honeybees

More hay movement

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Friday we went to an estate auction and got a few trinkets. One of the best things was an old fashioned counter/clicker! There were two of these and I should have bought them both instead of just one. I can now officially count hay bales and sheep easily. I used this to count the hay as I loaded it up into the barn. I can only throw the hay bales about eight feet high. I have to have help to stack them higher. One person throws them up and the other stacks them higher. I spent two days picking up hay bales and then unloading them into the barn until I had all 170 bales in the barn. I can only get about 30 bales into the back of the pickup. So it takes a few trips for me to get it all loaded and unloaded.

I ended up having to feed about nine bales to the boys in Alcatraz. The bales were too wet. I used to measure the moisture content in the bales but I can pretty much tell by picking them up whether there is too much moisture in the bale. The wet ones just get fed to the boys. They love the green grass and eat them before they spoil.

The next thing I need to do is to get some spray on the neighbor’s field. I need some on ours also so I can do them all at the same time. As fast as the grass is growing I will be getting a second cutting in 6-8 weeks and maybe will get a third cutting in this year. The grass is really growing. We are working on getting water out of our irrigation ditch and onto the field next to Donna’s. This will give us about 3 acres of irrigated land. We are going to pile on the water and try and get the cheatgrass to sprout so we can accelerate killing it. I would like to see it sprout three times this year.

Sunday I did not really want to move bales so I went down and cut on the broken apple branch that was blocking the gate. I cut on it until I had a path for the animals to get through. My hope was that if I opened up a path and locked it open the four alpaca would come into the area near the houses. Otherwise I am going to have to chase them in so they can be sheared. We are going to shear this upcoming weekend.

All three of our bee hives are still alive! We are having to feed them for a short time between flowers blooming. Pretty soon the blackberries will start to bloom and the bees will not need any supplement. But for now all three hives are getting some.

Wild hive now contained

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One of our neighbors had a wild honey bee hive living in the walls of an old building. Turns out the bees had been living there for at least 25 years off and on. Which begs the question, how did the next group of bees know that the condo was empty and would be a good place to live?

The Gingerman and I went over with everything we thought we needed except two bins, one for honey and one for wax. The wax is old and dark but it is still wax and we were going to have to remove it anyways. I had to run back to the house and get those bins, we actually had everything else we needed. They are going to tear the building down so access was super easy, we could just pull the siding off a piece at a time.

The bees were surprisingly calm the entire time. We had empty frames so the Gingerman cut the comb out of the walls in sections and I rubber banded it into frames. We were able to get brood, honey and pollen all rubber banded into frames. I had 10 frames banded up and we inserted them into the bottom box. A large number of bees followed those frames into the box but it did not look like we had found the queen. As an FYI do not store rubber bands for any length of time, they degrade and break very easily. I broke about half the bands I attempted to use. The rest of the bag went into the trash when we were finished. Neither one of us are very good at spotting the queen but we figured maybe we got lucky and had moved her when we were scooping bees over into the box. We kept watching the bees hoping they would form a line of scent leading into the box. We even built a little ramp leading up to the box. At one point we had two groups on the wall but they kept hiding in the comb scraps we had left on the wall. So we just started removing every single piece of old comb by scraping it off the wall. We started at the top of the wall and worked our way down. As we got near the bottom we had two distinct groups of bees, one at the top of the wall and one down at the bottom. We scooped the upper bees into the box but never spotted the queen.

The Gingerman is totally out of all of his bee protective gear except for gloves and gauntlets. I opted to keep all of mine on. The Gingerman started to smoke the bees as they were trying to go under the building. He spotted the queen! I tried to reach over awkwardly with the queen clip but when I grabbed I pinched her so I had to quickly open the clip to prevent it from killing her. She flew off! We waited another 30 minutes and the bees started to form another ball of bees down near the bottom of the wall again. It was her, Gingerman spotted the queen again and we got her into a scoop of bees in the queen trap and put her in the top box hanging between some frames. We left the setup, as there was a queen excluder on the bottom of the first box to prevent her from leaving the box, until almost dark.

When we came back it was almost dark and there were no bees flying around. We had to shake the box a little bit to hear them buzzing around inside. We blocked off the entrance and strapped the hive together and put it in the back of the pickup. I had gone home and leveled some concrete blocks out in the barn lot so we had a place away from the other bees for this hive. I wired a couple of blocks to the hive stand so the wind could not blow the boxes over. I was able to just carry the hive boxes to their new location. I did strap the boxes down so the wind could not move them.

