first. I feel like there are so many unfinished pieces, but I need to realize that we are just one family, working full time jobs, on limited incomes etc. With time, this place will continue to grow and morph into what we want.
Mark is working at P&R Communications for the summer. This is the place we worked when we first met each other and fell in love. Although it is nice to have the extra money for a bit, his time spent away from the house (it's an hour commute each way and he doesn't get home until around 6 PM each night) is challenging and we are still trying to find time to get his school/teaching/decorating stuff sorted through and into his classroom (have I mentioned how FREAKING excited we are that he is working as a Second Grade Teacher, starting this fall?!?!?!?! - He is going to do an amazing job, he's a good man and will be a great role model for those kids and it will bring consistent money into our home and he will be working SO close to home and we'll be able to be a stronger part of the community that we live in....all very good things). I see next summer being very different for us - we'll have bills under control and money in savings (knock on wood), we'll have some projects completed and working on new ones (to get the house and property ready for Kait/David's wedding), Mark won't be working (well, FT anyway - he'll have sorting/planning/organizing that he'll need to do for school and he'll be here to help with everything around the house, instead of getting home so late at night).
Even though we have so much going on - we've been trying to make time for relaxing and community. This weekend, we spent some much needed family time, fishing at Hueston Woods, picking black caps, having dinner at the church down the street, digging up our potatoes and more. Today we will be FINALLY planting the remainder of our garden - I'm SO not on the ball with all that. The weather hasn't been very cooperative either...today seems like a nice day, with rain expected later. So with that, I'll share some photos and videos of our adventures and then I will be off to start our day.

Mark and me at Hueston Woods State Park. I think that we've realized that we are missing a water element to our lives. We spent yesterday morning, sitting on the docks fishing for a couple hours. We didn't catch a thing, but it was relaxing and not too hot. It's not the beaches of Florida, but it'll do.

The kids on the dock - I love the picture, but I love the reflection of their heads and faces in the water so much more.

Potato harvest - this is how many potatoes we got out of the garden, before it started to rain. The next day, we pulled the rest out and were able to AT LEAST double this amount. Can't wait to make salt potatoes....delicious!

This is our first year for growing artichokes. This one is the biggest and it is so beautiful - can't wait to taste home grown artichokes.

Here's our oh so handsome, ever growing, young man, Drake - showing off just a bit of our black cap (wild black raspberry) harvest - so far, we've gotten about 4-5 quarts of berries off the bushes and there are SO many more to ripen and pick. I'm thinking that a batch of my Nana's berry dumplins is in our very near future.

This is SO exciting! One of our apple trees has four apples on it. We've been watching these trees...hoping and praying for some beautiful, tasty, homegrown apples (it takes several years for the trees to get established and start to fruit). This is a big step for our family and our food independence. We eat SO much fruit and knowing that we have four apple trees (hoping to add a Granny Smith soon...next planting season?), four peach trees, two pear trees, two apricot trees, two plum trees, two paw paw trees, a cherry tree (hoping to add a tart tree next planting season), several blueberry plants, a hedge filled with black caps, a few mulberry trees, purple and white grapes and both pecan and walnut trees - right here on our property. Just writing this makes me so excited about our property. Sometimes it is challenging to see the differences we've made from day-to-day...we are so knee deep in the thick of things, it's hard to step back and see how awesome it really is.

Some of our black caps over vanilla yogurt...this is SO good.

It's hard to see on this photo, but perched up in the tree is a turkey vulture. It was just hanging out, by itself. We really like vultures, they are nature's clean up crew, strange and cool looking and pretty fascinating.

My dad asked me the other day, when we are working with the bees, just how many bees are out and about. It's so hard to get a good idea - but we are estimating that the "good hive" has around 50,000 bees, maybe more - but as you can see, they aren't all in our business - they kinda just do their thing and only give us issues, when we are overstepping our boundaries. They start to let us know - they buzz louder, they send out guards to ping at our jackets, they start to fly around more...we are starting to know when to smoke, when to feed, when to just get out of the hive and let them go back to their business.

When we were in the hives, I took a few videos to give everyone an idea of what we see when we inspect the hive (what we are looking for vs.what we are seeing). Here are links to the four videos...let me know if you have any questions.

