First snow

The first snow of this winter arrived overnight.  It was just a light snow but it made everything seem clean and bright.

My tractor and implements still sitting out without protection get a light coating of snow.

The orchard under a blue sky.

The black berry patch holds a coat of snow well.  I still after two or three years have yet to add support wires to hold these canes up.  Perhaps I can get that done before these leaf out in Spring.

Grapevines in snow.  These vines took a lot of damage from Japanese beetles this year so I hope they all make it through the winter.

Ice in a puddle.

Deer have a habit of scraping their antlers on small trees, and have done considerable damage to this weeping cherry tree in our front yard not far from our front door.  Unfortunately I didn't get the fence around it until the damage had been done.  I hope the tree makes it.

There was similar damage to some of the larger lilac bushes that are growing along the east side of the garden fence.  It has taken forever for these bushes to get to this size so I hope that the deer do not set them back too far.

Goldenrod in bloom

Goldenrod is in bloom providing some pollen and nectar forage for the bees -- the fall honey flow that helps them build up their stores for winter.

Here's a bee working the goldenrod near the hives.

I just inspected the North hive this day.  Though I intended the bees to use the three bottom boxes for raising their brood, this hive as always extended its brood into the fourth box (counting from the bottom up).  This frame from the fourth box shows a lot of brood.  My intent this date was to reduce the size of the hive as it had six boxes total.  I pulled out the frames that had little or no nectar in them, though I had to take frames from the top two boxes to do so.  The empty hive box is sitting in the background here on my new hive stand that is not yet in use.  I did have a nucleus hive on that stand earlier in the year but it died out apparently due to not producing a viable queen.

This frame has both capped and uncapped brood in it, showing that I seem to have a producing queen.

This frame was covered with bees and when I nudged some out of the way, I could see that they were covering some uncapped brood.

This frame from the third box shows some capped brood as well as some drone comb on the bottom of the frame  (on the right in the picture).  The bees typically will cut back on drone production late in the year and I was little surprised to see how much drone this hive was still producing.

Another frame from the third box shows a lot of capped brood.

This frame had a lot of honey on it and an odd structure in the middle with what appears to be drone comb.  I don't know why the bees built the frame out this way.

After the inspection there remained a lot of agitated bees on the outside of the hive.  These bees seem a bit more aggressive than earlier in the season and I suspect that the requeening with swarming in the Spring brought in some more aggressive genetics into the hive.  Bees are more defensive in the fall too, with fewer sources of nectar and a need to protect their honey stores, and that might explain part of their aggressiveness too.  I had a guard bee follow me all the way to my car and I had to walk down a road a bit to shake her off before taking off my protective gear.

Late summer hive inspection

The thistle is in bloom.  Though this isn't a flower that I see honey bees on, they are pretty and attract a lot of butterflies.

The goldenrod is just starting to open.  This is a flower that provides a major source of honey and pollen for bees late in the summer and early fall.

My three hives.  There is some activity on the front entrances of each hive, but there aren't as many bees out as there have been during some of the hotter and more humid days.

I was inspecting my middle and south hives this day.  I had inspected the North hive a few days before but my camera wasn't working then.  Here is a frame of solid honey though it has very dark capping rather than the usual white capping.  I'm not sure why that is.  The frame was very heavy with honey.

Here's anther frame of the dark capped honey, with some cells of bright colored pollen peaking through the bees in the bottom center.

When I opened up the brood chamber of the hive, there was some honey stored between the boxes, that broke and provided a treat to the bees.

Lots of capped brood in the South hive shown here.  I found a lot of brood in the middle box but got distracted by what I was finding and forgot to take pictures.

This frame from the South hive had both open and capped brood on it.

Here is a frame of capped brood with capped honey on the outer edges.

This frame from the South hive has capped brood surrounded by pollen and honey on the outer edges.

There is a lot of pollen on the bottom (left side here) of hte frame.  There is brood scattered around under the mass of bees above the pollen.

The South hive also had some solid frames of dark capped honey on the outer edges of some boxes, but not a full box full of these frames like the middle hive had.

Outside of hives just before honey harvest

Just had a chance to take some pictures of the outside of these hives.  I was pulling honey this weekend but the camera I use to photograph the inside of hives wasn't working.  I did extract 72 pounds of honey with the tallest North hive (on the right) providing most of it.

The South hive entrance is busy with lots of bees in the air.

The middle hive entrance is also quite busy.

The North hive also has lots of bees coming and going.  This has been my largest hive all year.

The nucleus hive that I have tried to start just recently was active with bees coming and going.  I put the grass in the entrance as a way of helping the bees orient themselves to a new hive.

Another hive inspection

Another inspection of the north two hives to see how they are doing.  The bees had built comb between the top two boxes and filled it with honey, so when I pull the boxes off and scrape off the comb it leaves some honey pooled on top of the frames.  Here you can see the bees eagerly lining up shoulder to shoulder (do bees have shoulders?) to lap up the exposed honey.

Lots of capped brood in the north hive.

This frame has some pollen around the outside edges (the orange color) and some brood in the middle.  You can see my new hives stand in the back waiting for future expansion.

Here is a frame with pollen on the bottom (actually that's the top of the frame as I am holding it upside down) and there are some queen cells along the top -- the peanut shaped cells.  This means that the hive is preparing to swarm and replace their queen.  This is an "old" queen entering her third year so I am not too upset about replacing her.

Here is a frame full of orange pollen from the bottom box of the north hive.

Here is a nice frame of capped brood from the middle box.  All of the hives seem to be doing well, though I only got into two of them today.

I have added honey supers to each hive.  Each hive has three boxes on the bottom for brood, and then boxes above that are for honey, called honey "supers" by beekeepers.  The two far hives have one honey super and the near hive actually has three supers on it at this point.  Obviously the near hive (my North hive) is the strongest most active one, but its also the hive that is preparing to swarm.

Summer tanager

I saw a red bird fly across the back yard and land in one of my pecan trees that didn't quite fly like or look like a cardinal.  So, I got my binoculars and saw that it definitely wasn't a cardinal.  After some research in my bird books I find that it's a summer tanager.  This seems to be at the far northern edge of its range.

It is a pretty bird.  Actually more red than a cardinal because it is all red without the black markings on the face that the cardinal has.  Also doesn't have the crest.  I have seen it several times since and watched it singing.  Its song is actually rather familiar, so I presume its been around in past years but I didn't recognize it for what it was.

The female is a yellow color -- I saw a female singing in the top of one of my apple trees in the orchard.  The only down side of these birds is that their favorite food is bees and wasps.  Luckily, my bee yard is a quarter mile from my back yard where I am seeing those and I hope they haven't found the hives to make a feast.

Something's chipping up a dead tree

While walking in my woods I noticed this tree.  It is a fairly large tree and is dead, but something appears to be chipping away at it in a major way.  You can see that the trunk has been chipped away quite a bit and there is a pile of chips on the ground.

Here's a view of the tree from the side to the right of the first picture.  The chipping is somewhat uneven with some deep furrows.

Here is a closer picture of the bottom front of the tree, where you can see the degree of damage and the chips on the ground.

Here is the bottom from the side.  You can see some of the furrows.  It almost looks like claw marks on the bottom portion.

Here's the middle section from the front.

And the middle section from the side.  Here you can really see the deep furrows.

Here is the top portion from the front.

Here is the top section from the side.  The only thing that I can think that would do this would be woodpeckers, and particularly the large pileated woodpeckers.  Still, even with the big woodpeckers, it seems like an awful lot of destruction.  I don't visit this part of the woods often so I don't know how long this has been going on.