Rain Rain Go Away

I don't have a photo because there isn't much sense to take a picture of more rain. The bees are hunkered down (I hope that's a word) and after what I had to go through yesterday I'm sure that they are just as glad that I'm stuck in the house far away from them.

Between the Bee Yard, The Farm Market, and our youngest graduating from High School, life has gone from being just mildly crazy to flat out wild and crazy.

Tomorrow I have to pack up the product and load up the truck for Saturday. . . and then in the evening watch Mike get his diploma. .

Bird Update

Here is a picture of the fourth egg and the birds I mentioned a few days ago.

Long Long Day

When you look at this photo I'm sure it's hard to visualize, but what you are looking at is the underside of the hive top feeder. The girls used the empty space between the box and the frames they were working on below to fill with wax, honey and yes babies.

I gently removed as much of the comb without doing much damage and set the comb right above the frames. I put an empty box where the chunks of comb are and put another box of frames right above it. I'll go in either tomorrow or Saturday to remove the empty box and hopefully the cleaned up comb.


So what did I learn?
I still have loads to learn. I am so overloaded with what I found out in the yard that I don't know where to start.
I got all the hive top feeders off and if I didn't have another deep box ready to go on, I put a queen excluder and a super on it. There are three out there that I had to take so much comb off of that I just stuck an empty box between the new box and the old box with the honey and wax sitting there. I figure I'll let them clean it out and then go back in tomorrow or Saturday and take what they don't manage to clean up.
It was a lot of work. My Uncle keeps telling me that it's a lot of work, and today I'd have to agree. I took 20 feeders off, took the boxes back to the garage. Took 20 boxes with wax and frames out as well as inner covers and in some cases queen excluders.
I have to get 9 deeps together soon and get them out there. I figure that a super was better than nothing and at least the queen excluder would keep the queen in the brood box.
I do have one box of cut comb foundation out in the yard and it's coming along nicely. I don't know if it will continue, everyone tells me that it's next to impossible to achieve, but after seeing the beautiful cut comb at my Uncles last year I had to try.

Sunshine Finally

Well it finally stopped raining. Yesterday in between the downpour I came home at lunch to find this little mess. Talked with Uncle Ted and he said it was probably a afterswarm from last Sundays adventure. Great. . . I found a queen in the group and put her along with the whole mess in another box. Once I went inside the hive they were hanging onto I cleaned out all the queen cells I could find. Didn't want any more leaving town.

I just got out of the yard a short while ago and it was nice to finally see what has been going on. I learned a whole mess of stuff.

1. Don't leave hive top feeders on new package bees too long. I just spent the last two hours scaping larvae and bees wax and honey trying to pry them from the box. In two cases it was so bad that I gently scraped them away and put just a empty box over the top of the whole mess. I wasn't sure what to do. There were babies everywhere.
2. No matter how bad the weather is, check on things. I ended up putting 5 supers on and combing two hives on top of trying to take all the feeders away, and I only got 12 done so far. I have at least 9 more to do.
3. Make sure that the ground the bees are on isn't going to turn into a river. Right now I'm wearing rainboots just to get from one hive to another.
4. I'm still kicking myself over the feeders. What I thought was going to be a great idea, sure didn't turn out that way.
   

Well back out for another round. I'll take the camera out to photograph whats going on so someone else can learn from how badly I've messed up.

Birds and Bees

Here are a few photo's of some of the guests we have had at the house lately.

The little birds nest is right outside the front door in the middle of a bush. The first day we looked there were two eggs, yesterday there were three, today I just checked and there are four. Talk about a long labor and delivery. . . .




Jim's Mom and Grandma told us that the red headed bird is a red headed woodpecker and of course the blue one is a blue jay. Jim looked out at the stump they were both sharing and said, "Boy we have a patriotic bird feeder. . . " (His humor is something else.:)

Life here on Noahs Ark

Well it's been a typical spring in Michigan, freezing cold, hot and sunny and mostly dreary and rainy. I don't remember what the sun looks like anymore. I realize it's only been three days since the sun has been here, but the last three days have been horrible. I haven't gotten out to the bee yard, because to do that I would have to get in a boat. But we did have some excitement at the start of the week. Jim and I were out in the yard putting up some "yard art" given to me by the world famous artist "Steve Million" when Jim looked over my shoulder and said, "Uh Oh, I think we've got trouble."






