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