2 Grey Weeks Later...

We've had about a fortnight of rotten weather. I'm just hoping it clears up by the weekend so that I can practice taking a sample of adult bees in a match box in preparation for my Basic exam on Monday 27th!

Luckily I have now learned how to get the smoker going: DON'T USE THE RIDICULOUS HESSIAN SACKING WE WERE USING BEFOREHAND. I have never been able to light the smoker so I was doing some practice the other day. I used our spare smoker in case the main one was broken, and it had a roll of cardboard in there already, so I used that and I lit it FIRST TIME. So fuel choice is important, and thankfully I'm not completely incompetent! :-)

There have been bees out and about but it's mostly bumbles - most of the time it's been only just warm enough for honeybees to venture out, and way too wet. However, we did get some beekeeping done at the weekend, and it was fantastic!

We only inspected 2 apiaries out of our 3. In the first one we have 2 hives and 2 nucs. Everyone is getting on amazingly well over there. The nucs need to go into full sized hives ASAP - they're building up so quickly, despite the weather. We also harvested our FIRST EVER FULL SUPER! We haven't done anything to it yet but we'll be getting our extractor cleaned up etc. soon.

In the 2nd apiary we have the hive that we collected from that barn wall (see the video blog, http://alittleisland-tv.blogspot.com/) and they're doing OK. We thought that they might have EFB, but have seen no signs of that on second inspection. However, they're now quarantined and we'll call the inspector in the moment we see signs. In the mean time I may buy in a tester kit just in case. We now also have separate hive tools for each apiary, and a new record-keeping system, all of which should help us to avoid diseases like that from now on.

The new record keeping system is one that I devised myself. It's basically record sheets where you tick the boxes, e.g. queen seen, tick. Eggs seen, tick. etc. etc. You can buy record cards from beekeeping shops but making your own has several advantages: a) you can design your own layout, e.g. I like to have room to jot down notes and draw apiary layouts as well as tick boxes, b) you can just print out more as and when you need them and c) you don't have to pay for them! I might put mine on the net available for download, not sure yet, but I'll let you know if I do :-)

Chicken news: just over a week ago we unwrapped Cleo's bandaged leg and found that her infection had got much worse. It smelled bad, and it looked worse. There was no way she could have survived an infection like that, so we put her out of her misery. We disposed of her last night, and this River Cottage forum snippet should explain how: http://community.rivercottage.net/users/NJ/forums/poultry/viewtopic/topic_id:462

Since the last post we've harvested our first couple of runner beans and first handful of French beans...they were absolutely gorgeous!

My American corner has gone absolutely haywire, especially the Delicata squash (actually an Italian variety) climbing up the bronze elder bush. There are now some small sunny yellow fruits on there. And my Blue Hubbard squash is fattening up nicely, I just can't wait to eat it!

^ Delicata squash; below, the American corner

In the latest edition of Permaculture Magazine (essential reading!) there is an article about Warre beekeeping, an alternative beekeeping method that claims to be more bee friendly. I'm really interested in non-conventional beekeeping methods, such as top bar hives etc. so this was really interesting to read about. One principle behind the Warre method is leaving the hive sealed up all season...I'm really not sure about that. The theory is that bees leading a more natural life get fewer diseases, but I'm a paranoid beekeeper and like to know what's going on with my bees, so I won't be doing that just yet! However I was interested to read how they add more boxes to the bottom of the hive instead of the top, something to do with airflow and maintaining the temperature...now that we're converting to OSBs (One Size Boxes, aka Rose hives - another alternative beekeeping method where supers and brood box are all the same size - just such a common sense idea!) this is something that we could experiment with too. If you're interested in finding out more about these beekeeping methods I've put some links at the bottom of the post.

Did I tell you that I've got a job at a bamboo nursery? It's only part time but it's really good fun! Boss is nice, pay is terrible but we do get some perks. In fact to date we've had 7 perks at the least...FREE PLANTS! The nursery doesn't just do bamboo, it's also other exotic stuff, but now the boss has a website so he's branching out into other stuff too. The things is though that if a bamboo etc. isn't big enough to be saleable after he's had it a while then he just THROWS IT AWAY. Perfectly healthy plants, just too small! I think he should have a discount section on the website and sell them to other silly sentimental people who don't like to think of sweet little plants being confined to the scrap heap, but in the mean time it means that fairly often we rescue poor little plants (and not always little at that) and get to put them in our own garden! So we now have a garden full of hardy palms, bamboos, bottlebrush bushes and a North American trumpet vine. None of them have been planted out yet but have been given a little TLC. Today we were moving citruses too, and they were in flower and they smellt just so WONDERFUL, so I'm secretly hoping that he neglects them so I can take a few home ;-)

^ Bottlebrush flowers

^ Campsis radicans, American Trumpet Vine flowers

This is an exciting week for our family. It's my Grandma's birthday on Thursday, my Dad's birthday on Friday, and my auntie should be giving birth around the same time! I'm really excited and hoping to have lots of delicious home produce for my Dad's birthday meal...I dunno what yet but I'm sure I'll be able to dig up something!

Anyway, I leave you with the promised links:

http://warre.biobees.com/ Warre beekeeping

http://www.rosebeehives.com/ OSB hives

http://hirschbachapiary.com/default.aspx Top Bar beekeeping

http://www.worldgardenplants.com/ and here's the nursery's website.