Category: Bees

Published on Leave a comment on Happy Summer

The weather was beautiful this weekend so it was time to catch up on a few things.  The early morning started with opening the bee hive.  It had been a week since we brought them home.  It was time to add one more brood chamber and put the first honey super on.  Since it was fairly cool the bees were not too active.  I did suit up fully and smoke the hive just a bit but everything went very well.  Since there are many things blooming they should start to make honey now.  There is a queen excluder between the brood chambers and the honey super to prevent the queen from laying eggs in the honey area.  It has been really fun so far getting to know the bees.

I finally got the additional 50 strawberry plants into the new planting bed in the front yard.  The plants that we planted a couple years ago are heavy with fruit.  We were able to pick 2 quarts of beautiful sweet fruit in the afternoon.  From the amount of berries still ripening on the plants I'm think we will be able to pick this amount each day for a week or more.  Boy they were really good sliced up on vanilla ice cream with a bit of my mother in laws famous hot fudge sauce on them.  My next project will be to make biscuits so that I can make my sweetie his favorite strawberry shortcake.  It must be on biscuits though, none of that squishy sponge cake.

We had a heat pump installed a few weeks ago so it was time to built the rain cover over it.  I just built a little shed roof with a scrap piece of metal roofing over it.  Now when it rains or if snow from the house metal roof slides off it will not hit the outside unit.

There is still a ton of stuff to do during our short summer including getting the garden weeded soon before they take over.

Well, it sounds like we are having a passing shower, good for watering in those new strawberry plants.

Happy Summer Everyone

Published on Leave a comment on Finally a Fenced Front Yard

Well it took about 3 weeks to get it finished but the front yard is finally fenced.  I finished by hanging the gate after work today.  We fenced the front yard for a few reasons.  We are putting the bee hive inside the fence to keep it away from the chickens who would think each bee made a fine snack.  It also places it up in the vicinity of the dog yard and house which will both be a deterrent to bears.  The added advantage to keeping the chickens out of the yard is now I can have my edible perennials and not have to fence each planting bed.

So far we have planted inside the fence blueberries, raspberries, strawberries and asparagus.  I have some elderberries and ground cherries yet to plant this year.  The strawberries and blueberries all bloomed really well and now have fruit set so we should have a good berry harvest this year.

 

Published on Leave a comment on The Hive Has Arrived

I got home from work this evening to see four large boxes sitting on the front porch.  Our bee hive that we ordered from Brushy Mountain Bee Farm had arrived from North Carolina.  Ironically the boxes were being snowed on.  They will have to spend time in the garage until the four feet of snow that is on the ground at the homestead has melted.

My plan is to put the hive in what is our front yard.  It is on the south side of the house and I am slowly turning the front yard into a edible landscape.  I have already planted raspberries, strawberries, asparagus and blueberries.  There are also fruit trees in the front yard.  The peaches and apricots have been planted up close to the house because we are in a marginal area for those fruits being in low zone 4.

The bees will be introduced to the hive in June.  So we have until then to get their new home ready for their arrival.

Published on Leave a comment on New Spring Project

Even though there is four feet of snow on the ground here at the homestead we are thinking about spring.  The new beehive was ordered yesterday.  This is our new adventure this year.  We will be setting up one hive and installing a nuc of bees in June.  My mother had bees when I was in college but she never harvested any honey from them.  She kept them for their pollination of their orchard.  We will be using them for pollination but also hope to be able to harvest some honey by their second year.  Honey has so many wonderful properties that my husband and I hope to take advantage of.  He suffers from seasonal allergies and it is said that eating local honey from the blooms and pollen that cause allergies will help to build up ones resistance to the allergy reaction.  Besides, it sure does taste good on biscuits.  We will keep you up to date as the project moves forward and hopefully have some pictures.  The hive we ordered is beautiful.