Bee Video Number 1


Bee Video Number 2



Bee Video Number 3


Bee Video Number 4

Ima Bee, Ima Bee, Ima Ima Ima Bee

I thought that I'd give you a bee update...we've had the hives for a week shy of two months. As mentioned in a previous post, we have a "Good Hive" and a "Bad Hive" - this holds true today...well sorta. On Saturday, we did a full hive inspection on both hives. We took them all apart, looked through the frames - searched to find glimpses of pollen, brood (bee babies) and yes...honey. We always start with the "Bad Hive", I guess it's the, I'd rather hear the bad news first so the good news can start to cheer me up situation.
In case you missed the previous post, here's a little background on the "bad hive" - when we picked up the nucs (five frames of an established hive, including bees, brood and a queen), we noticed almost immediately that this have was failing to thrive. I saw some brood in there that seemed older. I didn't notice any larva. I never saw the queen. It wasn't looking good for this hive - especially when comparing it to the other one that was really thriving well. We took photos of each frame - front and back and took the photos to our beekeeping association meeting and our leader confirmed what I thought, that our hive was queenless. UGH. Well, in nature, typically, if a hive is queenless, they will typically take some of the larva and create a new queen; however, in our situation, there wasn't uncapped larva that could have been converted. So option two was that we buy a new queen - except that we had just spent $130 on the nuc and didn't really have extra funds to buy a new queen at full price - nor did we have enough live bees to help support a new queen, since our bee population was dwindling. If our other hive was well established by then, then we could steal a bit from them - but even though they were doing well, we didn't want to stress them and have two mediocre hives. So we contacted the gentleman that got us the original nucs (he purchased a large amount of nucs and then sold them off to people like us) - he REALLY helped us out. For $20 he came out and essentially brought us another whole nuc - five frames, a new queen and all the fixings to make a strong healthy hive. At first, it seemed like things were getting better. He stressed to us that, since our hive now had five built out frames, we should get another empty brood box on top - to encourage the bees to continue building out the frames. So we did. A few days later, we checked on the queen, to make sure that they hive had accepted her and didn't kill her. She was wandering around the frames, doing her thing. They accepted her! As time went on though, rather than seeing more and more activity, we started to see a bit less. We took a look at the hive and couldn't find the queen - that doesn't mean that she wasn't in there, it just means that we couldn't find her - but given their activity it made me feel like we lost her, again. When we did our hive inspection this past weekend though, we SAW her! Although they weren't building out any of the frames in the upper brood box (due to a low nectar flow happening right now). We were seeing brood patterns - as they should be...and I got SO excited when we saw that beautiful queen walking through!! We decided that we should close up the hive and let them go back to work. We've officially upgraded this hive to the "Getting Better" hive. We'll open it up again this weekend to make sure that the queen continues to do her job. My theory - I believe that the second queen actually died (eventually was killed?) - I think she started to give the hive some direction and something happened and they ended up making a new queen...she's here and getting everything really back on track. I'm finally excited about this hive. Go Queen Go!
Now let's talk about the "Good Hive" - ummmm hello - this hive freaking ROCKS! They are filling out BOTH brood boxes - we looked through each frame and they are building them out and filling them with absolutely beautiful rainbow patterns of brood, then pollen and honey (in the corners). Our bees are so smart that they took advantage of the honey flow and decided to convert an entire deep frame to store honey. Geez I just love those bees! Each frame I pulled out we were more and more excited - praising the girls for the amazing job that they were doing. Exciting indeed.
We ended each inspection by sprinkling powdered sugar over the top of each hive - to give them a special treat and a thank you for being so awesome.  Also, sprinkling the bees encourages them to groom themselves and each other - which helps with mite control. We have a screened bottom board in which makes it so that if a bee does take off a mite it just drops to the ground!
This weekend we'll be adding honey supers on the hives - well, at least the Good Hive, and we'll have to make an executive decision about the Getting Better Hive, once we are in there. We'll also be feeding them with some sugar water (1:1 sugar and water, in a ziplock bag - we'll lay the bag on top of the frames and cut slits or make poke holes in there and let the bees get in there and use it how they feel best). I'm hoping for another exciting inspection this weekend...and dreaming of sweet home grown honey, possibly as early as this fall. Yum!

Fresh Egg's Farm...Population 35,062

Well, it appears that, for now, the gang is all here. We've had our honeybees here for just over a week and they seem to be settling well. One hive is doing significantly better than the other. It does make me worried that we may have lost the queen in the one that isn't doing so well. Twice we've taken the frames out of the hives, one by one, searching for her and cleaning as we go - today we even took photos of the frames and some of the bees to show what we are seeing - I'll share those below. Just because we haven't seen her, doesn't mean that she isn't there - it just means that we haven't spotted her, that said, I don't notice much of a brood pattern either. Unfortunately we aren't going to be able to go to our beekeeping meeting this Thurs because we are going to Drake's concert (which is VERY fortunate) - so I think that to ease my mind, I'll write an email to our association leader and see if he has any input. If any of you keep bees and have any suggestions, that would be wonderful.

As first time beekeepers, everything is new to us. That said, this looks strange. Rather than each cell being individually capped, There is like a blanket of capping material.

Same frame as above - notice that lighter colored bee?? I don't know if that is normal or not...could it be a baby bee?

