Nature & Wildlife Thread

[GBBUDD]

We use around 1500 hundred pounds of sugar this time of year. I put out 200 lbs yesterday and it is already all gone. Back to costco!

dang ADY how many gallons of honey do you produce a year.

 

[addy1]

dang ADY how many gallons of honey do you produce a year.

The bees did good this year, less rain, few bad storms when our short nectar season was on.

This year, we got 1500 lbs of honey, last year with all the rain we got 650 lbs of honey. If we sold only 1 lb jars = $15000 but then you take away bottles, labels, mite treatments, foundation, sugar. We don't even try to count our time. I spend full days extracting, over a period of 1.5 months to 2 months. Not every day but enough you sure get tired of it. We only have a 6 frame extractor, takes around 20-30 minutes per load. That is not counting decapping the frames, loading the extractor, unloading. Then putting out for the bees to clean, then freezing them, then removing storing for the next season. Each box is 10 frames, we have over 500 honey frames. Not all get filled well.

So long and short a heck of a lot of work, our pay per hour is probably a penny lol

But we have some real loyal customers, they call us all winter for our honey. Excited to see we come back each market season.
We might do this another few years, it is a lot of work and we are aging................at least still upright and breathing!

 

[j.w]

So many bun buns this year. Must be 12 or more of various ages from tiny babies to adults making more and more!

This one watched me taking photo's today.

 

[JBtheExplorer]

I wish I could've photographed this better, but I just wanted to get a photo of it to share. There were more than 40 butterflies in total. This was at a local trail today. It was amazing! I counted three species in total, but only two in this photo as far as I can tell.

 

[addy1]

The butterflies love mud! I see them there quite often, when we have mud

 

[Burd]

I was doing some siding on my house today. I saw this huge moth taking a snooze. I’ll have to chase him away tomorrow if he’s not gone. We’re running the siding on this side. And one of the young ground hogs figured out how to get a treat on my squirrel feeder

 

[addy1]

smart little suckers.............

Our resident hawk stopped by to visit. Taking the picture through our dirty windows. They come a lot and sit in our dead maple tree.

 

[Burd]

I saw this caterpillar yesterday. It’s the American dagger moth

 

[SherrysPond]

Wow! What a beauty!!

 

[JBtheExplorer]

I saw this caterpillar yesterday. It’s the American dagger moth View attachment 124538

I had one just a couple days ago.

Today I saw this beautiful GBH in the Pike River. It was hunting in this spot for over two hours. Saw it catch a couple things, including a stick.

 

[JBtheExplorer]

Just got home from two short days of camping. I will post a thread with photos tomorrow.

Meanwhile, here's me realizing that a cave labelled "big cave" does not have a big entrance.

 

[JamieB]

Butterflies on my blooming onions/ chives, not sure which one that is.

 

[Gemma]

Anyone knows what type of moth comes out of this caterpillar?

 

[mrsclem]

It might be a spiny oak slug- They can sting!

 

[JBtheExplorer]

It might be a spiny oak slug- They can sting!

I tend to agree.

I tried to do a google search on that image but the only thing it identified for me was "plank".