This was two weeks worth of posts, so hence the extra post to cover everything we did. We were finally blessed with some nice warmer and dry weather, so were able to accomplish some tasks before heading out for a short vacation with our kids.
David, was finally able to get my two planter boxes together that are going to be the entrance to the new front garden, they looks really lovely and are nice and heavy to and deep enough with one layer to accommodate what we will plant in them.
My bees have been out and about on warmer days, and we finally had nice clear day that was warm enough for me to open the two hives up. We did lose one hive over the winter, it looked like the bees had moved on, as we didn't see any dead ones, but them a week later some seemed to be going in and out, so we left it for a couple months, in case we had a swarm that had moved in last fall. Alas, the hive was empty with some dead bees inside when we did open it up, so we took it out of the apiary for now and will set it back up in a couple weeks in hope of catching a wild swarm, and if not we will order a new set of bees.
The roofs that David had made for the hives, took quite a beating this winter with all the rain, and we had had them covered with tarps to keep the hives dry, which they did a great job of, but they literally fell apart when we opened the hives up, so we have made a temporary roof with some plywood and a tarp for now until we can build new roofs.
https://www.facebook.com/david.j.gray.1238/videos/10157281872164180/?t=4
This link is a video I took inside the hive, I actually had to add 4 new combs, as they were super busy and making new comb, hopefully the video link works and you can see it.
These were some of the clusters of dead bees in the hives that is no more, a lot of the comb was really black, not sure what that means, I need to ask my mentor to come look over the comb with me and give me some insight. This hive was never a very good hive to start and didn't get nearly as big as the one next to it, even though they were both from the some beekeeper. They had Russian queens with Italian bees.
I did finally get to reseeding my seedlings under the wonderful grow lights I bought off Amazon, don't know why I have never invested in these before, they are wonderful. I have this great bakers rack I have stored for years, from when I used to have a small catering business when we lived in Florida, and I finally put it back in commission and it is serving me very well.
I am amazed at how quickly and better the seedling are growing. Once I get my seedlings to a place of transplanting, I am going to try my hand at some micro greens with these lights, as I have been wanting to try that for a while now, and hopefully in the future at it to my little farm as a source of income.
I also had ordered some tree, flower and strawberry shoots, and they literally arrived a few hours before we went on our trip last week, so I quickly had to get them transplanted so that they didn't get to dried out while we were gone.
The first picture are the Pineberry Strawberries I ordered, I have a couple good strawberry patches already in my yard, and thought these would be a nice addition for something different to go int o the front yard, they got some good foliage on them the four days we were gone.
This picture is of my Russian Mulberry I ordered, I wanted to try something different, but also realized that these can get really tall quickly, so I found this cute pot and planted it in there for now, till I can figure a good spot for it.
Lastly for this week, on our way home, we stopped in at my sister in laws, to wish my nephew Happy Birthday, they live on some acreage a couple hours away from us, and have this interesting pond that is home to a couple snapping turtles and lots of frogs in the summer. They have this super cute little pig called Winston who is about 4 months old, he is definitely pet vs future food for their family. We took Winston for a walk down to the pond to let him do some rooting and mud rolling.
Their pond looks so lovely for the first time ever, it usually is a bit of an eyesore with a messy perimeter that just gets mowed down, but now with all the rain it has this Marsh Marigold filling it to the brim, my brother in law keeps trying to kill anything off that grows in the pond, as he wants it to just look like a nice clean body of water, but I can't resit taking plant samples and encouraging him to leave it be, so I had to get a few samples and bring it home to try grow in my new pond I have planned for my bees.
We have an old clawfoot tub that came with our house when we moved here 14 years ago and we have never quite settled on a good use or place for it, but I have big plans this year to make it into a pond to have on the bees side of the backyard fence for them to use as a water source - so stay tuned for updates on that.