Backyard Chickens & Bees

*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 [...]

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 [...]

Well, since we have honey supers on the beehive, and the bees are fully active with collecting nectar and making honey, we’ve been starting to ponder on how to collect the honey from the supers without breaking the bank or spending countless hours. I am hoping to look inside again today or this coming weekend [...]

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 [...]

Time for an update on the bees, since we’re now at week 4.5, they have drawn out over 85% of the first box (that is, 8½ frames out of 10 are almost fully drawn out), and I put on a new deep/brood box. The general rule of thumb that we learned from both bee classes [...]

I like ice cream. Most people do… well, unless they are intolerant of lactose or have no sense of taste. Anyway, taking a step back (to explain the thought process leading to the ice cream connection), I was reading about bee gardens and was reminded of a link I had set in a previous post [...]

Last Friday, Veronica, Kristin, and I donned our bee suits and veils and cracked open the hives to check on their sugar supply and to see how much progress they had made in drawing out the comb. To our dismay, both hives were very low on sugar syrup, so we mixed up two gallons for [...]

Northeast Portland is a large anthill. No doubt about that, as ants get into everything all summer long, no matter what you do. On the other hand, we don’t have fire ants here, which is a very good thing, especially when they swarm and cover a wall in the basement (this happened two years in [...]

So I wanted to add to my previous post about the bee-keeping class we took last weekend with Glen Andresen. My wife, Veronica, felt that it was overly technical and didn’t really express how fun and informative the class actually was, so I feel I should clarify that point. I really enjoyed the class with [...]