Same hive, different frame...notice anything? If you are a beekeeper, you'll likely notice that there isn't much brood (babies) - just a few scattered capped cells. AND there aren't many bees. I mean, there is a decent amount, it's just not loaded with bees (like some of the other frames from our other hive). I feel like this hive needs some help...I'm just not sure how to give it the boost that it needs. This is a question for our beekeeping veterans.

As we got closer to the center of the hive we saw more and more bees...but still did not compare to the other hive.

Here is a frame, from the same hive - more brood is on there, more bees too. Hopefully it just needs to build itself up a bit.

I love this picture - you can see capped cells, bees working and feeding the larva, see the white larva in there? Future honey makers...LOVE

Here is a picture from the second hive that is doing SO much better. The queen is in here...do you spot her? Hint :: she is golden in color...longer and thinner than the others...on the right of the picture, half way between the top and bottom.

Now, this is what I'm talking about! Look at all those bees. COVERING the frame. Go bees go!

It might be hard to tell, but this hive has already started to build out the cells on the frames we put in there. Love it. So strong.

Look at all of those bees, covering one of the frames that we put in there.

Hmmmm not sure if this photo does this justice - but you can see lots of different colors - yellows, oranges...so neat.

So the bees are kinda a big deal around here...but they just kinda do their thing. We check on them (and get stung by them...ouch! I got a stung on my head and Mark got one on his arm last time and another on his leg today)...but we let them be, unless they are in need of intervention. Hopefully, the hive that doesn't seem to be doing well will get stronger and we'll just reap the benefits of eating their honey.
There are still SO many other awesome things happening around here. Blossoms and gobbles...Spring is good.

Here is our first strawberry blossom - unfortunately, we needed to pull the blossoms off today, since these are new plants, we aren't supposed to let them grow until after June 1st. We are strawberry blossom killers.

...and with that, I'll leave you with a photo of our turkeys - Well, we now know that at least one of them is a Tom-turkey. Look at him strutting around, feathers all ruffled...and he gobbles REALLY loud. I love having them here...but look forward to eating them.

Hives and Coffee

We had quite the eventful weekend. We attending our beekeeping school - something that we've both been looking so forward to, for a few reasons. We learned that we know more than we think we know, we learned more of what we didn't know and we feel more comfortable than we ever have about adding bees to the farm...and we picked up our hives! That's right - we picked up two full kits (with tops, inner covers, bases etc.), along with two additional brooder boxes and four honey supers - we should be all set in getting these bees settled in and producing honey. We've heard mixed opinions on a honey harvest - some people have said we can expect a small honey harvest this fall and others say we should leave the honey with the bees...I say, we let the bees guide us. No sense in stripping them of their food, just to spend the winter wondering if they have enough food - but if they go crazy gangbusters and have enough yummy goodness to share with us...then we will gladly take a bit of honey off the top. This past weekend, we were able to build the two main brooder boxes with all the necessary pieces to get our hives up and running - we'll build the additional pieces as we have time.

Drake, Master Carpenter

Hammering in the frame foundation.

Ratta tap tap...

More frame building.

Look at that beautiful completed frame - can't wait until these are covered with bee brood.

Fancy beewear!

Cora modeling my bee jacket lol.

Oh, wow - the living room was quite the mess.

Stuff was all over the place.

Cora is helping hammer a brooder box together.

Building our hives, lid and brooder boxes.

Mark and Drake putting together the boxes.

Proud father and son moment.

Look at that awesome completed hive! We have two just like this and will be adding additional brooder boxes and honey supers.

We are officially ready for our honey bees. We'll be getting two nucs in the middle of April.

In addition to becoming bee hive owners this past weekend, we also were surprised by (yet another) new baby!!! This one is a buck Oberhasli/Angora cross. His name is Coffee and he is Itty Bitty's baby. He is absolutely adorable. He and his Mama have figure out the whole nursing thing, all by theirselves. He is just as sweet as can be.

Mama Itty and Baby Coffee...I love his smirk in this photo.

Time to eat!

Coffee

Coffee!!!

Coffee!!!!!

Coffee!!!!!!!

Coffeeeeeeee!!!!!

Itty and apparently something I'm going to need more of around here...COFFEE!!! LOL

I'm going to knock on wood while I write this, but we've had four mamas give birth to six babies and everyone has done amazing. I'm so proud of all of my girls and their beautiful babies. Soon we'll be milking Mabel and Flora (once we wean the babies) and we'll be able to have milk and cheese (and soap?!) from our backyard. We'll also be shearing the fiber animals in about a month or so - before the hot weather rolls in.
Milk, soap, cheese, honey, fiber...soon chickens will be here for meat and eggs...this place...it grows on ya'