Bees flying on Boxing Day

The temperatures warmed up to 50 or so on the day after Christmas and some bees were flying around the hive entrances.  All three hives were showing some activity.  So far, so good.

The far south hive that was getting the most sun was most active.  These are the bees at the bottom entrance.

The bees had found the top entrances in the southern two hives.  I had cut a hole in the sugar block boxes on top of the hives to give them another entrance and to aid ventilation.

This is the bottom entrance of the middle "split" have with lots of bee activity.

There is some activity at the top entrance of this middle hive as well, though not as much.  I think the difference is due more to the amount of sun exposure and resultant relative temperature of each hive.

The north hive got the least sun and was showing the least activity, with only an occasional bee going in or out of the mouse guard.  You can see one bee going into a hole in the mouse guard on the far left.  If the temperature gets into the 50s and the sun is shining, this hive will be as active as the others.

Bees flying over weekend

The temperature got up close to 60 degrees on Saturday 11/21 after some unusually cold weather in the previous week or so.  The bees were flying in front of all the hives.  I took this later in the day, but when I stopped by around noon there were a lot more bees flying in front of all of the hives in orientation flights.  When I took this picture the bees on the hive on the right seem to have stopped and there weren't as many flying at the two hives on the left.

This is a close up of the two hives on the left, showing the bees flying and gathered in front of the hive.  The bees clearly don't have any trouble navigating through the mouse guards I have installed on the entrances.

First signs of Winter

We received the first dusting of snow overnight -- the first signs of Winter.  The garden has been killed off by frost for several weeks and I have been working on getting the bees closed up for the Winter.

It was a light snow without wind so that what little snow that we had dusted the trees and branches in the neighboring woods.

The trees and road just North of my garden.

The corn has been harvested for quite some time and produced a very good yield this year.  The corn field has been disced to cut up the leftover trash.

The blackberries in my garden still have their leaves that caught the snow.

Here are the sad weedy remains of my vegetable garden.  This was a poor year for the garden because we were gone so much in the critical part of the summer that I completely failed to keep up with the weeds.

I only got half of the tomatoes in cages and the corn plot is behind that, both full of weeds, and all dead at this point.  There's always next year.

One bright spot in the garden were the strawberries that seemed to spread and push out most of the weeds on their own.  I did manage to get straw put on the strawberries yesterday to give them some protection over the winter.  I should have a good crop next Spring.

Here a large pumpkin remains n the garden.  There were several smaller ones too, all of them with a mouse-sized hole gnawed in them to get at the seeds.

My Norton grape vines show the remains of the grapes they produced this year and look rather dead with the snow on them, but I am sure that they will come back vigorously in the Spring.  The Japanese beetles damaged by grapes rather badly this year, though the Nortons and Concords less than the rest.

The path to my bees grew up quite a bit this year, and has some snow on the bare dirt of the path.

My bees are all set for the Winter, with mouse guards on the entrance to keep mice out of the hives, a candy board with 16 pounds of sugar for each of the big hives, 8 pounds for the small one and a "quilt box" which is a box with cedar shavings on top of the hive for insulation and to help absorb moisture.  I think that they all went in to the Winter with good numbers and stores, except the small hive which I really don't expect to make it.

I have straw bales around the west and north sides to block the worst of the Winter winds.

Looking down in the creek bed in the woods.

The creek bed in the other direction.

A deer decided to bed down just on the other side of our back yard fence.  Deer season starts next weekend.

Preparing hives for winter

I was out on Sunday to check my hives starting to get them ready for winter.  The two south hives here have treatment for mites in them and have a feeder in the top box feeding them so they have enough honey stored for the long winter months.  There are lots of bees coming and going gathering nectar and pollen to, mostly from the goldenrod, I think.

The south too hives are preparing too, though I don't have a feeder for the small nucleus hive.  I am not sure that it will make it.  If it doesn't produce a good queen by the end of October, I will probably just combine it back with the hive to its left where it came from.  The odds are against it developing a good queen this late in the season.

