todd
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Posts by todd
Okra in September
0I did my best to keep up with the okra this year, but in the end, the okra was just too much for me. For the past two months I have been trying to cut okra every two or three days. When it was the third day, I would have to cut and discard about a quarter of the harvest and the rest was a little bigger than ideal. Cutting every two days was better, but in a perfect world, I would be harvesting every day.
Okra before cutting and composting
Well I have found that the world is in fact not perfect and about a week ago I just got busy and didn’t get out to the garden at all. I finally got around to looking out at the garden and there was the okra just mocking me; these giant spears atop six-foot tall stalks. It’s a shame to let so much go to waste, but I have already blanched, sliced and frozen lots of bags of it, I have shared some with other okra-minded folks, and I have several large bags and bowls of it laying around the house.
A few were saved, but most were headed for the compost
Okra is a hard sell to many people. When I tell them I have okra to sell or trade (even give away), I am usually met with a sour face and a comment about gooey slime. I try to tell them how delicious it is cut fresh and roasted or put in soup, but they usually pass. Their loss has been my gain – until now. Now it is the compost pile’s gain.
If I run out over the winter, I’ll be amazed and disappointed, but that seems unlikely.
Lost a hive
0Hive E is a goner. There are no eggs or brood and no queen. I don’t know for sure if all the bees in the hive are left over or just robbing what is left. I rechecked near dusk when the bees had mostly settled down and there were still lots of bee in the hive, so I think they are just old bees without their queen. I don’t know what happened to her. She might have died or might have ‘re-swarmed’ (I think I just made that word up). This was a swarm from the Georgia hive and although it was very productive, I think not very stable. The consensus among local bee folk was that this year’s Georgian queens should be replaced. I agree, although in my case, swarming made re-queening unnecessary.
It has been in the 90s this week, but as soon as I get a day in the 80s, I will decommission hive E and use some of the frames in the other hives and honey supers, if possible.
The good news is that hive A has a honey super that is almost full! It seems as thought they ignored it for months and then it went from empty to full in a week. I guess that is possible. I may even need to add a second super on that hive. So it looks like some honey is actually in the cards for me this year after all.
The bees still seem very active. Foragers are coming and going at a brisk clip, so there must be some nectar out there. I just hope it can keep up for a little while longer. Most people harvest honey in July or August, the idea being that we can take honey then, but after that we need to leave it for them to store and to get through the winter. A nectar flow in the fall is great for the bees, but doesn’t help me harvest honey.
Patty died but chicks on the way
0Our Partridge Rock hen, Patty, died on Friday. It was over 100 degrees that day, I believe, and it may have been the heat. If not the heat, then I have no idea. These things just happen sometimes 
I don’t remember her acting strangely, but I might have missed something. The hot weather continues and the rest of the chickens mostly just stay in the shade. Egg production is down, too, in this heat.
Violet has been setting on eggs for a week now and has two weeks to go. I hope she makes it. I haven’t seen her come out to eat or drink, but she would typically only do that once a day and I might be missing it. She was setting for about two or three weeks before we gave her eggs to hatch, so there is a possibility that she will give up just before these eggs are ready to hatch. If that happens, I will try to incubate them and hope Violet will still be interested in raising them. Today Gertie decided to lend some moral and physical support.
The ‘new’ birds, meaning the ones we bought or raised this spring are now as big as some of the mature hens, although the new hens are still a couple of months away from laying. They are very handsome birds. There are certainly a few boys among them, but none have offered up a cock-a-doodle-do yet, so we can’t be sure.
Late June bee flowers
0Wildflowers come and go sometimes so quickly that I don’t get a chance to document what is going on. I am trying to record what the bees are visiting and when. This may be an unusual (early) year because of the warm and short winter, and that affected the spring plants greatly, but I suspect that the summer plants are mostly on schedule. Things in bloom now that the bees like include clover, wild mint, broccoli, squash, and hibiscus.
Garden update
0The garden looks pretty good. For the past week we have had some very hot weather and just one day of rain. The soaker hose seems to do the job when it won’t rain, but the plants can tell the difference. There is no substitute for a real drenching rain.
The tomato plants look good. We picked the first couple of grape tomatoes, but it may be a couple more weeks before we can harvest the bigger varieties. We have let some of the broccoli flower and it turns out that it is pretty and the honeybees like it. Who knew. I picked one small orange Hungarian Wax pepper and the rest are coming along. It was nice and ‘spicy’, by-the-way. We planted more bell peppers this year because they seem the most versatile and we will use them. One Jalapeno plant will do for this year.
The peas are just about done. We froze some and will freeze more as soon as I get around to it. I don’t want them to sit in the refrigerator much longer. When I pull those plants next week, I will plant another bunch of cucumbers and pole beans. The okra looks as good as last year, but it has another couple of weeks to go. There are some flowers forming. I will probably pick the first few small cucumbers in the next day or two. They are perfect pickling size now.
There were some germination problems with the beans and edamame, but the plants that made it look good.
The problems are with the vines: the cucumber, watermelon, cantaloupe, and squash. Germination was terrible, the rabbits ate the early shoots, and now the plants are dying. It seems like a root or stem problem. I think the soil is not as good as it should be in that part of the garden. I will plant some in another section when I pull out the remaining broccoli plants.
