Hiving and Checking for the Queen

The bees arrived Saturday, and it couldn't have been a worse day for it! It was really cold, hovering not much above freezing, and was raining and snowing off and on all day. Not good for the bees! But there wasn't much to do other than move forward. I mean, the weather wasn't supposed to change for at least a few days, and they couldn't stay in their package forever!

They come in a wooden box, two sides of which are screen. There is a hole in the top which is plugged during transport with a can of bee food (basically very thick sugar water) that has tiny holes punched in the bottom. The bees feed off this sugar water while they are trapped in the package and unable to get to pollen. They're fine in there, but they're obviously better off in their hive.

 

The queen is in a tiny version of the larger package, which is suspended from the top of the package. This is so that the bees begin getting used to her scent and so that they can take care of her, but she remains separated from them. Because the bees from packages are paired with the queen shortly before they're sent out to their new homes, you want the bees to have a little time to get used to their new queen. Otherwise they might kill her.

I picked them up early that afternoon and kept them in the garage so they'd be a little warmer until C got home. We put sugar water (a 1:1 ratio) in a spray bottle and spritzed the sides a few minutes before we went out to the hive. We first removed the queen cage, covering the now exposed hole that the bee food can was plugging. There is a small hole in the bottom of the cage with a cork in it. C removed that cork, immediately covering the hole so the queen couldn't get out, then I shoved a mini marshmallow into the hole. Don't worry! The plan is that the bees will eat through the marshmallow and let her out. Then we dumped them out of the package and into the hive. Literally just dumped them. C shook the package around a little until almost all of them were out in the hive. The temperature did work in our benefit a little in that it made the bees a lot less likely to fly around during the hiving process. Unfortunately I did not get any pics of this process. Maybe next year. Anyway, we closed up the hive and left them to get the queen out.

We checked back in this afternoon (Wednesday) to be sure that the queen had indeed been let out of her cage as planned. We found a huge wad of bees suspended from two of the top bars. While we didn't see her, it's most likely that the queen was in the middle of that wad. And hopefully they are working on making comb. We closed the hive back up and we'll leave them again for about a week. If all goes as we hope they will have a good start on comb and there may even be some brood!

PS Have I mentioned our awesome bee suits? They're made for someone about 6" taller than me, but otherwise they're quite stylish. You should see the way people slow down and stare as they're driving by when we are walking across the yard in these babies. It's quite funny, really :)

Build It and They Will Come

After we decided to get bees, we'd already decided to use a top-bar hive, but C decided he wanted to build our hive. We found plans in several different places, but he decided the plans he found in a beekeeping magazine - GRIT Magazine's Guide to Backyard Beekeeping and Honey - looked like the best and easiest to follow. So my Can Do Basically Anything Stud Muffin got started.




Gotta measure it out








Used a chalkline to make sure the lines were straight.

He made all the cuts.

I helped by sanding.

 We used a low VOC water sealant to protect the wood. We let these air outside for a week before C was ready to assemble the hive. You want to make sure that there are no toxic fumes remaining that could kill the bees once they're in the hive.

 I really wanted to be able to peek in without disturbing the bees - especially in the winter when you're really not supposed to open the hive at all - so C had the owner of our local glass shop cut some pieces of glass so that he could put in windows.

 Here are all the parts for the top bars.

 These will lay across the top of the hive, flat part (the part laying against the table) will be on top, the bees will build their comb suspended from the thin piece going down vertically from that.

Here are my windows!

And here is the roof! It's almost done! And a good thing... the bees arrive this weekend!

Time for Seedlings

We had a great garden last year, though the selection was somewhat limited. That was partly by design - we wanted to get our feet under us, figure out our soil/climate/season, gain a little experience as gardeners - and partly from inexperience - see reason number one. All-in-all, given that it was our first stab at gardening, I think we did a pretty good job. But one of the things I regret about last year is not keeping better records on our doings, so I'm making a big effort to be better about that this year. I am keeping a gardening journal, including a graph paper map of our garden and all the relevant dates. I plan to record those things here, too, along with pictures taken along the way. This will be the first of the garden progress related posts...

