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 [...]

Once again, too much going on and not enough time to write about it. A few recent things that merit some mention include: I rebuilt the water pond after seeing that two of the fish survived the raccoon assaults. The additions made to the pond include a red water lily, several clumps of hortwort, two [...]

This month has been super BUSY, what with the bees swarming, the chickens getting bigger, and all the salads and peas that have been eaten. This past week gave us a nice respite via a road-trip vacation to Park City, Utah to see Veronica’s cousin be married and to party with the rest of her [...]

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. [...]

*Sigh* So, I caught the first bee swarm on Thursday. Everything seemed to be OK, and I went to get a new hive set-up (including a screened bottom board, two deeps, Pierco frames, and a migratory top). It’s mostly painted and ready to go for the captured swarm. Unfortunately, two more sub-swarms emerged today and [...]