Spring... Finally!!!

There is a sense of anticipation in the air around the farm. Last week it was cold and rainy. This week it has been warm and dry. The bees are starting to be active, the grass is starting to get a tinge of green at the tips, the fruit trees are about to burst forth in blooms and I've already seen some bugs flying around. Spring is almost here.

Along with the coming of spring are a whole host of tasks... herd maintenance, pasture maintenance, shearing, garden preparation and planting. I can't wait to work in the warmth!

So, now that we have survived Punxsutawney Phil's wintry prediction, we get on with enjoying the pleasant warmth that comes this time of year! Happy spring to everyone!

Bees!

I have been anxiously awaiting the time to go pick up my bees since I ordered them in mid-March! The 10th of May finally arrived and I drove just over two hours to Luray, SC where the Coosawhatchie Honey Farm is located to pick up my 5 frame Nuc of bees.

Anthony, the proprietor of the honey farm met me and talked me through the bee installation and gave me three points to remember. He said if I could master these three things I will be a successful bee keeper.

1. Never let the bees have more comb than they need because if they're not using it, something else, such as hive beetles and other bad things, will.

2. Learn what the queen's eggs look like. Eggs are only eggs for about three days before they hatch into lavae so if eggs are in the hive, the queen was active at least three days ago.

3. I forget.

I guess I have a 66% chance of being a successful bee keeper. It's been 5 whole days and they're still alive - so far, so good!

Pulling the frames out of the nuc and installing in the hive

A healthy brood comb

I must admit that I was a little worried about installing the bees but it was really no problem. I put on my bee suit and started adding frames. Anthony told me that I should put the brood comb on the wall sides of the box and then alternate between filled frames and new foundation. Once the frames were installed I opened the queen and put her in the box to do her thing.

The queen and her attendants

For a while I was afraid that I was not going to get everyone in the hive. There were hundreds of bees who did not want to leave their nuc and every time I tried to shake them into the hive they would fly around and land on the nuc again. Finally I got smart and took the nuc box down to the house. Once it was gone, everybody started to get the right idea.

Every time I shook them out of the box they would swarm and land in the box again.

The final piece of advice Anthony gave me was to feed them a mix of two gallons water and 20 pounds of sugar until it is all gone. Once it is gone, then it would be time to install the next deep super.

They finally started getting the idea.

There is a lot of science, trial and error to this bee thing and the stakes are high. Not only are the bees dependent on me getting right, but they have required a substantial up-front cost for the hive, equipment and bees. Failure would be costly.

I guess I better figure out what that one thing I forgot is.

Bee Keeping

Bee hives near our old home in Pfeffelbach, Germany

Bees are fascinating animals and I have always been interested in them. Last year during the Midlands Farm Tour we met some folks who kept bees on their farm and that planted to seed in my mind that I would like to try my hand at bee keeping. So, this year - despite my minor allergies to bee stings - we are adding a bee hive to our menagerie. There are a number of reasons for my desire to keep bees.

1. I like honey and it is expensive!

2. Bees are excellent pollinators. 

3. Bee's are facing some survival challenges and I would like to do my part to keep them going.

For most of the winter I planned to build a top bar bee hive. I found a good plan for the hives and bought the wood. Unfortunately, time conspired against me and I found myself in the midst of spring, with no bee hive built and most of the following weekends filled with other activities. I decided to buy my hive and get started.

Our son in his new bee-keeping suit. He's excited
to be a new bee keeper.

After several Internet searches and some discussions with other bee keepers I know, I found a pretty good bargain at Walter T Kelley's Bee Keeping Site. I purchased the Deluxe Beginner Outfit which comes with the hive, a bee keepers shirt, veil and pith helmet, a feeder, a smoker and smoking material, and honeycomb foundation. I still had to assemble the hive and frames but it is pretty easy to do. All the parts fit together perfectly and the frames go together with no problems.

The next challenge was finding the bees to put in the hive. My goal was to have the hive built and bees installed when the orchard started flowering but quickly learned that we should have planned a little better. Most companies that sell bee packages are sold out until late spring. I finally settled on a bee company that could provide a package of bees on 10 May. I'll miss the orchard blooms this year.  Coosawhatchie Honey Farms sold me a deep 5 frame nuc (short for nucleus) that contains 5-6 pounds of bees, three frames of bee brood and two frames of honey. I'll have to drive a couple of hours to pick them up, but that's no problem.

That's where we stand right now. The majority of the hive is now built and ready to move to its permanent location. I'll keep you updates on this experiment as it progresses.

The SC Organic Growing Conference

Earlier this month I attended the SC Organic Growing Conference in Greenville, SC. The one-day conference was sponsored by the South Carolina Organization for Organic Living (SCOOL) and covered a wide variety of subjects. I wanted to attend all of the classes, but sadly, I could only choose four.

I attended the Vermiculture class, a Beginning Bee-Keeping class, a Black Soldier Fly (BSF) Larvae class and a Aquaponics class. All were very informative and instructional. I am now motivated to jump into some new experiments and make some adjustments to some old ones!

Vermiculture Class - Paul Coleman of EarlyBird Farm in Hodges, SC gave a great class on vermiculture (vermiculture being the raising of worms. Not to be confused with vermicomposting; the use of worms to produce worm castings). He covered the basics of worm farming and showed pictures of his vermiculture operations. He also showed the class how to make a home-made worm bin out of a rubbermaid tote and filled it with a half pound of Belgian Red Worms. He then drew names to take the bin and worms home. I was the lucky winner - Wooo Hooo!

The beginning bee-keeping class was very informational. The lady who gave that class was working towards earning her Master Bee Keeper's certification. I learned a lot about bee keeping in that 90 minutes but I'm sure we only scratched the surface. Just a week prior to this class I had just ordered a beginning bee keeping kit. This class got me excited to get going on the bees. More to follow on that in a later post.

Black Soldier Fly Larvae Class - OK. Maggots can be just plain gross, but these guys are amazing. Watch this 22 hour time-lapse video. The black soldier fly is an insect that is prevalent across the US but especially in the Southeast. They spend the bulk of their life cycle in their larval form and are voracious eaters as they grow. When they're ready to turn into the black soldier fly they lose their digestive system and crawl off to find a quiet area to pupate. As an adult fly, their sole purpose in life is to mate and they die shortly thereafter. Black soldier fly larvae convert food waste into usable protein that can be fed to chickens or fish as a food supplement.

Aquaponics - This class was focused on how to build and operate an aquaponics operations. I learned that I was doing somethings improperly with the IBC system I set up last year so this year I will make some tweaks that will hopefully give us better results.

The organic growing conference was a great opportunity to learn and meet people. Best part of it was learning that I was not the only crazy person in the world interested in this stuff. There are a bunch of us out there!