This year we've decided to go with almost all heirloom seeds, and are using organically grown seeds whenever possible. We began talking about this idea during the winter, and we quickly realized that it was important to both of us, mostly for the same reasons we wanted to start gardening and get bees in the first place: it's important to us to be sensitive to our environment and we want to be able to give back as much as we take. Unlike hybrids and genetically engineered seeds, heirloom seeds are much more genetically diverse and have no genetic engineering in their history. While the other two are often engineered to the point that they can survive in more drastic climates (like ours) or are resistant to various diseases, I believe that these problems can be avoided too by using heirloom seeds that have been used in the area before. This year we got all our seeds from two companies: Botanical Interests, a great Colorado company, and Seed Savers Exchange.

We have also decided to use these little plantable, biodegradable peat seed flats again this year. The only thing you have to be careful of with these little guys is being sure that, when you plant them, you put the entire pot under the ground. If you don't, if even a tiny edge is above the ground, it can be disastrous for the plant. The pots soak up some water, which is fine if it's under ground, but any exposure to the air, and the water in the pot is quickly wicked away. We found this out the hard way last year. This year we will also use a very sharp knife to remove the bottoms of the pots. We didn't have trouble last year with the pots degrading and the roots being able to push through, but if we can help the process, why not? The pieces we cut off can just be thrown into the compost pile, so there's no real waste from doing that.

Last year we had three strawberries, two blackberries, and one each blueberry and raspberry; but four or five of a handful of different veggies. We decided to be much more diverse about our plantings this year. We will have: three cauliflower (white, purple, and green), three broccoli, two broccoli rabe, four beets, two eggplants, two tomatoes, two jalapeno, two cayenne, two tomatillos, two each of Catskill and Long Island brussels sprouts, five cucumbers, five edamame, five lima beans, four acorn squash, four butternut squash, three yellow squash, three zucchini,  and four each of Jack O Lantern, Big Max, and Casper pumpkins. We planted everything but the tomatillos, cauliflower, eggplants, and Casper pumpkins March 23rd. We kept them inside, near the fire so that the oil stayed nice and warm - a factor far more important than sun at the germination stage.

We began to see our first sprouts - within the first week: the 27th saw all three broccoli and both broccoli rabe sprout; the 28th brought us sprouts of two beets, 2 Long Island brussels sprouts, four cucumber, four edamame, and one Jack O Lantern sprouts, we also planted the tomatillos that day; the next day, two more beets, two Catskills brussels sprouts, one cucumber, one edamame, and three Jack O Lanterns sprouted; the day after that two yellow squash, three zucchini, and the last Jack O Lantern sprouted; the last day of March we saw sprouts for the two tomatoes, four limas, one acorn squash, one yellow squash, and all four Big Max pumpkins.

The first two days of April we had sprouts from the last lima bean, three acorn squash, three butternut squash, and the last Big Max; and a tomatillo finally popped through the 3rd; the 4th the second tomatillo sprouted, and we planted the cauliflower, eggplants, and peppers - jalapeno and cayenne. We'd been waiting for local garden shop to get in the seeds we wanted. One of the cayenne sprouted very quickly - the 6th, and the 7th two of the cauliflower sprouted. I love that we can already tell which are going to be the purple ones - they have darker leaves with purple around the edges. The 8th we had sprouts of one jalapeno, one cayenne, and the last cauliflower; the 9th our last sprouts - one jalapeno, one cayenne, and both eggplants - emerged.

Over the last two weeks the seedlings have been growing like crazy! By the time we put them in the ground - still a month from now - we'll have strong, healthy plants, ready to put their roots into the ground and give us lots of delicious vegetables.

Of course we're hoping to still have the fruit too. It all looks like it's wintered over okay, so within the next month or so we should start seeing some green leaves on them as well. We're definitely looking forward to lots of homegrown food this summer!

P.S. We are t-minus two weeks and counting until the bees arrive!!