This is the North hive (the one on the far right above) before I "smoked" the hive to drive the bees down off of the top.  The little tray on top holds the mite treatment, and still had a little left.  This hive had lots of nectar and pollen stored in the top box.

This is a center frame out of that top box that is almost completely capped with honey.  The capping is rather dark, but this is honey rather than brood and was very heavy.

This is the original hive -- one on the far left in the above pictures-- before I smoked the top.  Lots of bees in this hive too and they had completely finished off the mite treatment.  It takes two treatments two weeks apart, so I put the second treatment on.

This is one of the center frames out of the top box in that hive that shows lots of nectar with much of it capped as finished honey.

This is the other center frame out of that box showing even more capped honey ready for winter.

This is the center frame out of the middle large hive -- one made from a split of the far left hive in May.  This has some capped honey and some nectar in the center frame but I hope to see lots more by winter.  They have a month left to build up those stores, though, so I think it will be OK.

This isn't OK though.  I saw several hive beetles in this hive last week when I went through it and reduced it down, and saw one beetle this week, which is shown here by the arrow.  There was a bee on its tail chasing it down into the comb, which is good.  I panicked a bit when I saw the beetles, but I think all of these hives are strong enough to deal with them.  They are only a real problem in a weak hive.  Not want I want to see, though, going into winter.

Turkeys in the yard.

A flock of about 20 wild turkeys have been hanging around our property and lately have been spending a fair amount of time in your yard.  There they are congregating around the garden gate.

Three of them searching the grass along the lane for bugs.

This one must be a look-out.

With Thanksgiving only about two months away you would think they would find less exposed areas to feed.

Lost swarm -- newspaper combine

If you compare this picture to the one that I took last week you will notice a big difference.  The hive on the right has been covered with bearding bees for the last month or so but when I went out on September 3, the bees on the outside were gone.  This was the hive with some swarm cells and it appears that it threw out a swarm.  I decided to combine my nuc hive with this one to give it a productive queen more quickly, and take some of teh swarm cells out of this hive to make a new nuc.  There probably isn't time for a new nuc to establish itselt this late in the season but I couldn't bear to waste good queen cells.

A frame out of the middle hive that swarmed dhows some brood around the edges here but nothing in the middle.

The other side of the same frame though shows a lot of capped brood.  So there is considerable brood here to help this hive survive and build in what's left of the season.

This frame shows brood in various stages and some swarm cells on the top (it's actually the bottom in the hive) of the frame.  I decided to introduce the nuc queen through a combine so I moved a few frames with good queen cells into the old nuc body to make a new nuc and cut off the rest.

I didn't take any pictures while doing the combine as I was too busy with two hives open at the same time, but this is the end result.  You see the newspaper under the top box on the middle hive.  The bees will have to chew through this which gives them an opportunity to gradually get used to each other.

I also got into the hive on the far left -- my oldest hive of the three.  It had quite a bit of honey in the top super.  This frame though had some odd comb build in sort of a wedge shape in the middle of this frame  I guess the comb was damaged somehow and this is how the bees repaired it.

This frame shows some honey along the top and some drone brood along the bottom (note I am holding the frame upside down to take the picture).

This hive seemed strong with lots of bees and lots of brood.

The back of the same frame shows the same.

Here's a frame showing uncapped brood.

Here is a lot of capped and uncapped brood in fairly new looking comb.

This frame had two queen cups located in an indented area in the middle of the frame rather than on the bottom of the frame where they are usually found.  I found the same on another frame in this hive as well.  These bees seem to be a bit creative in their comb building.

Busy Summer -- Garden Disaster

We had a very busy summer, being gone on vacations over three weeks and other weekends as well.  The garden suffered with these massive weeds hiding the grape vines and other garden plots and pests and disease attacking fruit trees.  These weeds cover the Norton vines but other grapes were equally covered.

