Opening up the Bees

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Originally uploaded by velacreations

We opened up our new hives at the beginning of the week. We wanted to increase the brood box and check on how they are doing. It was a little invasive for them, but kind of cool for us. We will be further increasing the brood box, as we plan to do a Perone hive, but future increases should not be as intrusive.

Here's a video of Abe describing what we're doing.

For more photos, click here.

Garden Paths

Although not yet finished (as the rabbit shed is more of a priority), I thought I would post a photo of the new garden paths.

The garden started off on a slope. On top of that, we are continually adding compost and mulch, so the soil is growing. These two factors had led to each bed spilling over itself and making it difficult to maneuver the garden. So we decided we should spend some time rectifying the problem, as the garden is a place we spend some time.

I made a small brick retaining wall on the uphill side of each bed (downhill side of path), and then filled in the path with rocks and dirt, making them nice and level and easy to walk on. I then used Juniper branches to retain the downhill side of the beds. It's much easier to get around now, and allows space for the beds to continue to raise.

For more photos, click here.

Rabbit Shed

For the past couple of days, we have been working on the rabbit shed.

It is a 20' x 10' building (and will eventually have outside pens too) - enough space to house 12 does, 2 bucks, babies and all their feed and bedding.

With the land leveled and the post holes dug, we raised the 20' wall panels that Abe had welded into place. We then leveled them both. Once everything was level and square, Abe welded the connecting walls, so that the whole building is a nice, strong, welded box. We then poured concrete in the post holes.

Next week we will put the metal roof and asphalt board walls on.

Pretty productive couple of days, especially considering how damned hot it was.

For more photos, click here.

Food systems

I think I have already mentioned this, but now that the house is so comfortable, we are focusing our attention this year on the power, water and food systems.

The power system is now done, at least for now. We will one day add another solar panel and get a freezer, and build a couple more wind generators (even though this site is not great for wind, we have the parts and we love wind power). For the first time, we have free refrigeration - having switched form propane to electric. We run what we want when we want (although we are conservative by nature - force of habit, I guess). We recently put a fence around the solar mount.

The water system will be addressed in a couple of months, so stay tuned.

As for the food, we are really enjoying working on that system. Until we have our big tank, we are taking it slow, not planting the majority of our seeds until the rains come - next year, we will be able to go crazy! For now, we have lettuce, beets, cabbage, collards, tomatoes, onions, carrots, leeks, radish all in the ground in the garden, growing like weeds on compost and worm tea. Inside, in seed blocks, we have turnips, eggplants, arrugala, chard, cherry tomatoes, rhubarb, comfrey, purslene, asparagus. We should be transplanting most of them this week.

Under the trees, we have all kinds of squash, beans, spinach, melons planted and they are getting big. All our trees are doing great and we will even get some fruit this year, which is incredible considering we just planted them.

The trees are on a drip system and they get watered twice a week. Their water comes from a small tank we set up uphill from them. We have a fishtrap in the river and we are trying to stock this tank. So far, we have 4 perch, 1 bass and 1 carp in there. We have a little solar powered pump set up that oxygenates the water. A small system, but Leo loves it. It is his job to feed them worms, which he also loves.

Of course, there's the bees and the chickens, mentioned in previous blogs.

And last, but not least, rabbits. We haven't actually got rabbits yet, but we are starting to work on their house. While I have been making garden paths, Abe has been leveling a 20' x 10' area. We will build a shed for them in this space, and then have pens coming off that. We are going to be keeping the rabbits in a colony setup instead of cages. We'll keep you informed.

More Bees

Here's another blog from Abe about "his girls"...

This week we bought 3 Langs (the traditional type of beehive) from a beekeeper about 50 miles from us. So, we had our first experience moving bees in hives, which went pretty smooth, except that I got stung twice, from a purely newbie mistake. I didn't have closed shoes, I wore my sandals, and once the hives were in the truck, a few bees managed to climb up into my sandal, and well.... you know the rest. So, I've been walking around with one big leg and one normal leg for the past 2 days! These stings did not hurt as much as my last prick on my nose, so maybe I am slowly building up a resistance. My foot still got very swollen, and I am going to try and test out a few remedies with bee stings (meat tenderizer, ice, toothpaste) to see if I can keep the swelling down in the future (I could hardly walk the next day).

Anyway, we got the girls settled in pretty easy, and they seem to really like it here. In their old setup, there was not much blooming right now, it was pretty desolate, actually. But here at our place, we have tons of wildflowers, apples, pears, plums, oaks, acacias and tons of other things that are in bloom right now. In fact, it is a bee paradise.

I opened up each hive today just to make sure nothing was out of place, and everyone looked fine to me. I will probably start adding supers soon, as the brood chamber is pretty close to being full. I didn't go through each frame or look for the queens. I want them to settle in a bit more before really getting invasive. I have been feeding them syrup, just while they adjust to the change, and man, they can eat! They've been going through about 600mL a day!

