A Quick Post

I spent the morning elbow deep in bee hives up at the North Apiary. The newest hive up there, which was the one I sucked the bees out of that tree a month or so ago seem to be doing well but there are no new eggs or larva in the hive. Maybe I missed the queen although the hive in and of itself isn't acting queenless I certainly can't find her. So I moved a frame of new eggs from one of the other hives in there and we will see what happens.

I could have done this a couple weeks ago but until today I hadn't actually seen any drones flying around. I also haven't had much time to mess with the hives the last few weeks but from the last check I did do I knew I had a while before they needed checking anyway.

Still not one sign of a swarm cell anywhere. All the hives I checked today had plenty of room for expansion. This Winter was hard on em and they took some pretty significant losses but they do appear to be building back up nicely now.

After the bees it was time to help castrate the little boy lambs. Since Mrs. PP goes in there with them once or twice a day to collect up bags of sheep poop and catch the little guys to pet, they are all pretty much totally tame and not very afraid of being caught. The Vet had a helper along and so we got a constant train going of catching the boys and holding them while he did his knife work. We used to band em and take care of this step ourselves but we lost one last year and when I ran the numbers I figured out if we combined the castration visit with other things it only runs about 5 bucks a lamb to have a pro do the job.

If it saves even one lamb it more than pays for itself.

Anyway I am off to St. Louis for a work run this evening and I am behind in getting ready. Justa  quick update and I will catch up tonight.

Keep Prepping Everyone!!!!