The Japanese beetles took a heavy toll on the grapes, particularly the Marquette and Foch grapes, which are French/American hybrids and have thinner leaves than the Americans.  These vines though show a little new growth as well trying to overcome the damage.

Here are the rows of Marquette vines that look a bit spindly.  This was after I had cleared away the tall weeds, of course.

The Concord vines suffered less pest damage though they had some.  Very few grapes were on these vines though, perhaps due to the very cold winter.

My older Jon-a-Red tree looked very weak this year and I suspect due to borers in the trunk cutting off its foot supply from the roots.  No apples on this tree though it produced enough for a pie last year for the first time.

This Golden Delicious tree had suffered borer damage several years ago but seemed to have gradually overcome it, but this year looked bad again and I think lost some branches.

This older cherry tree shows some dead branches.  Not sure what caused this--some sort of disease.  I need to get the dead parts cut out.  The smaller trees had a little bit of this effect.  I wonder if the wetter than usual Spring and Summer contributed to the disease in the orchard.

The pear trees are producing only very few pears this year, but the few that are there look pretty good.  These should be ready to pick soon so I should keep an eye on them.

My tomato patch looks sad because I only got a few tomato cages up before they got too large to get into the cages.  With the tomatoes sprawled along the ground, weeding is more difficult, of course.

Even though the tomato plants didn't make it into cages, they are still producing a lot of tomatoes if I can get out and pick them.  Being on the ground, I think they are more prone to damage and rot.

I didn't get my sweet corn patch completely planted this year, and with all the time we were gone I failed to keep it weeded and the raccoons got what corn that grew.

My pumpkin patch is engulfed in weeds that are eight or nine feet tall.  Still, the pumpkin vines are growing among and up these weeds and are producing a few pumpkins.

My pumpkin patch on the left and gourd patch on the right are both covered with weeds but have vines growing through them so I will get something out of them.

Here a few of the Jack-be-Little pumpkins are visible in the gourd patch.

My green pepper plants are barely visible in the grass and weeds growing here.  I should get into these and weed them after I finish with the grapes.

I did get pole beans growing up their supports better than I have had in past years but haven't seen much production off of them yet.  They have suffered pretty heavy damage from Japanese beetles and I am reluctant to spray something directly that we want to eat shortly.

Here you can see the Japanese beetles congregating on the bean plants.

The heavy damage to the plants is more visible from this angle.

Despite neglect, my strawberry bed in the foreground and asparagus bed in the background look fairly good.  Both could use some weeding but are not overpowered by the weeds.

I've had a little more success with the bee hives this summer than I did with the garden.  I did manage to successfully split the far left hive and catch a swarm out of the original hive to end up with three hives as well as a nuc started from the swarm cells in the first hive.  All three have been active, though not much honey production.  My goal this year, though, was to produce bees more than honey.

The north hive (on the right above) had some honey in the middle of the top box but not much nectar around it, like the bees had been feeding on this since the nectar flow stopped.

The third box up had some nearly full frames of honey, looking ready for extracting.

Some of the brood frames looked a little spotty but I think its just because it is partially hatched out.  This is the box with my "old" queen that is in her second summer though.

However this frame has an excellent brood pattern, covered with capped brood, so I think my old queen is OK.

This frame from the same hive shows lots of uncapped brood so I know the old queen is still present and active in this hive.

A frame out of my nuc hive shows plenty of capped and uncapped brood, so this newer queen is also doing well.

This frame is from the middle "split" hive, made from a split in May.  This frame shows lots of capped and uncapped brood.

This frame from the split hive shows lots of capped brood and an abundance of bees.

The top of this frame shows some swarm cells (actually this the bottom of the frame when in the hive).  These cells have larva in them, meaning that the hive is getting ready to throw out a swarm.  This is the hive that has been bearding heavily for the past several weeks that I took as a reaction to the hot humid weather, but perhaps should have been read as a sign of crowding.