On another front, I also opened up my barrel hive to check on the situation there with the new queen and everything. The ants are still making their way in there, I noticed, but I don't think they are actually doing much harm. They seem to be focused on one of the older combs at the back of the hive that had quite a bit of dead larva in it. The bees were not even maintaining that comb, so I guess it is ok for the ants to have it. I went ahead and took it out of the hive in hopes to draw the ants away.

I didn't see the new queen, but it was pretty difficult, as there are a lot more bees than before. I guess some of the brood comb has hatched since we move them. I thought I saw a small section that looked like it had eggs in it, but I am not quite sure. I also noticed that they haven't built much new comb, yet. They have repaired a lot of the older comb, attaching it to the top bars and such, but not much expansion, yet. I assume they are focused on the new queen.

The queen cells were all opened and on the floor of the hive. I also saw 2 very large, almost developed larva, that I can only assume were queen larva, due to their size. So, I guess the queens did their thing, and I am hoping one killed the others, as is their way.

I did see a few drones in there as well, but not a whole lot. I think they were more apparent because I was looking for the queen, and anything bigger than normal caught my eye.

One thing I did notice in the barrel hive was that they have been storing a lot of pollen. There is a lot more in there than before. The oak tree that they sit under is current blooming, and they are not having to go very far (4 feet vertically) for forage. I am sure the oak is producing a bunch of pollen, and they are taking advantage of the surplus. That might also be a good sign that they are prepping for a lot of babies, soon.

Anyway, it was very nice opening everything up and getting some time with the girls. The new Langs are a bit more aggressive than my barrel hive, but they also have more honey and bigger hives to defend. The barrel hive is growing in numbers of bees, and I hope has a new queen as well, so all in all, things seem to be doing very good with the ladies.

I will probably be able to harvest from the new hives this year, as they were not splits, but working hives from last year.

I have also decided to do an experiment with at least one of the Langs and test out a hive design from a man in South America. Basically, he gives them HUGE amounts of space (the brood chamber is 3 Langs deep, honey stores are 5 full supers). A lot of folks have had huge success with his system, which is very hands off (he only opens the hive once a year). Now that I have a few hives, I can compare different types of hives. I do like the idea of not disturbing them much (though I do like looking at them). In some of the tests that I have seen, folks have been able to harvest over 120 kg of honey from one of his hives (after a 2 year start-up time) compared to a 15-25 kg harvest from normal Lang setups. The large increase in production is attributed by the much larger brood chamber, which allows the hives to become quite big (150K bees or more) and thus, can harvest more honey. Larger hives seem to be more stable and less prone to some of the more common issues (Varroa specifically). This hive is called the Perone Hive (after Oscar Perone, the inventor), and we have been calling it the SuPerone, due to its size (5 feet or taller).

Chicken Tractor

We have always free-ranged our chickens in the day and then shut them up in a coop at night. But this system is no longer working for us. There were two major problems: predators and eggs.

Although the dogs do a pretty good job of keeping the coyotes away, they do allow a neighbor's dog (male) to come up here whenever he pleases. And he has a nasty little chicken-eating habit. We have lost too many chickens to this damned dog, and we had to decide whether to kill him or change our system.

It's the other problem that probably went a long way towards saving the dog's life. Free ranch chickens like to lay eggs where they please, and they are often difficult to find. Furthermore, whenever a hen decided to set on a nest outside, a predator would come up at night and grab her.

So we have now switched to a chicken tractor. We made a hen house on wheels and a pen that we can easily disassemble and move. We move the pen once a week. This way they get to graze on grass and bugs without ever overgrazing the land. So far we like it and the chickens seem very content. More photos

Where the chicken pen was is overgrazed, from having to keep them inside for too long (after each time we lost a chicken). We have made rock terraces throughout the area, to try and help limit the runoff when it rains. Once the rains start we will plant the area with some ground cover, preferably a clover or some other nitrogen fixer. Next year, we will plant trees in the terraces. For now however, it will be used as our biochar area, where we cut wood and chop the small branches for biochar material.

2 Years Old

Well folks, Leo just turned two years old on Sunday. Hard to believe. In some ways, it seems like time is flying so fast. And yet, it also feels like a long, long time since he was that tiny, fragile creature that came out of my body.

Still too young to appreciate what a birthday is, we decided to celebrate on his behalf. Some friends came over (we call them Leo's God Parents/padrinos, though he wasn't ever baptized). We had a huge roast dinner and were too full for cake/Jello, etc.

So, as we digested our food, we decided to go to a friend's ranch that is further along our road. It is beautiful. Very remote, with HUGE Pine, Oak and Juniper trees. After walking around some, we all settled by a large pond and did some fishing. The cows came down to drink, and Leo was throwing rocks in the water, but otherwise very quiet!

Abe caught a couple of fish to put in our tree irrigation tank. We want to grow some fish in there, so that their poop can go to the trees, and we will have fish to eat later down the line. Our first (and very basic) aquaponics system. We want to go back, with a net, and get a lot more.

It was late when we got home, so we didn't do the whole cake/candle thing. We just split it and other desserts up so our friends could take a share home. A nice day.

More photos