Hive Update, Spring 2013

Just a brief few words on the state of beekeeping at Circle of the Sun.  The hive has multiplied, though not of its own volition.
The most common way beekeepers get extra colonies is to wait till the hive swarms, then capture the swarm and house it.  Because our bees aren't in a well-traveled path, I wasn't sure I'd know they swarmed before they moved on and found a permanent home.  I decided to make a split, using the information I found on a great blog offering beekeeping advice, Basic Beekeeping.
The long and short of it is, you take a thriving colony and remove a few frames of eggs and brood in different stages, leaving at least a few of the same in the donor colony.  You also take a few frames of honey and pollen, and the bees on the frames, and put all of these in a new box.  If the brood frames you took had eggs in them, the new colony can raise its own queen.
I'm pretty impatient, and don't have a lot of experience with beekeeping, so I was ready to make a split in late April, about the time Steve's colonies were fixin' to swarm last spring.  But that was an exceptionally mild and early spring, and this spring was cold and late, so the bees were not in a position to swarm.  So I waited, and waited.  But not really long enough.  I ended up doing the split around May 15, moving two frames of brood and two frames of food into the new colony.  The donor colony was left with about the same.  It was not booming in any sense of the word, and I began second-guessing myself almost immediately.  I was ready a day later to recombine them, but our friend Carol Cox (who is beginning to know something about beekeeping) encouraged me to see the experiment through.  She pointed out that, really, the worst that could happen is that I don't get any honey this year and the split dies in the coming winter.  One year of large, but not devastating, loss for a great experiment and first-hand knowledge.  So I'm watching them now.
I opened both hives up a few days ago to check out the progress. I had assumed that the queen was left in the donor colony, having been pretty sure that I spotted an emergency supercedure cell (a sign that the colony is grooming a queen) in the split a week after making it.  But it is clear that the split is growing too fast, and has brood so recent that it can only be explained by the presence of a queen, while the donor colony also appears now to have some supercedure cells.
Time will tell how this all plays out, and you can count on a fall update to fill you in.

Meanwhile, I got my first glimpse of wax moth damage.  Not in my own hives, thank goodness, but at work.  I was pulling up a couple of short lengths of floorboards in an apartment we're working in, and found this:

You can see the hole the boards were pulled from to the right.  The first things I saw when I removed them were rows of very old, brittle honeycomb. Then I looked at the bottom of the boards and saw the cocoons.  Wax moths are often found in hives, but a healthy hive will evict or manage their population.  If they take hold and lay eggs, though, they can do immense damage, burrowing through comb and destroying the colony.  (The cocoons are the rice krispie-looking things.)  How about that?

You Think YOU Have Problems?

Just imagine how this guy felt.

When Margo was walking through the dog room this morning she noticed that we had a guest. "Hey Dan! Come here. There's a chipmunk stuck in the window." I'm not sure what I heard her say, but it wasn't that, because I stayed at the table eating my oatmeal. At her insistence I came to look, and was surprised. And, of course, went to get the camera.
Some folks use video to make an educational impact. I can already tell that, on this blog at least, it is going to be reserved for entertainment. Here's the main idea: this chipmunk is in between the window and the window screen. How did it get there? Who knows.

We just know how we wanted to get it out.

It would have been pretty easy to remove the screen and let it jump the five or so feet to the ground, but then it would have had to face three dogs who were anxious to make its acquaintance. So we got it out the other way, and got another priceless photo.
I think the whole operation will go smoother the next time this happens. If only we had gotten to practice first on a sloth...

Baby spinach, anyone? It's organic!

A Shout Out to Our Peeps

What started out as a rainy day somewhat devoid of promise has ended up a special treat: our chicks arrived! Ok, I should be more specific. They're technically Mom's chicks, but like a new puppy we can all pretend ownership when such intense cuteness is involved.

Mom participates in what I would call an Egg Cartel. Together with a number of other folks in the area who keep small numbers of chickens, she gathers eggs, pools the dozens, and delivers them to folks all over the western Dayton area. For those trying to muscle in? I'm pretty sure there are some midnight visits from The Flock. Chickens seem dumb, but they can be senselessly brutal, let me tell you. Anyone who has seen a frog or mouse get into the hen-house knows I'm not joking. And anyone who has been around chickens much knows they are certainly senseless.

But I'm straying. The point is that Mom keeps a flock of about 40-50 hens around at any one time. After about 3 years they stop laying and end up in the pressure cooker getting canned. After being killed, of course. So every year she gets another batch of chicks.

This year we have New Hampshire Reds, Black Sex-Links, Barred Rocks, and Ameraucana chicks. (If you visit those links and click on the big photo it shows two or three more great pictures, one of them the chick.) Incidentally, we ordered ours from Mt. Healthy Hatchery, in nearby Mt. Healthy, Ohio.

We showed up at the local grain elevator, which receives the orders, and made a fuss. How can you not? Baby chicks are so cute. I'll not pretend we didn't make fools of ourselves. We took them home to the pen that Mom so expertly set up: a foot-tall cardboard barrier, newspaper floor, two one-quart waterers and a food trough, plus three heat lamps. A few rocks, too, to make it interesting. And we put them in, one by one, and introduced them to the water. As Mom pointed out, the huge 5,000 chicken operations must somehow get by without doing this, but it's tradition. Each one must be set in front of the water and have its beak dipped in at least twice. So they know it's water, right? Never mind that they spend all their time running around pecking things, from food to spiders to chicken poop to their own feet. They would probably discover the water. But we don't leave it to chance: it gives us an excuse to handle each and every one of them!

At this point I am going to try a first in my blogging experience, and stick in a video. I read a book recently that asserted that chickens are much more entertaining than tv. Absolutely, I say. But what about chickens on tv?