Painted Bee Boxes All In A Row

A good weekend's worth of work, the bee boxes come unassembled and unpainted. With the three farm hives building up gentle Italian workers for our spring clover, and a colony (or nuc, for nucleus) of hearty Russians in the works, I must try to stay ahead of their housing (and honey storage) needs. A lot of nails, glue, and three coats of exterior enamel have these hive supers ready for the honey flow. Now, there are only 81 honey comb frames (nine per box) to go. Yikes! What have I gotten into.

Thais wanted me to explain what the Russian bees are about, and I will try to be brief. If you've been following the blog, you know we got into bees last spring because there were so few honeybees around the farm. One of the reasons for the dearth of bees is that so many of the native honeybee populations were decimated by a number of honeybee pests imported from overseas. One of the worst of these, the varroa mite, plagues the bees, attaching to their brood while still developing in their cells and holding on through the adult bees lives unless groomed or knocked off. If the infestation becomes too great, the hive will lose so many bees that it will die off or swarm away. Commercial beekeepers, and many hobbyists, keep the mites in check by treating their hives with miticides (essentially poisons), which are hard on the bees and can leave residual traces in the honey and comb. Can you say organic farm? It won't happen here.

Hence, the Russians. Unlike the Italian honeybees (also imported to America), which had never been exposed to varroa mites, Russian bee stock comes from the same part of the world as varroa mites (eastern Russia-western China) and are thus better adapted through behaviors (removal of mites from infected cells, grooming, etc.) that keeps the mites in check. They do so much better, in fact, that chemical treatment is not needed. So less than a year into beekeeping and I am already trying to adapt to the ever-changing insect world. By the way, I will not get rid of my Italian ladies, not directly anyway. I will eventually requeen the hives with Russian queens and my Italians will slowly develop a decidedly Slavic accent. In the mean time, there are non-chemical tricks to limit the damage to the Italian hives. I will miss my more gentle Italians, but the honey will still be just as sweet.

Spring is early but we'll take it!

I remember, back in the fall, driving the pickup truck slowly, oh-so-very-slowly, round and round and up and down the field while Will sat on the tailgate, spreading clover seed and saying (way too frequently) "Too fast! Slow Down! Turn Left! Turn Right! Not THAT way!" What I DON'T remember is driving round and round only the outside edge of the field...but if you look at it now, you'd think we only seeded the edges and not the inner part...thats the way the clover chose to come up. There is some in the middle, but not a lot. The edge looks great, though! There'll still be plenty for the bees (all are very busy, by the way). Will has plans to take a couple of the hives over to a friends organic blueberry farm when the bushes bloom. He also wants a new hive of 'Russian Bees'. Don't ask. I have no idea what they are or how they are different. If I can encourage Will to post here, maybe he'll enlighten all of us.
And then we have the strawberries (yea!). Three 75-foot rows. That's a lot of strawberry plants. As you can see, they are blooming and setting. Will can say 'now don't get too excited' all he wants, but as we say down here...'me, I'm excited!' It is true. Many times, a crop looks fabulous but the weather turns or a pest enters the scene, and suddenly the crop takes a downturn. And we would hate to get our customers all anticipating a bumper crop of berries only to wind up with a lot of disappointed folks. I have to say, though, we have never had a strawberry crop that didn't perform, and I don't expect this year will be any different. It's so great to have SOMETHING in February in the garden. The only way for that to happen is to get out there in November and make sure you get those plants in the ground. We don't get to it every year. The window is fairly small for strawberry planting, and you have to locate the little plants and have somebody put them aside for you. P.S.; ditto for garlic, and we did that too! Of course, garlic doesn't look as exciting as a little plant full of strawberries, but it's a great thing to have a lot of.

Wildflowers...it must be spring

Will seeded wildflowers around the pond and into the little tiny woods area beside it...last fall. And here they are...as advertised; we were joking about seeding into flats or buying expensive annuals, and really - they are just pumped up versions of these...as you can see: alyssum, snapdragons and on and on.
Ah, yes...even the Willow trees know it is Spring...

A Fish In The Hand..2008 version

A year and several months later...
from tiny little things to big fat perch; and I argued against the hybrid perch - for what I thought were pretty good reasons. But these are beautiful. Me, I like my perch fried whole - and that means there is a point beyond which they are really too big for that; but maybe not. But maybe outside rather than in the kitchen. We have a whole pond full of these guys now...I think we;re going to have a spring and summer full of fish frying parties.