I did not get very much honey from the hive, most of it went back to the bees. I am trying to gravity extract it now for the person who let us collect the hive. I think I can get a single jar! It is very good. It may take me a couple of weeks to get it to ooze out of the comb with the help of gravity. I have some new metal mesh filters and they are very fine and the honey is very thick’s so it is going to take some time for it to ooze through. It may even have to warm up some outside. I could put it out on the front porch as long as I covered it so the other bees did not help themselves to it!

Who needs a new tractor?

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Well I want a new tractor but what I really need it for is to lift big bales full height. So it needs to bigger than the two I currently own. I went to the dealer and for that lift capability I need to get something with over 50 HP. Which is going to run somewhere in the $50k range without a cab. I cannot spend that much for a little convenience. I need the smaller tractors to run my hay equipment and I need the little John Deere as it is the only tractor small enough to get inside the barn. It takes almost 30 hours to dig the barn out with the tractor and move all of the poop. That is not a job I want to do by hand anymore. It would take me a month or better of back breaking labor. As it is I have to dig by hand for about 8 of those 30 hours. So that dream was crushed by reality, I need to win the lottery.

I got the John Deere loaded on the trailer so it could be dropped off at the shop. They told me that if I delivered it they could look at it same day. It was leaking so much hydraulic fluid that I had to toss a five gallon bucket and spout into the back of the pickup so I would be able to fill the fluid level up, allowing me to drive it off the trailer. It was pouring out by the time I got it off the trailer. They said they would call with an estimate. They called a few hours later, $9K to fix it! The hydrostatic casing had a hole worn in it and the casing and the pump need to be changed, $6k in parts, $3k in labor. I had a minor meltdown as the front left knuckle will need to be rebuilt in a couple of years also and it was $3500 for the left, it will be more this next time. I thought that was half a tractor.

Again, I go back to the Kubota tractor dealer and say I want another new tractor but I need something smaller than what I currently own. It turns out they had just gotten a subcompact in the day before and it was still crated up. So we looked at it in the crate and I said it had to have rear PTO hydraulic connections. I need them for my baler and my smaller sickle bar mower. I tossed in a new 5’ brush hog and 5’ land plane for my bigger tractor. I am going to have to name them now. The Mistress (my very first tractor, John Deere 2520) will have to be laid to rest. The Gingerman said he would take it and eventually do the work himself. He is super busy for the foreseeable future and will need to work it in. The repair price was not half of a new tractor. It was more like 30% of a new tractor! A new tractor was $28k, the two pieces were only another $4k.

They are now going to assemble my new ride but the hydraulic takeoffs have to be ordered in and then installed. So it may be a couple more weeks before I actually get to use it.

I discovered another repair project. The old lamb shed wall is pushing off its bottom supports. I will need to add a couple of new supports and then drill and concrete in a couple of pieces of steel pipe to prevent the wall from pushing out when we stack hay in the building. This is not a surprise but it will need to be fixed before the wind tears the building down.

I had another neighbor tell me that they have a wild honeybee hive that they want removed. I had them send me pictures and yes they are honeybees and yes it is going to be messy. You can see the honey coming out between the boards near the bottom of the wall. Luckily, they are going to tear the building down so we have permission to just tear into the building. That is on the list for the upcoming weekend. The Gingerman and I are going to attempt to find the queen.

Trying to get rid of cheatgrass

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Last weekend was spent going around in circles! We are trying to get about three acres cleared of cheat grass. The stuff has totally taken over the fields and there is nothing left but cheatgrass and thistles. I tried to plant grass about a decade ago without any success. It got choked out by the cheat grass. Our plan is to keep killing the cheat grass until we cut down on the number of seeds in the soil. I will keep spraying Round-up and plowing the field under until we just don’t get much cheatgrass emerging. We got a really good kill on the grass and I was trying out the new plow that the Gingerman brought over. It is an old rotating or flop plow that allows for the direction to be changed. It took a few hours to get the number of pulls on the rope figured out. It cycles through a transport/lower/lower/flip cycle depending on where you are in the rope pull cycle. Plus, there are a couple of springs that need to be replaced. I had to get off and kick the levers every twenty minutes. I do have the springs on our grocery list so I do not forget them. It took me two days to plow, disc and harrow the three acres. When the equipment is only 2-4 feet wide it can take a while!

