Homesteading Craziness...

The past two days at our house have been pretty crazy. I should mention that before the strange-ness, there was an earthquake nearby... It happened two days ago, June 23 at about 1:45 in the afternoon. The epicenter was over 300 miles away in Canada, but some people in our community claim to have felt the shaking. I was in the garden weeding when it happened and I didn't feel a thing... Anyway, since then 3 mysterious things have happened.

1. Our bedroom door opened and closed by itself in the night. No windows open, so wind was not a factor and no other variables were different from any other night.

2. Yesterday, we had 1/2 of one of our bee colonies swarm. It was an absolutely amazing sight (and sound). I was working in our kitchen at the table when I heard a loud buzzing. I looked out to the yard and saw an enormous cloud of bees (maybe 25-30 feet across). I called to A and together we went outside with the camera (pics to follow) and watched the cloud shrink and condense until all of the bees landed in a clump way up high in our apple tree. I could NOT believe this was happening! The monthly beekeepers meeting had been just the night before and the topic was SWARMING(!!) and I chose not to go because I was running late.

The first person I thought of to call was the president of the local beekeepers association and she was at our house within 1/2 an hour. She and I did a full inspection of both of our hives to determine if, in fact, they were our bees. It looked as though they came from our Langstroth hive that contains Russian/Carniolian bees and that the bees left in the hive either had a new queen or one would be emerging imminently. She gave me several options about what to do with the swarm - it was pretty much out of the question to catch them ourselves by cutting them down because they were so high up and on the end of a branch. So, I could call one of two local guys to catch it for me and either let them keep it or pay them to catch it for me or I could try to catch them in an empty hive body with pheremones that would attract them down from their branch and start a new colony, or after removing the queen excluder during our inspection, they might come back into the hive on their own. Apparently, adding a queen excluder can make some colonies feel cramped, so they will swarm, but if you remove it and give them "more room" they may come back on their own and know it's ok to do so either by the bees at the hive fanning, or sending scout bees back. There were several offers to borrow equipment to catch them in, but I had to go buy the pheremone from the nearest beekeeping supply which is in Granville, NY, about 1/2 an hour drive.

So, I drove there and back as quickly as I could, all the while wondering how I would assemble my new equipment quickly and type the pheremone label info into an online translation site since it was all in French. I know a teensy bit of French, but not enough to know what to do with this tube of paste! So, I pulled into our drive way at 3:45, about 4 hours after the swarm landed in the tree and I could see that they were gone. My heart sank... I ran to the tree to see if they were still in there somewhere, but A came out and told me they were gone. Gone.

He had been on a phone call and was looking out the window when they left. He said he couldn't tell where they went, so we went around our property hoping they just moved a short distance into another tree. No such luck.
There was quite a bit of activity around the hive, so we're hoping they just went back home. Otherwise, some lucky beekeeper in our area may have an opportunity to capture a healthy swarm of bees!

3. Two of our hens (Little Pickle and Clemmie) are broody, so we got some fertilized eggs from a farmer friend and they have been sitting on them. The eggs were due to hatch this coming Monday, June 28. I had marked the fertile eggs with pencil so that I could collect our eatin' eggs, so everyday had to physically go into the coop, pick up the chickens and sort out which eggs are which. Well yesterday, the 2 that were under Little Pickle were gone! The only trace were a very few bits of dried shell near her. Well, I didn't think that L.P. ate them, but they have pecked their own eggs open on a few occassions, so I wasn't too worried, more puzzled.

This morning Little Pickle was missing, as well as the remaining 3 eggs that Clemmie was in charge of. Just gone. There were a few black feathers by their pen's fence and a lot of buff feathers. No blood, no guts, no trace of the eggs or their contents. I closed the gate myself last night, so I know it was closed. S is so very sad that her little chicken is gone. She knows there's not much hope that L.P. will come back, but I still have my fingers crossed. Maybe she wasn't in the coop last night (I did forget to check that) and wandered off. I can only hope that she's having a chicken adventure. S has already asked if we can get a replacement, she asked for the same breed and color and wants to name her Little Pickle so L.P. can live on. Poor kid.

I will post pics of the bees and some other fun stuff soon. Cross your fingers for the rest of our flock of hens.

Love, A, R & S

We're back!

It's SPRING!!! Hooray!

We have had a long, snowy winter, and it seems like the memory of cold weather is already fading away. We have had some beautiful, sunny weather and are preparing for another round of bees, garden, cows, OH MY!

Our chicken girls did well this winter, cooped up. They have been churning out eggs so fast we don't know what to do with them. 7 a day really add up fast. We have started selling them to a couple of friends and also give them to some others. It's nice that the girls can get outside now and forage around the yard, you can just tell how happy they are! They were going through the feed so fast, but that should slow down now that they can munch on bugs.

