buzzzzzzzzzz new adventure

[addy1]

lol every plant out there has survived despite me. I plant and ignore. If they manage to survive our summers, our winters they get to stay. Anything that needs to be babied does not survive here, same as with my pond plants.
I rely on seeding for the bees, birds, bugs. Every 3-4 years I till and do a start over with the seeded beds, the poison ivy and vines start to take over if I don't.

 

[JamieB]

Here, it’ll be Johnson grass. Sadly, tilling it just spreads it, it’ll take chemicals or daily mowing for the entire spring- to fall to keep it controlled, and since it spreads by seeds and runners, I’d have to do that all day all warm weather till we are too old to keep up. It grows like bamboo. Inches a day. Cutting it just helps control it, pulling it only works if you get all the roots, and from what I’ve seen, most chemicals kill more plants I do want and it ignores them. So if I can get plants that will put compete it for space and nutrients, even better.

 

[addy1]

I had some grass start taking over my wildflower gardens, so I bought this on the advice of where I buy my seeds.
http://www.forestrydistributing.com/en/ornamec-170-grass-herbicide-gordons-pbi-gordon

I used it in one garden last fall, I had planted sweet clover, which takes on year to grow, the next year it blooms.
So I could not till and do a do over. I sprayed this stuff and it killed the grass left the clover growing.

This spring as soon as the grass begins to grow I will spray it. It is sort of like round up but grass specific.

I don't have acres to spray like you do. This last fall I tilled almost all the gardens then sprayed roundup as the grass regrew. Once we hit cold I put out the seeds. Some of them need to be cold stratified. We lucked out and had a cold winter this year, but dry. We are way behind on water, snow, moisture. We are in a moderate drought which is going to stick around.

 

[addy1]

Our sugar and dead bee eating opossum wandered back tonight. It seemed to want to get into the hive, biting at the handles, climbing the hive. It is pulling out the slide in bottom boards and licking off the hive debris and sugar drops almost every night.

Biting the handle

 

[j.w]

Uh oh hope it can't hurt anything!

 

[JamieB]

I figured bees would do like ants and remove the dead. Dropping them away from the hive, or at least outside it.

 

[addy1]

Uh oh hope it can't hurt anything!

It can't get into the hives, if it scratches the hives some of the bees might break cluster to come out and sting it.
The boxes are real heavy and we have a brick on the lids. It was biting the hive boxes thinking it could chew through, no way it could. A beaver could.

I figured bees would do like ants and remove the dead. Dropping them away from the hive, or at least outside it.

They haul them out, undertaker bees, some are flow away, some are just dropped on the outside. Some of the bees will fly out of the hive when they are reaching end of life, or sick and die outside.
The opossum comes at night and eats any it can find. Any sugar the bees drop while eating the sugar blocks it inhales. I have slide out boards, I have to put them back in now and then, licked clean.

 

[addy1]

Pollen feeding station, on top of our bee hive stuff storage van. They are out flying even though it is 39f looking for food. We give them some pollen purchased from a bee supply store. Artificial pollen loaded with good stuff for them. Gets the queen brooding up i.e. laying eggs, for the spring nectar flow.

The fine yellow powder is the pollen.

 

[addy1]

77 F today, we inspected some of our hives. They are looking great.

Actually saw the queen in 5 of our hives.

Saw brood, eggs in all of them, they are queen right and doing great. One beautiful queen, surrounded by her attendants.

Eggs! the queen is doing great, different queen then the one above.

Another queen and her attendants.

 

[Lisak1]

How exciting! Spring can't be far behind!

 

[j.w]

Nice and I'm getting good at spotting that queen now that you have posted about them so much. They all look nice and healthy and clean.

 

[Lisak1]

Nice and I'm getting good at spotting that queen now that you have posted about them so much. They all look nice and healthy and clean.

I was thinking the same thing! It's like playing "Where's Waldo" ... now where is that lovely lady bee? haha!

 

[addy1]

I was thinking the same thing! It's like playing "Where's Waldo" ... now where is that lovely lady bee? haha!

A lot of people mark the queen, we have not started doing that. A nice colored dot on the back helps find her. They use different colors to indicate what year she arrived. We don't worry about how old she is, we are currently letting the bees replace her when she wears out. A lot of bee keeps replace her every year, we find it hard to pinch her.

In the summer when you have 60-80000 bees she is hard to find. I look for the black thorax and of course the larger body. But she is very good at hiding and moves darn quick when light hits her.

 

[addy1]

When the queens scent is strong, she holds the hive together, when her scent gets lighter (age) the bees begin replacement.

You can see the nurse bees antenna touching her body, they guide her as to where she should lay eggs, feed her, take care of her. They also make the queen cells where she lays a egg and the nurse bees feed it more royal jelly which causes a new queen to be born, which is her replacement. They usually make 3-7 queen cells when doing a replacement. Swarm cells they make tons of queens to be.

 

[addy1]

Our late season pine tree, near ocean city, rescue swarm is doing great. All odds were against it surviving but it did.