The bees had swarmed. There is a good side and a bad side. The good side was they didn't get too far. The bad side was that we had to catch them and put them back in a hive. I immediately said, "I've got to call my Uncle Ted." He wasn't home and I grabbed the BeeKeeping for Dummies instead. Jim just shook his head and put his suit on and headed out to the yard. I of course made sure to have my camera and followed closely behind. We dragged a ladder out and a new box and Jim climbed up the ladder and brushed off what we could while I held the box. Believe me there were a ton of bees that were not to receptive to getting into the new box. We put a screen on top of what we had and while I held the lid to the new box up, Jim poured them in. A couple of trys later, they finally seemed to settle in.





Just when you think things are going great, life happens. . . .Off to market again tomorrow hope it goes well.

Some photo's from the Toledo Farm Market

The market was truly amazing. I can't tell you enough how much I enjoyed being somewhere. I met a whole lot of really nice people, I sold some of our honey and lip balm and most of all I got the opportunity to talk to people about beekeeping and how much fun it is. I really enjoy it most when there are kids who ask questions about where honey comes from.

All in all it was a really amazing day.

Off to the Farm Market

Well here we go, I got up real early this morning, finished up the work on the sign, started gathering all my stuff up and finished putting tamper proof seals on all my honey. I thought the inside seal would be enough but was told I should have both.

I picked out a couple of recipes to bring along and made 100 copies of them, I also printed off more business cards. I'm going way overboard I'm sure. . . .

I've really worked hard on this adventure, I'm a little nervous about all the effort I've put in. Funny I realized that there are alot of people watching to see if I'll suceed or fail. I've worked hard, I've got a good product and I've just got to find the right market for it.

On another note, Jim went out tonight and found a ton of morrell mushrooms. He ended up with an entire sinkfull and while I was finishing up my bottling he was cleaning mushrooms. They only come around once a year so you've got to enjoy them while they are here.

Early day tomorrow.

Hello Kids

It sure makes me feel pretty bad when my oldest calls and tells me that she is keeping up with me by reading the blog. Honestly I'm sure all this will end soon. In the meantime, thanks for being so understanding.

Labels Labels Everywhere

It's a little after 1:00 a.m. and I'm tired. There is no way to explain what the last week has been like. It was so bad that Jim was thrilled that he got to go back to work on Monday.

We were pretty busy making sure that everything was going well in the bee yard, and Jim is still trying to work with his dog Bailey to try to get her ready for the fall test. We also have a house to kind of take care of and a basement that is suppose to be finished for a graduation party in about 4 weeks. On our way over to Grand Rapids Friday I was reading the American Bee Journal looking in the ad section when I noticed an ad from someone not to far from where I lived. I called while we were in the car and told him I'd call him again Saturday when I got home. We didn't get home till around 1:00 on Saturday to find a message on the answering machine telling us that his Grandma had a stroke.

(Now I have to share something with you about this woman, she's 90 something and is totally amazing. She just had a hip replace either last year or the year before that. Nothing is going to keep her down. She's the kind of woman that you read about and smile when you hear about her. Yes, she is a bit hard headed, yes and maybe set in her ways, but most of all pretty darn independent. I love hearing the stories about her children and her life. I enjoy her a great deal, and I know that she will be back on the road to recovery quickly.)

Jim called his mom to make sure that Grandma was doing ok and when we heard that she had lots of company we decided not to go up. I wanted to get down to the Toledo Farmers Market to check it out since I'd decided to kind of open up shop there. I also wanted to get a feel for how long it was going to take for me to get down there, and figure out how to get around all the detours.

