In my Beekeeping book for Dummies, it tells you how to make sugar water for when the bees arrive in 6 days!! I'm getting excited now. So I'm making the sugar water as follows:
2.5 quarts of water brought to a rolling boil
Shut off stove
Add 5 lbs of granulated sugar...just regular sugar, no brown or fancy sugars will do
Let sugar melt in the water, stirring to help it along.
I will then refrigerate the sugar water until I need it on Saturday. Then I will have placed some sugar water in a spray bottle that I will spray on the bees as they are placed in my hive. Or, if I can't put them into the hive on the same day and need to wait another day, I would spray then two or three times a day to feed them. It also keeps them from noticing anything else (you) as they are licking the sugar water off each other.
I'll let you know how it goes. I'll be reading instructions all this week to make sure I do it right. And I did watch it being done which was very helpful.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Anxiously awaiting bee arrival
I know it's been a few weeks since I sat down to write anything...but I've not been idle. I've been creating some new gardens that I have partially planted and will be adding flowers, shrubs and vines over the coming months.
That started me on another venture, something I do fairly often. I get outside, start to do one thing but end up veering away because I've seen a need to do something else. That may often lead to yet another item to tend that has nothing to do with my original task. That means that sometimes, I have projects in flux a little too often and nothing totally complete...something that drives me crazy. :). Guess I bring it on myself.
So I bring that up only because my adding a bit more garden sent me off on a task to build an archway using downed trees. You can see both the new gardens that I'm enhancing now with compost as well as the incomplete archway. My goal is to have that done this week. I decided to plant birdhouse gourds there this year...and may start a climbing rose or other climber there for a more permanent solution. But I thought the gourds would be pretty there. Their white flowers open at night and they will fill the archway quickly since they're a fast grower. I may put them in planters on either side of the arch. Not sure yet. That would give them the best growing medium. I'd use Promix, which all my plants start out in.
There are "sort of" 4 oval gardens, two to each side of the archway. Notice the little birdbath on the right in the back oval garden. I've added some stones in the water so that, when the bees arrive, they can drink the water without drowning. They will have something to perch on while drinking. This looks pretty bare right now but I have high hopes for something pretty later on this summer. Stay tuned.
It's good to get this work done now before the bees arrive. The date is now set at May 5th. I'm getting so anxious and looking forward to them arriving. Imaginethathoney over in Swanzey, NH held a short class a few days ago to show us wannabee (get it?) beekeepers how to add bees to a hive. They showed how to add a bee package and also how to add a nuc to the hive. Naturally I was most interested in the nuc since that's what I'll be getting. I had a chance to wear my veil and hat and gloves. My jeans were tucked into my socks. I wore an old chambray shirt I've had for years. I DID NOT GET STUNG. My only fear was that I wore my crocs. Then realized, oh goodness, they have holes in them! But I had good, thick socks on too. It turned out to be ok but it was recommended to wear full shoes to not take the chance. After seeing the bees inserted firsthand rather than reading about it, I was much less nervous about it. Looks easy enough so I am now looking forward to it.
Naturally, as I begin to beautify this area near the bees, I've decided I need a pathway and want to get some grass growing in the bare areas. I had several trees cut earlier this spring and kept the wood chips so I will use these wood chips for my path once it's dug out. I will plant the left side of the path this year. I want a garden to the right of the path too but that will need to wait a bit longer. Not sure I'll get to it this year. I feel like I have enough to do for the moment.
The pathway...in it's beginning stage. The newspaper is marking the left line of the path which will be 3-4 feet wide, enough for two people to walk side by side. I have quite a lot of vinca that I will plant to the left and it will form an evergreen matte that will bloom in the spring with pretty blue flowers. I am digging the path down a few inches and using that dirt to pile up on the left. Once it's all dug out, I will add some compost and plant it. I will also add some shrubs. And of course, woodchips on the path itself. I will lay black landscape cloth under the chips to keep out weeds.
That started me on another venture, something I do fairly often. I get outside, start to do one thing but end up veering away because I've seen a need to do something else. That may often lead to yet another item to tend that has nothing to do with my original task. That means that sometimes, I have projects in flux a little too often and nothing totally complete...something that drives me crazy. :). Guess I bring it on myself.
So I bring that up only because my adding a bit more garden sent me off on a task to build an archway using downed trees. You can see both the new gardens that I'm enhancing now with compost as well as the incomplete archway. My goal is to have that done this week. I decided to plant birdhouse gourds there this year...and may start a climbing rose or other climber there for a more permanent solution. But I thought the gourds would be pretty there. Their white flowers open at night and they will fill the archway quickly since they're a fast grower. I may put them in planters on either side of the arch. Not sure yet. That would give them the best growing medium. I'd use Promix, which all my plants start out in.
There are "sort of" 4 oval gardens, two to each side of the archway. Notice the little birdbath on the right in the back oval garden. I've added some stones in the water so that, when the bees arrive, they can drink the water without drowning. They will have something to perch on while drinking. This looks pretty bare right now but I have high hopes for something pretty later on this summer. Stay tuned.
