We Have Honey...But We Lost the Hive
We Have Honey...But We Lost the Hive
BEES
At the forefront of the farm business right now...bees! If you've been keeping up on facebook, you'll know that we have had nothing but trouble with the bees lately. The hive was rockin' this spring, we decided to split it into two hives and when we went to split, we found the queen missing. We waited two weeks (hoping a new queen was on a mating flight since we found queen cells)... no queen. We found what looked to be a worker laying larvae (not good).
I also found some strange things going on in the hive. Some larvae that I knew weren't bee larvae. I scrapped the infested comb. We tried to get brood comb so they would make their own queen, none was available. Someone on the Fort Harrod Beekeeping Club group on FB thought we might just have a really new queen, so we waited another week. Still no queen. Still more uneven larvae being laid. And the bee population had been steadily declining. We were down to what looked like 2-3 frames of bees. I begrudgingly decided to buy a new queen. The local guy had none available, so we were going to have to drive 1.5 hours away or wait a week and a half. We decided to wait.
Local guy said I needed to harvest NOW so local colonies didn't rob mine while it was weak.
Mom and I harvested while Sam was at work during the week, made a KILLER harvest with even more honey that we processed last year!
We pulled about two full supers from the hive and left one uncapped with the weak colony.
Fast forward a week and a half, we get a new queen (WOOH!), go to put her in the hive...and it's nearly destroyed with beetles. Every frame of comb left in the last two supers was infested with beetle larvae.
The bottom of the hive was covered in dead bees, larvae, and eaten comb.
And to top it all off, we saw maybe 20 bees. We had 10,000 this spring... Sam and I put a new hive out about 10 feet away where we were going to put the second hive during the split earlier this year. I scrounged up comb from the honey harvest because it was the only comb we had that was unaffected by the larvae (did I mention that it's been rained on about a bazillion times and starting to mold? I put it out for the bees to pull the leftover honey and every time they dried out, it rained again), and we put it in the new hive along with the queen and the ten or so bees that immediately found her.
So what now? 1) We sell the honey we harvested, save some of the proceeds to buy bee nucs next spring and use the rest to build more hoop coops for chickens.
2) I'm waiting on the bees to gather the honey out of the frames I pulled yesterday and then, I'm cutting every inch of infested comb out of the frames and popping them into a crock pot to extract the wax.
3) Make chapstick (and maybe tea candles) out of extracted wax. You can vote on chapstick flavors you would like to see, here.
4) Go back tomorrow and release the queen from the box she came in. By then, the bees should be familiar with her scent, and hopefully her hormones have started to regulate the 20 or so bees.
5) Pray really hard that she is able to lay larvae and get the hive back up and moving. We likely will have to feed them during the winter since their honey stash was spoiled, and we will likely not be able to harvest honey next spring. Are you as exhausted as I am from just reading about our bee problems? Edit: I'm sorry to report that the queen is dead. There weren't enough bees left to feed her. Upon arriving at the hive around 7:15am this morning to release her, I found her deceased.
CHICKENS
Last post I showed pictures of our attempts at turning the last barn stall into a place for the roosters to be penned up so they would stop over-breeding our hens. They were there for a while and it worked great, but then we had babies and needed a place to put the brooder. They've been since moved around to several locations depending on breeding schedules.
So babies...we had two broody hens hatch out barn yard mixed eggs. We tried to sell the babies at the Chicken Swap, but it turns out people only want 6-8 week old chickens. So we had to figure out a place to grow them up to the right size.
We attempted a hatch in the incubator from intentionally bred hens, and the incubator died half way through. The chicks did not survive. So Sam built us a brand new incubator that regulates heat, humidity, and turns the eggs about every 3 hours (it's awesome!).
Out of the forty some eggs we put in (twenty of which we knew were likely past the viable time, but we had extra space so we put them in just in case), only ten hatched. Waaaay below the expected hatch rate. It wasn't our incubator, it was (we believe) how we were storing the eggs. They need to be kept at a specific temperature warmer than a fridge and colder than room temperature, so we bought a wine cooler. Only then, the temperatures jumped up and the hens we had isolated stopped laying, so we are getting 1-2 hatching eggs a day instead of the (max) 5 we could be getting. We need to collect for 5 days before incubating. So to hatch a small batch or not? That's the question.
