We moved to a small house on 30 acres...

[jwcarlson]

Re: We moved to a small house on 30 acres...

Fall is my favorite season and summer is my least favorite. Our winters in Iowa have gotten drastically more mild since I was a kid. We don't even get much snow anymore. I know it's risky saying that now that I have a long gravel lane. But it's really changed from when I was a kid.
The best thing about summer is the days are long so I can do things before and after work without being in total and complete darkness.

[LizStreithorst]

Re: We moved to a small house on 30 acres...

Spring is wonderful here. All the different shades of green as the trees leaf out are so beautiful. I used to like summer next. I worked outside in the summer months. Yes, it was hot, but I had no problem doing it. I think that the problem now is my age. Since I've gotten older, and my body has become more broken, I find that I'm not able to handle extremes in temperture in any direction.

[jwcarlson]

Re: We moved to a small house on 30 acres...

I don't know if there's many other midwesterners here, but the corn in Iowa adds around 50 billion gallons of water to the air in the state every single day. This raises the dewpoint by like 10 degrees which means the humidity is much higher. Thankfully it's about 10 degrees cooler today and the outdoors feels inhabitable again, thankfully.

Spring is wonderful here. All the different shades of green as the trees leaf out are so beautiful. I used to like summer next. I worked outside in the summer months. Yes, it was hot, but I had no problem doing it. I think that the problem now is my age. Since I've gotten older, and my body has become more broken, I find that I'm not able to handle extremes in temperture in any direction.

There's a lot to be said about acclimation. I would wilt and melt into a puddle during Mississippi summers. 80 is pretty warm in my opinion.

[LizStreithorst]

Re: We moved to a small house on 30 acres...

lol...80 is perfect as far as I'm concerned.

[jwcarlson]

Not sure how these will go with the new forum. Checked out some more of the property this long weekend. Saw about 50 wood ducks on our creek. Put up trail cameras. On Saturday a swarm of bees came in landed in one of our big oaks. Made me wonder how many swarms this 300(ish?) year old tree might have seen in its time. My frame raised up to them didn't work, however I eventually got them with a 5 gallon bucket.
Also found a few hen of the woods already, which is pretty early.

[Second Hand Pat]

What is the purpose of the frame under the bee colony Jacob?
Pat

[jwcarlson]

What is the purpose of the frame under the bee colony Jacob?
Pat

That's an old brood frame, which smells exactly like "home" which is what those bees are looking for. It's a swarm. The idea was to get the frame right up into the cluster of bees and they would cluster up on that and I could lower them down to the ground and get them in a hive box. The problem was they were 20 or 25 feet up and I was throwing a rock with kite string tied to it. It took me a few tries to get it close, but there's just too much going on in the old oak tree. The 5 gallon bucket duct taped to a tree trimming pole which was also duct taped to a long piece of 2x2 pine and me standing on an old file cabinet did the trick. Once you get the queen into the box the rest of the bees move in fairly quickly. There's still a chance that they would move out and into a location that the bees wanted to go to. But nothing beats a box with comb that's already ready to use. Because the bees don't have to draw it out on their own. I'll get some feed on them tonight as they're really really really late in the year for a swarm.
There's an old saying:
A swarm in May, a bale of hay.
A swarm in June, a silver spoon.
A swarm in July, not worth a fly.

The "poem" skips August and September. The trouble is that they take a lot of sugar to get fed up for winter. Or swapping honey in from other colonies. Truthfully, it's not that big of a deal and a couple bags of sugar in water aren't that big of a deal.

Swarming in bees is absolutely fascinating. It is so interesting to watch even without knowing what is going on. But I've read book dedicated solely to honey bee swarming behavior (called Honey Bee Democracy), written by one of the premier honey bee researchers in the US (the world?). So knowing all the little stuff that's going on makes it even more interesting.

[jwcarlson]

Here's an old video of a swarm "coming back". I got a call for these, they were clustered up on rhubarb. I pulled up and they were actively leaving. So I ran over and watched the cluster, saw the queen, reached down and grabbed her, then put her in a little plastic cage with candy which keeps her stuck wherever I put her for a day or two. Almost all the bees were airborne when I put her in the box. So we got to sit in the cloud of bees and watch them circle back.

[Second Hand Pat]

That is just too cool Jacob and sounds like you were able to get them into a box (or whatever it's called)
Pat

[jwcarlson]

Got my honor stand setup for selling honey today... finally.

[Second Hand Pat]

Love the display Jacob and hope the honor system works out.
Pat

[jwcarlson]

Finally took a DSLR pic, this is Sunrise over Ragweed with Elderberries.

[Iminit]

Looks great and good luck with it! Great honey! I’m always interested! Just finished that last jar .

[brewmaster15]

Finally took a DSLR pic, this is Sunrise over Ragweed with Elderberries.

Nice pic! and nice elderberry jam in the rough.

[jwcarlson]

This is the best deer spotted by our trail cameras so far.