Sunday, June 19, 2016

New bee house complete

Finished up the bee house on Friday and then Sat. morning began the haul north to the "farm".

On the way the trailer spring broke which then blew out the tire so I had to make an exit off the thruway.  Luckily there was a tire sales place within 10 blocks so on the rim I hauled.  Of course they didn't handle my size tire so I had to drive (leaving the trailer)  and get a new tire and a rim.  Of course on the way was a parade which caused me a 2 hour delay, but I made it there and back in 2 1/2 hours.  Fixed the tire and then that's when I found the broken spring, so I told the store manager, who was helping, to raise the trailer up and I put in 2 short sections of 2X4's to hold it up.  He just shook his head and said he hoped I wasn't going to far.  All done I asked how much? and he just said, Happy Fathers day.

Monday, June 13, 2016

Are we killing our bees with kindness

Last week when it was raining, I watched for the umpteenth time, "More than Honey".  The very first time I saw it I was interested in the beekeeping methods used in the mountains of Europe, but of course, did nothing about it.  But after I lost all my hives last winter, I thought that maybe there was a better solution, so as an experiment I purchased 2 Slovenian hives and am now building a 2nd bee house. But I digress.  As I watched the documentary this time, my attention was attracted to one of the bee keepers from, what looks like Texas, talking about how his bees have become Africanized and how aggressive they had become.  But, along with there manageable aggression, he states that his mite and beetle problems have disappeared.  This then got me thinking on the subject of queen rearing and how ( because we are such pussies) they are working harder and harder to develop strains of bees that are more and more gentle.  The bees it seems, have now become so gentle that they could give a shit on who or what has invaded the hive.  For me, I work without a suit and when the bees don't want me around, they let me know.  I for one, would rather a few stings than deal with all the other problems.  By the way, last year I found 1 mite in all of my drop boards in all 7 of my hives.  Later