It's good to get this work done now before the bees arrive. The date is now set at May 5th. I'm getting so anxious and looking forward to them arriving. Imaginethathoney over in Swanzey, NH held a short class a few days ago to show us wannabee (get it?) beekeepers how to add bees to a hive. They showed how to add a bee package and also how to add a nuc to the hive. Naturally I was most interested in the nuc since that's what I'll be getting. I had a chance to wear my veil and hat and gloves. My jeans were tucked into my socks. I wore an old chambray shirt I've had for years. I DID NOT GET STUNG. My only fear was that I wore my crocs. Then realized, oh goodness, they have holes in them! But I had good, thick socks on too. It turned out to be ok but it was recommended to wear full shoes to not take the chance. After seeing the bees inserted firsthand rather than reading about it, I was much less nervous about it. Looks easy enough so I am now looking forward to it.
Naturally, as I begin to beautify this area near the bees, I've decided I need a pathway and want to get some grass growing in the bare areas. I had several trees cut earlier this spring and kept the wood chips so I will use these wood chips for my path once it's dug out. I will plant the left side of the path this year. I want a garden to the right of the path too but that will need to wait a bit longer. Not sure I'll get to it this year. I feel like I have enough to do for the moment.
The pathway...in it's beginning stage. The newspaper is marking the left line of the path which will be 3-4 feet wide, enough for two people to walk side by side. I have quite a lot of vinca that I will plant to the left and it will form an evergreen matte that will bloom in the spring with pretty blue flowers. I am digging the path down a few inches and using that dirt to pile up on the left. Once it's all dug out, I will add some compost and plant it. I will also add some shrubs. And of course, woodchips on the path itself. I will lay black landscape cloth under the chips to keep out weeds.
Getting the gardens ready
I realize it's been relatively quiet in terms of bee activity since the fence was put in. It's working great. I check it every few days with the voltage meter and it's registering about 4,000 volts each time. A new apple tree will be added to the fenced area, probably today, as it's waiting in its pot to go into the ground. Last night was in the low twenties so I kept it in the greenhouse for the night. The next several nights will be much warmer so it should be ok to go in now. I do have other fruit trees in the space already and was told to just keep watering them through the cold weather and they should be all right.
More gardens were dug over the weekend, right in front of the fenced bee area. All I added to the clay soil so far is sawdust, but compost will also be added and probably some peat moss to lighten the soil. I have time to work on enhancing the soil while plants are growing in the greenhouse. But I haven't really designed each of the gardens yet. It's good to have at least a sketch of a design so you can plan to have something in color in every season. And of course, I'm striving to give my bees plenty of pollen in my own yard, although they will travel up to three miles to obtain pollen.
I'm concerned about people using pesticides in the area so I've developed a flyer that I will give to my neighbors to hopefully make them aware of the dangers of using them and how they affect the bee population (and us, for that matter). In my flyer, I will include the abstract below from a Science Magazine article sent by an UVM Cooperative Extension worker who happened to think of me when she read it. Here is the abstract I included which helps give validity to my concern:
I'm noticing the sun changing the light around my house so soon I will do another chart to see how the sunlight has changed during the month. I think it might be fun to do this for the year, say once a month, so chart out the sun in my yard over the course of time.
More gardens were dug over the weekend, right in front of the fenced bee area. All I added to the clay soil so far is sawdust, but compost will also be added and probably some peat moss to lighten the soil. I have time to work on enhancing the soil while plants are growing in the greenhouse. But I haven't really designed each of the gardens yet. It's good to have at least a sketch of a design so you can plan to have something in color in every season. And of course, I'm striving to give my bees plenty of pollen in my own yard, although they will travel up to three miles to obtain pollen.
I'm concerned about people using pesticides in the area so I've developed a flyer that I will give to my neighbors to hopefully make them aware of the dangers of using them and how they affect the bee population (and us, for that matter). In my flyer, I will include the abstract below from a Science Magazine article sent by an UVM Cooperative Extension worker who happened to think of me when she read it. Here is the abstract I included which helps give validity to my concern:
Growing evidence for declines in bee
populations has caused great concern due to the valuable ecosystem services
they provide. Neonicotinoid insecticides have been implicated in these declines
as they occur at trace levels in the nectar and pollen of crop plants. We
exposed colonies of the bumble bee Bombus terrestris in the lab
to field-realistic levels of the neonicotinoid imidacloprid, then allowed them
to develop naturally under field conditions. Treated colonies had a
significantly reduced growth rate and suffered an 85% reduction in production
of new queens compared to control colonies. Given the scale of use of
neonicotinoids, we suggest that they may be having a considerable negative
impact on wild bumble bee populations across the developed world. Read more.
I do hope my neighbors think before using pesticides and hope even more that they don't use them at all.
I'm noticing the sun changing the light around my house so soon I will do another chart to see how the sunlight has changed during the month. I think it might be fun to do this for the year, say once a month, so chart out the sun in my yard over the course of time.
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