Bees in my bonnet
A swarm of bees in May is worth a load of Hay
A swarm of bees in June is worth a silver Spoon
A swarm of bees in July is not worth a Fly
Quicksilver noticed them first. "Bee! Bee! Bee!!!" and excited dancing an pointing.
I checked them out. It appears that a swarm of bees took residence in our soffit or wall. Mrs ERJ indicated that while she enjoys honey she does not like to be stung and that they have to go.
A local bee-keeper will pay us a visit but he straight up said it was going to cost money to extract the bees. I expect him to add another $50 when he sees how close it is to the picture window due to the risk of collateral damages while ripping out facing.
I have a trap-hive out in the forlorn hope of luring them out of the wall but figure it is a less-than-1% chance. I have sugar sprinkled on top of the box and a cotton swab with a few drops of lemongrass oil inside the box.
Lots of people love the IDEA of keeping bees but very, very few have the temperament and stones to follow through. Keeping them through the summer and into the fall is the easy part. Getting them through the winter is what separates the pretenders from those who are called.
The smart money says that I will end up bug-bombing the honeybees rather than shelling out the bucks to have them removed as an intact swarm. Three pounds of bees runs about $150, locally.
Hummingbirds
I saw our first visitor to our feeder today.
Dumbbells
I am adding concrete to the dumbbell that I have outside. They are currently 130 pounds and I have a bunch of plates strapped across them to mass them up. My current plan is to add 40 pounds to each side.
100 pounds of concrete completely fills the five gallon bucket I am using for a form. I slipped a plastic trash bag over the 65 pound lump that is already cast on the end of the pipe and then put the lump + bag into the five gallon bucket with the edges of the bag turned down the outside of the bucket.
 |
| Cool season grass grows the most in mid-spring. I mow, I mow, its off to work I go... (apologies to the Seven Dwarfs) |
It has been hard to get to the gym. Too much to do. It is very handy to have them between the barn and the house. I can do a few dead-lifts each time I walk past them.
Implied precision
"Implied precision" is the degree of quality in a number implied by the number of "significant digits". I can measure a manure pile with a micrometer and the angle of the conicity with optics and calculate the volume to be 3.679254 cubic yards.
But if I measure it next week after a rainfall and some settling I might calculate 3.1796595 cubic yards.
So which number is it? The correct answer is 3 yards. It could be as little as 2.5 yards or as much as 4 yards.
So when I say that I am adding "80 pounds" to the dumbbells, it could be as little as 75 pounds or as much as 90 pounds.
Cabbage seeds started
I started about fifty Deadon savoy cabbage seeds. I have not intention of growing that many plants.
Deadon is now my go-to. Being a savoy (crinkly leaf) cabbage, it is naturally resistant to splitting due to autumn rains.
The old Stokes Seed Catalog said that every day that sowing late-cabbage seeds was delayed moved the harvest date back three days due to the shortening days and cooler temperatures in late fall. That makes planting cabbage seeds a time-critical task.
OH no Joe! Pay the money. There wll be honey combs in there. Rotten honey is a dreadful smell. Took gallons of kiltz to fix my issue. Get it over with. Roger
ReplyDeleteI thought I read or heard somewhere that honey doesn't go bad.
DeleteDead brood, rotting in the honeycomb might be the issue.
DeleteThe bee guy stopped by and used an IR camera to pinpoint the bees. He said that if there were bees in the soffet or wall there were not very many of them. Sometimes swarms splinter and if they didn't take the queen with them then the group will self-extinguish.
Wait and see for a couple more weeks.
Likely, yes. Sealed honey will keep; brood that dies or uncured honey will not do as well.
DeleteWow ERJ, that’s some serious Rocky in Siberia training…. You must have a big log you can shoulder to the barn as well!
ReplyDeleteFence posts!
DeleteERJ
ReplyDeleteYou are on the money about beekeeping and winter. It’s tough to keep them alive thru the fall: varroa mites, mice, wax moths, yellow jackets, hornets, and skunks all try to kill them off as the wx cools. Other bees try to rob the hives. Queen health is always a key factor too.
This past winter we had two straight weeks of temps below -10F. That killed off all our first year hives. It wasn’t the cold so much as condensation inside the hives. Bees cluster to keep warm. Warm air condenses on yhe inside of the hive boxes and drips onto the bees, chilling them. As they die off the hive falls below critical mass and expires. At the cold temps we had they can’t even swarm to get away from the wet environment inside the hive.
These kinds of setbacks are a normal part of rural life. I suspect most of the people who live vicariously on the internet would benefit from some exposure to the harshness of growing their own food. There’s no reset button in any of the ag pursuits.
$150 is cheap for a package of bees. Especially if it comes with a marked queen.
-john
Kaw River Valley
Nothing useful to add but here goes anyway. When I was a kid, a swarm landed on a branch of a small tree in our front yard. My father and a neighbor quickly built a wooden box and encased the swarm before sawing off the branch. The queen and her minions were relocated to the garden “to pollinate the plants”. Great idea. Except... After the first winter something changed and the little monsters attacked us whenever we got too close. “Too close” being defined as wherever we were while mowing or gardening. Did you know you can comb bees out of your hair with your fingers while setting Olympic records running for the house? I forget how we decided who was volunteered to retrieve the idling tractor; it was probably me, but trauma has clouded my memory.
ReplyDeleteIs there any chance they were Africanized-bees? How close did you live to the Mexican border?
DeleteCorwin Davis, now long deceased, told me some bees had a strong dislike for the vibration/ground-shaking caused by the gas motors on lawn mowers.
Illinois, before Africanized was a thing; they were just ornery. Mr. Davis may have had the answer.
DeleteOne possibility is that you got a new queen over the winter and she had mated with a bunch of drones with an ornery gene.
DeleteERJ
ReplyDeleteTalk to your beekeeper about a "Forced Abscond". If it is a swarm that has recently moved in chances are they haven't built up too much already. Much less invasive than a cutout. I've had almost as many removal calls this year as swarm calls.
Get a shop vac next to the soffit, tape the open end of the long extension next to where the bees are entering and leaving, and leave it run for 24 hours. Once the bees are in the vac they are unable to find their way out. Did it again after 48 hours and problem went away!
ReplyDeleteThe spoiled honey attracts other critters and stains the interior wall. It has to go.
ReplyDeleteI had the Great Honey Bee episode of 2023. A beekeeper came out mangled the cut in and tried the smoke and vacuum plan with about 30% success. I gave him 48 hours before waging chemical warfare. He came back with a real life carpenter who showed him what to do and where to cut. Still had bees show up for a couple of weeks but in the end they either died off or went away.
I had to get that side of the garage resided and of course it was less that my homeowners deductible. I think it was $1050 out of pocket cost.
Screw the bees.
A lot of the problems we are experiencing with hive survival is because our practices go against the natural needs of the bees. Check out horizontalhive.com for lots of information on natural beekeeping as well as DIY plans for a hive that makes more sense for the non-commercial beekeeper
ReplyDeleteTop bar hives are a cheap way to house honeybees for the summer if you want to treat a "found" swarm and don't care too much if they survive the winter.
Delete