Annmarie went out and checked on the bees. They are doing great and finding all different colors of pollen. They are not even bothering to eat any of the sugar water we put out for them. We pick up our second hive in the evening of May 1.

The new town chickens we were given are so stupid, they keep flying into the yard where the dogs are residing. Every day, Annmarie or I chase some chickens out of the yard. The kids came down to stay the weekend and they bring our older Border Collie dog Mouse. Our young Border Collie, Chance, just harasses the chickens all day long. She has not killed any yet. Mouse killed two last weekend. Honestly, we warned the chickens that the yard needed to be a no fly zone for their own safety and they ignored us. The chickens are just too stupid to live.

Winter duties completed as spring arrives

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Mr Rainman came out last weekend to help out and on Sunday I decided that the we should actually finish the last of the winter duties since spring is here. We tore the bird netting off of the raspberries and tame blackberries. The berries had thoroughly integrated themselves into the netting, it just had to be cut away and rolled off the top. The berries needed to be trimmed anyways. So we hacked out everything in between the rows then started to trim them back. Removing the dead out first always makes it easier. A few of the raspberries have migrated over into the blackberry row. We cut some out but others just got left.

The netting did its job and kept the birds out so we could actually collect a crop. It’s the raspberries that the robins love. As soon as they start to turn colors the birds eat them without the netting we get none. It was not fun to remove but the year before we did not get any berries so it is worth the hassle. I learned to cut the raspberries short and tie them to a central wire. It helps control them and makes it easier to pick. After talking to Mr Rainman everyone treats their raspberries differently. I had no idea, I learned from my father so that is what I do. I do use sisal or cotton cord so it can just rot on the ground afterwards. It makes cleaning up easier.

Annmarie went out and checked on the bees again. They survived the winter! We have one hive only right now. We are buying another nuc the first of May. We had some moisture get into the hive over the winter and this is a bad thing. I am going to install a gutter on the back of the bee enclosure to keep the wind from blowing water from roof into it. I am also going to cover the back. We have been talking about a tarp but I am afraid the wind may tear it up. I am still thinking about what to use. I have some old tin that with four support boards I could just install along the back wall. I am also trying to be a cheapskate and use stuff we already have on the farm. I am hopeful we will get some honey this year. She did not get stung and the bees got sprinkled with freshly made powdered sugar and another chemical treatment for mites. The sugar helps the bees shed the mites which fall through the mesh bottom then the chemical knocks down the rest. It is an eternal battle.

Our bulbs are starting to come out of the ground and are now blooming. If we don’t get rain soon I am going to have to hand water the flowers to make sure they get enough water. Also we now have six of the big bushy roses planted alongside the side fence. In three years they should totally obscure the fence.

I want blueberries next and someone in Pendleton is offering 10+year old plants for $120/each. The price of a pack of blueberries in the grocery store is $8/ea. It will not take long to save money on owning our own plants. I have four 3 foot metal troughs set up in the orchard on the other side of the berries. I drilled holes in the bottom so they can drain and have filled the bottom with four inches of gravel. I am hopeful that I can get the plants next week and get them into the troughs. We really like container gardening. Not having to get on your knees and bending over all the time is wonderful and as we age it is even more wonderful!

The strawberries are trying to take over their container. I just started grabbing dead leaves and pulling. I figured as prolific as they grew last year they would have no trouble filling in again this year. The bamboo poles are where our asparagus plants are located in the bed. I bought a few more metal troughs at an auction last year and am going to create an asparagus only bin. We read that you could overgrow the asparagus with strawberries but the type we were given (free) are super aggressive and just grew like weeds. It was hard to find the asparagus. This should be our first year that we can harvest asparagus if it grows. Hence the reason for asparagus only bin, it will be obvious and we can fill it up with plants to get a nice crop from. I have a 12 foot circular bin! I cut the bottom of the bin off, it was rusted through, so the plants can go down further into the soil if they want. They have to be planted 18” deep to begin with so I figured growing down another 18” would be easy for them.

The horseradish that was given to me last year survived the winter. I planted it in the ground, away from the sheep and it is just now starting to peek out of the ground. I will dig some up in the fall and see how it tastes. I am told that fresh horseradish is amazing.