We finally found it and the space looks really a whole lot better than I thought. They are covered spaces with lots of parking; the Libby Glass Outlet is there as well as the Erie Street Market. The downer is that the Erie Street Market is currently closed and I'm not really sure when it will open. We got down there around 2:00 p.m. and it was pretty dead.

But I don't know, something about it sure appeals to me. . .

We ended up home around 3:30 or 4:00, yes we stopped for lunch, and after a quick trip in the house we headed out to the yard to see whose feeders needed feed and to check on the 5 hives that we had split as well as the splits from those hives.
Now we were real meticulous about our note taking and we had two hives that we could not see any brood or babies in #4 & #17. 17 actually looked like it was dying a slow death.

I had a pad of paper and each hive we went into I wrote down what we found. I found a queen that wasn't marked and was very impressed with the fact that I actually was able to do it. (Ok, it didn't hurt the fact that she was huge, and I mean huge) And no it wasn't a drone it really was a queen.

By the time we got in the house it was after 7:00 p.m. I made a phone call to the person who had an Ad in the magazine and made arrangements to meet him on Sunday. We quickly had a bite to eat and then headed downstairs to liquefy and bottle honey.

Liquefy honey you ask. . .well when it gets cold it starts to crystallize. You can make it liquid again if you gently heat it. If you have a bottle at home that seems like it's getting solid, just set it in a jar of warm water. I read in one of the magazines that you could put the jar through the dishwasher and that would liquefy it as well. Just make sure it's sealed real tight.

We got the last bottle bottled at around 11:30 and we passed out cold.

Sunday, I started an inventory of all the bottling supplies that I had as well as an actual product inventory. I can't believe all the things I had bought and couldn't find and bought again. I'm really glad I did it, but when I was counting all the seals and caps I wasn't very happy then. I finished up around 3:00 and Jim headed out to train Bailey and I headed over to the beekeeper that lives pretty close to me. He was a really nice guy. It made me so happy to find someone so close and he was so helpful. He had a few extra queens and I bought four from him. Two Italians and two carnolians. He showed me a battery box, which means that the queens were shipped in individual cages with the attendants loose in the box. He packages up my four new girls and told me that I should make sure that I got them in their new homes by today.

Just about then I started to feel the pressure.

I was home around 6:30 and worked on some stuff until Jim came home at 9:00 p.m.

Today it's Monday, no yesterday it was Monday and I got up early with every intention of installing the queens. But it rained. At first I thought the sprinkles wouldn't bother them until I opened up the first hive . . . Let's just say it wasn't raindrops falling on my head, it was more like bees bombing my bee suit. They were not happy to be bothered at all. I also just didn't seem to be able to get it together. I knew that I only really needed two queens but I had to brand new nuke boxes waiting for someone to live in them. I really did try early on in the day but had to put everything away and waited a few more hours. Around 1:00 p.m. I thought I saw a glimmer of sunshine and I headed back out to the yard. As usual the best-laid plans went astray. I thought I had everything I needed but I didn’t. I always manage to lose my hive tool and can’t ever find it. I couldn’t get the smoker to stay lit, and burned my finger pretty bad in the process. I went into two hives looking for a frame of brood and bees to put in each of the two hives I had set up earlier in the day thinking that I would put the two queens in that I knew I’d have left. That went pretty good actually, I didn’t ruffle two many feathers in the process and had a queen sighting while I was looking at frames.

I got the bee yard work done and then headed into town for groceries, came home raced like mad to get the kitchen done so that Jim would not think I’d been sitting on my but all day. . .And he keeps telling me I’m retired.

He sure has that wrong, not retired, just plain out tired.

When he walked in the door he looked pretty worn out and after we ate, we headed outside to mow the yard and work with the dogs.

At 8:00 p.m. I started to print out labels for all the jars that we bottled yesterday, what a real pain in the rear. But I know it’s something that has to get done.

So you are pretty much up to speed right now. I know there were not any photos but I’m slacking in the photo department right now.

Hopefully I’ll get better soon.