Daily Archives: July 12, 2009

Bees, permaculture

Vega. Again. Bees and Permaculture.

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Summer                           Waning Summer Moon

Vega the wonder dog continues to amaze us.  While I worked on the air conditioning earlier today, she picked up the small box I had to reserve the screws removed from the cowling.  I heard the screws clinking as she walked away.  When I got to the box, she had set it down and not a single screw had gone missing.  She continued to help me during the whole process.

Also earlier Kona, a whippet who opens doors, opened the back door and let everybody inside.  When Kate came out of her shower, Vega had sprawled out on our bed.

After I put the whippets to bed, Vega and Rigel come out in to the living room for a bit of human time.  Vega promptly hops up on the couch, rolls over on her back and relaxes her legs over the edge.  Then she goes to sleep.

The hive stands pretty tall now with its two honey supers and the queen excluder.  hivebody500

I’ve been very lucky to have Mark Nordeen as a mentor in the bee-keeping.  He’s gotten me through the rough spots for beginners:  equipment which he let me use, hiving the package of bees, how to examine frames and what to look for, when to put on the honey supers and when to use a queen excluder.   All of this stuff would be easy to stumble over in even the first few years and Mark has walked me through it.

The bees have added another element to the permaculture work Kate and I have begun.  The bees live and work in our garden just as we do.  They have a stake in a healthy garden just as we do.  Working with bees feels very collaborative; we are two species working and living together, sharing our needs and our specialized skills.

We have two apples coming along in our orchard as well as blueberries and currants.  I also found a huckleberry today, a plant I have never grown before.  The garden has begun its arc toward full productivity.

Now we have an orchard filled with fruit trees and plant guilds to support the trees, bushes that bear berries, even a hazelnut.  The orchard complements our expanded vegetable garden.  The playhouse Jon put together for us will go with the finished firepit (someday) as a family outdoor recreation area.  This is all part of the permaculture idea, having various zones of the landscape for specific purposes and each zone located optimally for its needs.

Asia, Our Land and Home

Excluded Queen, Clean Fins

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Summer                       Waning Summer Moon

The smoker worked.  Mostly.  The bees have had 2 to 2.5 months of breeding, brooding and comb building.  There are a lot more bees than there were in April when Mark showed me how to load a box a’ bees into the first hive box.  Weekly I’ve checked each frame, when there are three hive boxes on as there is now, that means checking 28 frames each time.

The bee’s propolis had welded together many frames this time, so prying them apart proved more difficult than it had the first weeks.  With smoke to discourage angry bees each frame came out with minimal interference.  After checking a few frames in each hive box, I put the top box on the bottom, left the middle one in its place and put the bottom one of top.  If I understand it correctly, this encourages the bees to continue producing brood, making the colony more healthy for the winter while also expanding their honey base in the honey supers where the queen cannot go.

In this way the colonies survival over the winter gains a higher probability while still allowing the bee-keeper to harvest some of the honey flow.

Today, after the hives, I cracked the case of the outside air conditioning unit, took it off and sprayed off the literal blanket of cottonwood fibers that had collected around the fins which guide air past the cooling coils.  I could have done this three weeks ago, but I forgot about it.  It’s not fun for me since it involves lot of little screws, a cantankerous body of sheet metal that must line up with the holes just right and more bending than my deconditioned joints can stand.  A good prod to get back to the resistance and flexibility work as well as the aerobics.

I tend to emphasize the aerobics since the heart and circulatory system and the respiratory system tend to cause death if not tended with care.  That’s only half of the battle though, the other half is having enough strength and flexibility to live the life time saved by regular aerobic exercise.

The cantankerous sheet metal awaits.  I’ve written this while letting it dry off.  This all falls under the British category of estate management.  Where are all the servants again?  Oh, that’s right.  They are me.

Bees

A Real Honey

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Summer                              Waning Summer Moon

Today the queen excluder goes on my three hives after I shift the bottom to the top and the top to the bottom.  On top of the queen excluder goes two honey supers.  A honey super has half the depth of a hive box.  The queen excluder makes sure there is no brood in the part of the hive from which I will harvest the honey.

The bee keepers refer to this as the fun part, but I’ve enjoyed the whole process so far.  The learning curve, steep at times, has leveled off right now.  I can work the smoker, know how to check frames and have mastered at least some of the know how necessary to bee keeping.  The next lesson comes during the honey flow work.  After the honey flow stops in the fall, there is the question of hive maintenance over winter.  Over wintering comes later.  Now, the honey.