Backyard Chickens & Bees

We just had our first frost and (tiny bit of) snow here in Portland, and fortunately we were more or less ready for it! At least, ready as far as the bees and chickens are concerned. Well, OK, as far as the bees are concerned. But the chickens are easy to work with so I [...]

Well, since it’s well past harvest time for the bees, I thought I’d put together an update and take stock of what’s gone on this year, bee-wise. Let’s make a list of things to cover, and we’ll see how many of them I get through in one post (warning: it has been a while since [...]

Damn. Where to begin? Bees. I like them a lot and have been working them this spring to ensure that we get a good honey harvest this year. The existing hives made it through the last winter, which wasn’t really that impressive, considering how mild it was here in the Pacific NW. Nonetheless, I was [...]

Quick update on the bee hives… The front hive (the original, or Hive #1) is doing great and seems to have lots of stores for the winter. There are still three deeps on the hive, and they have the bottom two full of honey and brood. I have seen no swarm cells (although there is [...]

All of the swarms have been moved into their hives. Not all of the hives are in their final homes, but that is being remedied. We went and looked into the hives on Sunday evening to see whether the two with virgin queens are laying yet, and also to see if the original queen has [...]

In light of the swarm incident of the last week (and all the bee poop that ended up on my car as a result of parking beneath the tree that they swarmed to), I went and bought all the goodies for a new hive. This includes two newly assembled deep boxes, 20 Pierco (integrated plastic) [...]

Yesterday I was out working the hives again, this time making sure that the first (big) swarm was happily settled in thier new hive box, checking on the original hives, and capturing the two swarms that had taken up temporary residence in neighbor Charles’ tree. The video above shows the capture of the second swarm. [...]

I was planning a nice quiet evening, maybe going to the hardware store to get supplies, maybe develop some film that needs to be developed, maybe write up something about the strawberries and opium poppies that are all in bloom right now… A quiet evening. And then I walked outside and Kristin (neighbor to the [...]

Last night Veronica and I got into our bee-suit costumes and checked on the bees. It’s been pretty warm the last few days (yesterday was in the upper 80s Fahrenheit), and being in a full jumpsuit with gloves and boots got rather toasty. And all I did was work on one hive! I can imagine [...]

The bees being busy buzzing about on a warm (mid-80s ºF) day in May. I couldn’t resist. Once the temperature hit 85 °F last weekend, the bees were out in force! The video doesn’t even begin to do it justice. Ah well, this weekend should be about the same, although we’ll be down in San [...]