Apiary work, cleaning, relocating

Early Saturday morning I completed the assembly of the hive parts I had recently purchased with the plan to put those parts on the three hives that are ready for them. James, my bee mentor, had stopped by to return the hive tool he had inadvertently taken with him after we worked the hives together, and told me that in several hives he had looked into the rate at which the bees were filling the frames was faster than he had anticipated. He was struggling to keep up with some of his 80 hives to ensure the bees did not swarm looking for more room.

That was a warning to me to get the addition brood boxes on the hives as soon as possible. I did that Saturday afternoon. As I looked into each hive, I did notice there had been a huge leap in how much the bees had filled in on the frames (10 in all) in the hive. In one hive the bees were on the last frame, about half done building out the comb for the queen to begin laying in it. On the other two hives there were still a couple frames to be completed but the work had started on those as well. I added the new boxes, and the bees immediately began to investigate. Now there is plenty of room for the hive to grow. In the first week of May, I will add the homey supers to the hives. If the Lord blesses our efforts, we should have a lot of honey to share and to sell by the Fall.

Since I had an extra brood box and I had a base for a hive setup, I took the time to make a cover for a hive. In doing so, I have a complete hive set up and ready to go should I need it. The swarm traps are still empty, but they are in place in the event that a swarm happens by. I do not have a pallet set up for more hives to be placed in our apiary but that will be fairly easy to get done if I decide to do so. Plus, I hope to be able to put a swarm in the top bar hive this year so we can try that out. It is very tempting to keep adding hives as we are able, but I cannot get too far ahead of myself or build something I cannot maintain. On the bright side, keeping bees is a light duty activity that I should be able to keep up with for many years to come. If the Lord tarries.

I have been concerned about the stubble and refuse in the goat barn and have cleaned up in the barn several times, but it really needed a more focused cleaning, so Saturday I tackled that chore. I used the tractor for this cleaning and filled the bucket on the front loader four times with the hay, manure and dirt I raked, scraped, and dug from the barn floor. When I strawed the floor after cleaning out what needed to be removed, you could not tell I had done much, but I knew the difference. I wish I had built the barn to allow the tractor to fit through the center of the barn, but it is about six inches too low to accommodate the exhaust pipe. I scraped out what I could reach in the center of the barn from each end but that left about six feet of area I could not scrape with the tractor bucket. That and the sides had to be done by hand. The whole cleaning process took me a couple hours and wore out my back, but I was happy with the result. I was able to apply lime and Seven dust to the floor to limit mites and fleas and I expanded my compost pile quite a bit. My next big cleanup project is the corral where the calf spent several months before it died. Plenty to add to my compost pile from there.

Mama spent the most of Saturday with Mr. Plumley. After she had guided Grandma and Grandpa to the eye doctor’s office in Decatur, she went to Bridgeport and got Mr. Plumley and took him to Trade Days with her. I was tempted to go along but did not want to use up the better part of the day meandering through vendor displays looking at things I did not want or need. As it turned out, I made the right decision as far as using my time more effectively at the farm. Mama was not home until almost 5 pm. After she and Mr. Plumley had gone through the Trade Day’s collection of sellers, they went to visit with Grandma and Grandpa. Grandma and Grandpa need that connection and as long as they are here, we will make the effort to keep connected. They are planning to move to Florida sometime in the next couple weeks.

This weekend, Norman is coming to Texas and will buy them a camper which he will haul to Florida and set up the following week. After a quick trip to West Virginia, he will come back here and pack up Grandma and Grandpa and move them to the camper wherever that is set. I’m not sure they know what they are getting into, but they are excited about the move. They have very high hopes and expectations about relocating near family – Grandma’s family, that is. It will probably turn out fine but living in a camper in an RV park is a difficult circumstance to predict. Just imagining Grandma getting into and out of a camper is troubling to me and Mama, but Grandma is excited about relocating and sees no issue with that at all.

Time will tell.