Drstratton - My Backyard Journey Journal

[drstratton]

Just an fyi wisteria is poisonous. I love the plant and ooohhh the flowers - but not here on the ranch.
When it gets sooo hot can you put ice out like we do for chickens - would the work/help bees?

Thank you, that's good to know.
I don't have livestock, so I'm not too worried about it. I've actually had the Wisteria for at least 15 years. We needed to move it.

 

[drstratton]

PS - that's a lot of honey, ummm sweet gold!

It's truly delicious!

 

[fuzzi]

Sadly, she had one and she didn't make it. We lost 2 soon after they arrived. I usually try to have 2 of each breed.

Here are mine, but bantams. Talk about chatty Cathies!

 

[drstratton]

Here are some of the flowers the girls are loving right now.

Dahlias & cosmos

Alium

Blackeyed Susan

Blanket flower

More dahlias

They even land on the marigolds

 

[drstratton]

View attachment 120034
Here are mine, but bantams. Talk about chatty Cathies!

They are beautiful!

 

[drstratton]

My first gift jars of honey.

I am finally caught up. We still have more to bottle, but I'm glad I don't have to do it all at once.

I need to head out to feed the cats and chickens and do our next hive inspection!

Have a beautiful day!

 

[drstratton]

When it gets sooo hot can you put ice out like we do for chickens - would the work/help bees?

That's a great idea, I could place it in front of the fan. I'm sure that would cool the air down some. Thank you!

 

[drstratton]

We did our inspection today. The bees were nice and calm (I understand that can change), so far we've been blessed. We saw lots of eggs, larvae and capped brood. The queens also had plenty of space to continue laying. We will probably extract about 8 more frames of honey next week. Then nothing until/if we get a nectar flow from buckwheat.

Nuc hive #1
Capped brood

Eggs

Nuc Hive # 2
Capped brood

Lots of room for the queen to lay.

Capped honey

Package Hive
Capped brood

Swarm hive
Capped brood, Eggs & larvae

Capped brood, eggs & larvae

If you zoom in, you can see the eggs & larvae on some of the pictures. The eggs are like tiny grains of rice, standing in end.

I found one thing in our hive that doesn't belong there. A small hive beetle. Thankfully they won't survive in our area for very long. Too hot and sandy for them to breed. It might have come from some commercial hives that were brought in to pollinate the buckwheat. They can fly up to 10 miles to find a new hive to infest. If not kept in check they can destroy a hive and cause the bees to abandon it. Their larvae do the most damage. Hopefully we found this one before it laid any eggs. We will inspect every frame of the hive next week.

We will also test for Varroa mites next week. Hopefully the count will be low, but I'm not holding my breath. We need to ke the counts low, so that the hives will stay strong and make it through winter.

 

[SageHill]

Wow - so much to know and check for! That's a lot of work.
Very cool on zooming in - I could see eggs and larvae!

 

[drstratton]

Wow - so much to know and check for! That's a lot of work.
Very cool on zooming in - I could see eggs and larvae!

Inspections are a lot of work, but I love doing them. We usually stop checking frames once we see eggs and make sure the queen is laying a good pattern. We try to disturb them as little as possible as we don't want to risk killing the queen. But it's hard to stop, I want to see everything...lol
I'm glad that worked for you. I tried to get a couple of good pictures of them.