Happy Thanksgiving

Beautiful fall day and the bees are busy.  54 degrees out and they are even bringing in pollen, from who knows where.  Fed them syrup this morning and they are going at it like they are starving, one hive is to be sure.  Busy chopping up the tree I lost, looks like a lot of work.  Filled my wood shed almost to the top and I am not even started on the big tree yet.  Luckily the NYDS is hauling off the tree branches for me, that saves some $s.  Off to eat.  Later

Super storm Sandy

I missed the storm as I was on my annual So. Dakota Pheasant hunting trip.  Cut the trip short and got back late Thursday.  Found my Norway Maple down, which was a shame as it was the largest tree on Staten Island and one of the largest in NYS.  It fell all around the nasty hive but the hive came out unscathed, my wife and  daughter had lowered it off its stand to the ground tucking it under my lilac bushes.  The other 2 hives are fine and all three are buzzing on the warm days.  Still need to feed all three through the winter.

We were very lucky as the tree fell away from the house and only caused minor damage to the garage.  All of my various hand built boats had puncture wounds but nothing that can't be fixed.  My sailboat, which I decided not to store for the winter, came out fine, one of the few that did.  My storage marina had 100% damage of various degrees to all the boats in the yard.

Just read that the Grange in the Brooklyn Navy Yard lost 19 hives which drowned from the high tidal surge.  Guess they don't know how to measure 10'.  Later