We also bought a mini-fridge for eating eggs. We had SO MANY eggs coming in this spring (~20 a day) we couldn't find enough customers. Our little mini-fridge couldn't hold as many cartons as we needed it to. Then right after we bought it, temperatures sky rocketed, the chickens stopped laying and started getting eaten. I saw a coyote taller than Jacks gallop up to the barnlot to look for a free snack before I scared it off. We lost 5-6 hens within a couple weeks.
Luckily, I found an awesome deal on some hens, and we added 19 to our flock. 6-7 of them are already laying (so we are up to about 10 eggs a day right now). The rest are too small to join the foraging flock and have to be penned up in the other half of the hoop coop until they are big enough to not get eaten (probably another couple months).
So what's next with chickens? Either 1) list the hatching eggs for sale on the chicken swap or 2) start incubating them tomorrow. It will likely depend on whether the Splash Ameraucana hen FINALLY starts laying again since that's the chicks we are most excited about and she has yet to give us any eggs to hatch. (She was a $25 chick).
3) The cuddle coop really needs to be scrapped, but we don't have enough pens right now to do so.
4) We want to use some of the honey money to build more hoop coops for breeding. We are currently brainstorming whether we want to go with the same design (~$300) or try for something a little different.
5) We need to move Pancake to a different spot on the farm to help with the coyotes.
I'm gearing up to sell chicks, hatching eggs, eating eggs, honey, and cloth napkins (that I have to sew) at the Chicken Swap in late August.
HOUSE
We moved back to the farm about three months ago. Since then, we've been doing our best to clean up from all the construction this past winter and make the house livable. We put in a toilet in the basement,
a shower outside,
hooked up the washer and dryer, put in a sink in the kitchen, and even bought a dishwasher! Besides the one incident with a wolf spider in the shower and the several we've seen in the basement (along with a few snakes), it's been working just fine. Showering outside is actually kind of enjoyable!
I even put up a clothesline outside for the cloth diapers since I have to wash them every other day and I don't like to dry them in the dryer.
William's birthday party is coming up, and we want to finish concreting in the floors before we have guests come over.
Concreting means: filling in trenches with sand up to the bottom of the slab, drilling holes for rebar, cementing rebar into the slab, and then making/pouring/skimming concrete. We finished the basement, will be concreting the transition wall between the basement and the upstairs really soon, and have about half of the upstairs trenches filled in with sand. We need to get more sand.
LIFE
I submitted four Catholic children's books in a series called My Catholic ABCs to a publishing company but didn't hear back. I revamped my proposal letter, added in some great reviews I've gotten on it and resubmitted it to a different company. I should hear back sometime between the first of August and the first of September.
I've been writing and recording a song with the priest in Lawrenceburg that we are hoping to eventually submit for publication in the music books at church. Unfortunately, we have to write and record four additional songs before we can submit.
I'm going to start teaching Intro Biology for Non-Majors at Campbellsville University extension campus in Harrodsburg this Fall! I'm finally official and will get the training I need this week so I can start adapting the syllabus and lesson planning.
I've been so busy with other stuff, I'm still working through the last case study I need to finish before I can take my practical exam to become certified as a Billing's Ovulation Instructor. A friend of mine created an NFP support group for NFP practicing couples in the Diocese of Lexington (feel free to join if applicable!), and I've been somewhat helping her out with that. Along with somewhat helping to schedule a training for CCD/homeschooling parents/religious education teachers in the Diocese this August to introduce Ruah Wood's Theology of the Body curriculum. It's truly amazing!
And speaking of education, I've been trying to be more intentional about Rylee's schooling. I know she's only two and a half, but seeing my sister, Trulee, and all the fun stuff she does with the kids she watches has me wanting to do more. I manage to do about two or three activities a week right now.
Life is stressful, life is busy, but life is good.
We are extremely blessed that I'm able to stay at home with the kids and (attempt to) stay more on top of house and farm work.
We love our farm,
we love our kids,
and we are excited for what the future may bring, despite all the wrenches mother nature keeps throwing into our farming plans.
The kids are growing like weeds.
(please excuse the bad picture quality. I'm going to find a new location for monthly pictures)
William is full on walking, now.
I took the kids to Salato park in Frankfort for the first time. They loved it!
Will Will cheesin'
Rylee can swim by herself! She's getting too big.
William loves to help me mow!
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