We will be trying bees again this spring, and I have secured a beekeeping mentor for myself, which I'm really excited about. We're going to do an experiment - we'll put a package of bees into the top-bar hive, and a nuc into a Langstroth hive and compare. Should be pretty interesting. Maybe it will make it easier to know if the package/top-bar bees are on track since I can keep track of the nuc/Langstroth bees easier because there is more literature and information about that set up.

The garden is going - we have teeny tiny onion and tomatillo sprouts in the windowsill. Not so sure about the peppers I tried starting, if they will come up at all! We might have to buy some *GASP* starts at the nursery in May. I just bought a big bag of onion sets and will put them in tomorrow (we're expecting a thunderstorm today!) and see how they do. I haven't tried onions from sets before, so that will be good to see how they do compared to starting from seed. I think I'll put some carrot, radish, beet and pea seeds in too. It's early, but what the hell, it's worth a try.

Our friend and farmer that we get our raw milk from has not been milking for several months now (we've been buying milk from the grocery store) and will not be doing any major milking for awhile because she is going to have a baby in September. (Congrats Sara!!) So, we are planning to milk once or twice a week and be able to take as much milk as we need, which will be nice. I can't wait to get back into the routine of being with the cows!

Let us know what you're up to - are you ready for spring/summer?

Cross comb

Yesterday I opened the hive for the first time since the bees have actually drawn out any comb. The comb is so beautiful! Unexpectedly, though, it's wavy and crossing over onto more than one bar. I ended up breaking a piece off (sorry girls) which I left inside the hive so they could maybe recycle it and take the brood out, or let them hatch, or whatever they will do with broken comb. I want to let them do their natural bee thing, but I also want to be able to open the hive to inspect things and eventually harvest some honey, so I found this posting (http://www.biobees.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2763) who's advice I think I will follow. Basically, I will move all the crossed comb all together further back into the hive and give the bees empty bars toward the front to try to start straight and I will check more often to try to help them along.

It's a beautiful sunny day today with at least 4 rainy days to follow, so I will give this a try today while I can get in there. I'll keep you posted on the project.

Amateur mistake

So it seems that I made an amateur farmer's mistake - After running our dying chicken problem by a real farmer friend, she suggested that since Chicken Vindaloo perked up after being given yogurt, maybe they've got a mineral deficiency... so then I started looking into the mineral content of the organic feed we give them, and it hit me!!! I didn't switch them from the chick mash to the poultry grower pellets at 5-6 weeks like the packages told me. I was trying to have them finish up the chick mash, but they weren't getting what they needed from that anymore. So not only have they been getting yogurt as a treat, but we switched them to the feed that is appropriate for their age, and everyone seems ok now. (Knock on wood)

In other news, today I found that we have tiny ants in our beehive. Various sources on the web acknowledge that ants can be a problem, but there aren't many solutions offered. Some say that they don't really pose an issue, but I don't want them in there, so I'll keep trying to figure out a way to evict them without hurting our girls... I might try sprinkling cinnamon inside the top cover, but that requires a bit more research before implementation.

Also, I just checked on our red wiggler worms and it looks like they're doing well. There are various sizes of worms and what look to be little tiny babies, so that's great!

More later on the ants vs. bees...

An interesting day on the acre

We had a crazy morning today. First, A found another dead chicken in the coop. Again, not really sure what happened. The only hint is that one of the boys (light brahmas) was acting really spacey yesterday. He didn't come running to me when I called like all of the others, but just stood there kind of staring off into outer space for like a minute. I'm not certain that this is the same chicken that died, but it was the same type, so maybe...

And, unfortunately, we had our first bee sting today. I have not been stung at all (I'm knocking on wood as I type this) and we had about 25 guests over the day after installing the hive and the bees didn't bother anyone. This morning, our neighbor walked over to meet the chickens and the bees and check out our garden and as soon as we stopped about 10 feet in front of the hive, a bee buzzed right over and stung him on the neck. No sooner had he been stung, another one came over and tried to attack his nose. He crushed the one on his nose, and we got the stinger out of his neck, and he was fine. I don't know why they acted this way today! Very strange... Needless to say, he will be our first recipient of whatever honey we harvest this summer!

Is there a full moon today? Almost, I just checked and it's on Sunday, so I hope things don't get weirder for the next couple of days.

In good news, we're just about to the edge of the tilled garden. Hooray! Almost done planting!

The Bee Adventure

Renee survived getting the bees in the hive. The whole ordeal was caught in pictures.