What’s flowering in June
0When we moved to our property – before we were calling it the farm – we were impressed with the landscaping. It needed some TLC, but throughout our first year, it became clear that there were lots of flowering plants with almost continuous blooming from early spring through fall. I always look forward to the progression from crocuses to dafodils to tulips to irises to day lillies and so on. We have added a few things and Mother Nature throws in her splash of color as well.
Last week I decided to walk around and take a few pictures of some of the late June color. Here is what I found.
How are the bees?
0I inspected the bees a few days ago and found them in pretty good shape, but not ‘developing’ as quickly as I had hoped. The two old hives still have queen excluders on with signs of a little comb being built. Hive A is still brimming with bees and I believe that they have plenty of honey stored in the brood area. Maybe I will be able to extract some of that honey later this summer. Hive B is not as busy at the entrance nor does it seem as full inside, but is a good strong hive for this time of year. Both A and B have new queens this year.
Hive C still has the burr comb in the feeder, but without the queen excluder on it is now (I think) being filled back up with honey. I don’t think there is any brood in it, but am not sure. A few weeks ago I added a medium brood box on top of the deep and under the feeder and there is still plenty of room in that box.
Hive D is the first swarm hive which should have one of the original queens from either A or B, but I found the queen and she is not marked (both queens from A and B last year had white marks for 2011). So I am a bit stumped. Maybe that queen was superseded either before or after it swarmed. Maybe the white dots can wear off. I’m not really sure, but in any case hive D is busting out with bees. I didn’t look in the bottom brood box, so I don’t know if there were any queen cells, but I did get a queen excluder and a new medium box on top. I hope I got the new box on in time. Most of the pictures are from hive D.
Hive E is a swarm from hive C (2012 Georgian bees) and although I believe hive C swarmed twice, hive E was from the first swarm. I haven’t found the queen yet, but it should also be marked. It had a white dot when I got it in March even though it should have been yellow for 2012.
June bees and flowers
0I am always interested in what my honeybees are finding to forage on the property. They can fly three or so miles to find food, but the more I can offer them in my yard, the better. I haven’t planted a field of wildflowers yet, so the bees only have access to the native wildflowers and weeds. This June there has been a lot of clover in the grass and tons of Crown Vetch. I have seen the bees on both, but not much, so they must still be finding sources elsewhere.
Broccoli
0The garden looks pretty good at this time of year. Some things are already being harvested (radishes, lettuce, spinach, and broccoli), and the rest of the plants look good. The weeds aren’t too bad yet and the bugs are just getting their bearings. This week’s exciting news is that we got some broccoli. We have never grown it before, but it was easy, fast and in the end, delicious. It looks like we will get one nice head of broccoli for plant (we have five), but we think there may be a small secondary head or two that form just below the cut. Here’s to hoping.
Today I also planted another half row of bush beans (Derby) (about 2.5 weeks from the first planting). I hope to do this two more times at two to three week intervals.
May bee inspection
0I needed to move the last three hives out about two feet to have more room to move around behind the boxes. The set up was fine when there were only two hives, but when I added the three new ones this spring, I was just too cramped. It’s a daunting task, really, to move three hives forward two feed in the middle of the day. In order to do it I needed to temporarily move them to the side in order to move cinder blocks and 4 x 4 supports. When the hives are moved four feet to the side or back, the returning foragers can’t find the hive and the cloud of bees just gets thicker and thicker. So time is of the essence. I got them moved and the bees were pretty tolerant considering the disruption.
After moving hives 3, 4, and 5, I really wanted to look inside hives 1 and 5 because there was so little activity at the hive entrance that I was worried that they might be dead. They weren’t. Hive 1 (formerly Boston, and with five now I decided numbers were just going to be easier) had nothing in the honey super – no surprise there – but there certainly were bees in both deep boxes. Ok, so there are bees, but is there a laying queen. I have not seen a queen or any eggs since the hive swarmed seven weeks ago. In fact, I really hadn’t looked. I was going on faith that the hive had a new queen. The good news is that there was brood and a real live queen whom I saw after looking casually at just a few frames. You can see her in a couple of the close-ups above. That was just dumb luck. So I don’t really know why that hive has so little foraging going on, but it might have to do with the swarming and cycle of brood. At this point, I rather expect to see a large increase in the population very soon, and the young bees will soon become foragers. Time will tell.
Hive 2 has been super busy at the entrance and has more bees inside, but I didn’t inspect today.
Hive 3 was the new Georgia bee hive that I think swarmed twice. It has the comb in the feeder box above a queen excluder. The feeder box was acting like a honey super. I should have realized this, but there were lots of drones trapped in that box because they couldn’t get down through the excluder and they probably ate all the honey that had been stored there. It looked mostly empty. There is a screened cover over the feeder box, but it might not have an escape. I removed the queen excluder, mostly to let the drones out. I might just clean out the comb, the next time I inspect.
Hive 4 had a feeder box with nothing in it except a few larvae that might have been Small Hive Beetles. There was one large white larva that I removed and killed. Not sure what it was. It was 10 times the size of the small larvae.
Hive 5 had bees as it turned out, but, again, they were very quiet at the entrance. It was swarm 3, so the first of the Georgia swarms. It should, therefore, have a marked queen. As I recall, these are marked white even thought Jason Hough said they were 2012 queens which should be yellow, I think. I guess I just will never know for sure. But I should be able to find that queen and get a picture of her one of these days.
I still haven’t done anything to measure varroa, so that is another project that needs to happen soon.