Beltane\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Flower Moon<\/p>\n
After checking the parent colony with the queen excluder in, I found larvae in the top hive box.\u00a0 That’s evidence of the queen.\u00a0 That meant I shifted the middle hive box over to the new foundation and bottom board.\u00a0 A syrup feeder pail went on top of the new, child colony.\u00a0 This calms everything down and allows for a peaceful slow release of the queen tomorrow.\u00a0 Leaving the queen excluder on the hive box in which I discovered larvae, I put two honey supers on it and replaced the inner cover and the telescoping outer cover.\u00a0 The parent colony now has two hive boxes, one with a queen and brood, plus the other, lower box, which will get reversed on top in 7-10 days.<\/p>\n
Tomorrow I’ll check the package colony for larvae a second time.\u00a0 If they have none, I’ll have to get another queen for them soon.\u00a0 If there is no queen in the hive, the lack of her pheromones turns on egg laying in the workers, but, since they’re not fertilized they produce only drones.\u00a0 Once a hive converts to worker egg-laying apparently you have to start over.<\/p>\n
This has been a busy couple of weeks for the bees.\u00a0 Kate’s been making supers and frames and hive boxes, too.\u00a0 If the divide and the package colony take, things will calm down for a while until the honey flow ends.\u00a0 Then, there’s an end of the whole process I haven’t encountered.\u00a0 Honey.<\/p>\n
Two more bags of composted manure on the leek\/sugar pod pea bed, another on the sun trap and a lot of planting.\u00a0 The herb spiral has the herbs Kate bought Friday at Mickman’s.\u00a0 I also planted beets, mustard greens, fennel, onions and a pepper plant in the sun trap.\u00a0 The tomatoes and other peppers will go there, too.\u00a0 Those two beds, along with the other bed where I have green onions plants along with radicchio, beets from seed and thyme will be our kitchen garden for the growing season.<\/p>\n
Kate did a lot of weeding, including the blueberry patches.\u00a0 It really makes a difference to have her focused on that aspect of gardening.\u00a0 She’s also in charge of pruning which has its on rules.<\/p>\n
The leeks, onions, kale, chard, garlic, parsnips, butternut squash, other beets and carrots will also be available during the growing season of course, but most of these will get canned or dried or frozen for the winter.<\/p>\n
I would not like to do the cost accounting on these vegetables and the fruit because the two fences and Ecological gardens have created a lot of sunk costs.\u00a0 It will take years for them to zero out the costs, more years, I imagine, than we have left in this house.\u00a0 In our case, of course, that’s not the big point.\u00a0 The big point is a more sustainable and healthy lifestyle and in that regard the cost accounting has already tilted in our favor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Beltane\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Flower Moon After checking the parent colony with the queen excluder in, I found larvae in the top hive box.\u00a0 That’s evidence of the queen.\u00a0 That meant I shifted the middle hive box over to the new foundation and bottom board.\u00a0 A syrup feeder pail went on top of the new, child colony.\u00a0 … Continue reading Getting Things Ready<\/span>