Thursday, March 6, 2014

A Hard to get going day





I had to run in to the county seat today and take care of a vehicle registration. Seems I have the right to travel of course but any mechanism other than the Liberal bicycle requires fees, taxes and inspections. Which actually makes me wonder how long it's going to be before the state starts hitting those spandex wearing environuts with their own set of taxes and fees. I mean many of those bikes cost more than my little PoS beater car and they are using the roads too. Shouldn't they be inspected and have insurance as well?

Anyway that ate up a good chunk of a perfectly gorgeous morning. On my way back I decided it was time to begin taking apart and cleaning up the dead out hives I have from Winter losses.

Oh ya... I didn't lose anymore hives with this latest arctic blast either so I am still looking at nine hives going into Spring. At this point I am about to breath a huge sigh of relief too because I don't think I will lose anymore either. The forecast is predicting almost 70 by Monday and I think I am going to put some actual syrup in the hives as it should be warm enough for them to start taking it especially if I feed it inside the hives.

So I had the one dead out from the North bee yard and I was kinda curious to see what had happened since that was a pretty strong hive going into Winter. It was also a bit heavier than I expected it to be. I loaded the entire thing up in the truck then drove home to eat a quick lunch and when I came back out to start my inspection the entire thing was full of bees.

I tried to get some good pictures but the Sun angle was so low in the sky all I got was glare mostly but apparently in the few minutes I was inside eating the girls from the Garden Hives discovered this open dead out hive and began robbing it. It's all good if they can make use of what's left but it made it a bit hard to take the hive apart and I even got stunk once when I put my thumb on a bee that I thought was dead.

I decided to finish taking the hive apart tomorrow and hope I can get some good pictures because what I found was kinda interesting. So I moved to moving wood chips around from the piles I have of them. I got some pot holes and ruts kinda filled in and a few loads spread out when I discovered the piles are all frozen solid about 3 to 4 inches in.

That kinda ended that project.

I moved on to trying to take the old fence down in the front grass lot. The field was way too wet and muddy yet to take the truck or the tractor out in it so I just grabbed some hand tools and walked. The panels that were used to patch the thing have become so sunk into the ground (which is still frozen about 2 inches or so down) that I couldn't budge them.

By that time I just gave up for the day and put my tools and the parts of the hive I could get to away. I managed to make some progress but it's going to take another few days of warm temperatures to begin thawing and drying everything out enough to actually get any real work done outside. Once I get these two dead out hives taken apart and cleaned up I think I will switch to working in the shop for the next couple of weeks as bee hive production needs to take priority right now anyway.

Then again I really need to get those wood chips spread out so I can plant some more fruit trees too.

Keep Prepping Everyone!!!


14 comments:

  1. I think you are ahead of us on the warming, we are due snow tonight but then warm on the weekend. I have so many things to do when I get some decent weather.

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    1. Sf - Really warm here this morning. Going to get started in the shop here in a few minutes again but just came in for lunch.

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  2. It's warming up here in the valley & the bees have been out, but not too long ago I tried to pick up a gate that had blown down & it was frozen to the ground.
    The folks in Portland are talking about taxing the spandex set. Somebody should pay for all those bike lanes and who better than the people using them.

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    1. MV - Oh My don't get me started on the cyclist. Those guys make my blood pressure explode with their envir-nut BS and hypocrisy.

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  3. It's snowing here now at 4:45 a.m. but lightly and it's not sticking.

    The return of good weather means all the outdoor work has to start again. I have a 50 foot retaining wall made of railroad ties that I am going to have to completely replace. I will probably get started this weekend. I'm glad the bees seem to have made it through this dreadful winter more or less intact.

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    1. HArry - I am so far behind on stuff this year. Usually I have what amounts to about a month of nice days to get stuff done over the Winter. This year I think I got maybe four days in.

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  4. I'm interested in seeing the reason behind losing your hive. We started a hive a year or so, it wasn't strong enough to stand up against a neighbors bee hive business. (we didn't know it was so near by), they robbed our hive and our small starter hive had no chance of defending itself against the numbers of bees from the other hives.

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    1. Izzy - I plan on taking some more pics. I wanted to do some today but it's still full of bees. I will see what afternoon brings.

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  5. Preppy..Have you heard of Buckfast bees? I was reading about them on another blog. Supposed to overwinter better than our Italians and more mite resistant.

    I lost one of my hives so I am back to my original 2. I need to get my swarm traps up but too much has been going on the past few weeks. Sometimes there just isn't enough daylight hours and energy if there was!

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    1. MB - I have read about them and they sound good but to keept he strain pure you would have to re-queen every year which is viable many bee keepers do it but I am a survivalist bee keeper so I dot hings differently :)

      Seriously though the traits sound like good bees except they supposedly don't build up as much for Winter. As I said though if you don't requeen every year though they would get cross bred the first time they swarm or replace a queen.

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  6. I hope the warming trend continues, but am not looking forward to the spring thaw, they are all ready warning people of flooding.

    Bicycles Peeve me off as well, they act like they own the road, have no respect to stop and let cars pass..ugggg.
    Good luck with the hives, and try not to get stung any more... : )

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    1. OMG DAMN YOU JuGM!!! You are getting me started.... OMG....

      Around here the damned cyclist will get right in front of you on a single lane road and stay there. They managed to politically steal land from property owners to make some bike trail on an old railroad line then talked the capitol city into spending millions on a bike bridge no one uses.

      I so want to weld spikes on my truck and see how many I can collect after a little drive sometime.

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  7. Here in Mn it will take warm weather and rain to thaw out the ground. our frost depth is 6 to 7 feet in some places. the lakes are at lest 2' thick with ice. Sorry to hear about the bee's.

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    1. Rob - I am hoping today will go a long way to thawing us out. Almost 70 already. The lakes are already ice free once again.

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