A new queen for Hive 1

Hive 1 got a new queen yesterday. Jim Brown and I opened the hive a couple of weeks ago and decided that the evidence was there was either no queen or that she was slowing down so much, she simply wasn't producing. I called Coley O'Dell, master beekeeper, and ordered one. He suggested that when she showed up and we were able to install her, we should take a frame of brood cells from Hive 2 and put it in Hive 1 to give it a bit of a boost.


The new queens that Coley had ordered showed up this week, and Jim and I did what Coley suggested last night. We looked through Hive 1 and could not find the queen or any evidence that she was around -- no brood cell. When we were confident she wasn't there, we opened Hive 2 and found a frame that had a lot of brood. We took a frame from Hive 1 and exchanged it. Then we put a spacer between the first box and second box of the hive and placed the queen -- still in her protective box, of course -- in between the two boxes.

All this was done during the late afternoon and some fairly stiff winds. Bees dislike wind and tend to get very ill if exposed to it too much. I must say, however, that the bees did very well last night and were generally cooperative with what we had to do.

Jim and I will take a look inside the hive in a few days to make sure the queen is out of her box and has been accepted by the hive.

Meanwhile, after some rain and a bit of wind, today (Saturday, April 12) was spectacular on the farm. The sky was blue with lots of high clouds, the temperatures stayed in the 60s, and the wind whipped around all day. Sally and I did a lot of yard work -- mowing, cleaning, trimming, raking, etc. I also did some tilling and evened out the garden to some extent.

The forecast for early next week is cold, nearly freezing weather, so that precluded putting much stuff in the garden. Still, I couldn't resist stopping by the farmer's coop this morning and getting another variety of potatoes -- Kennebec red. Here's what the Washington State University web site has to say about Kenebecs:

Kennebec - Tubers are "elliptical to oblong, medium thick; smooth creamy buff skin; shallow eyes; white flesh.... High yielding fast growing variety, widely adapted. Requires close planting (15 to 20 cm between plants) and vine killing to avoid producing oversized and rough tubers. Excellent storage quality. Long dormancy period. High total solids." Primary uses: boiling, baking, chipping, and frying.

I bought a couple of pounds, which took up only about a third of Row 4. So this is how the garden lines up to date:
• Row 1: potatoes -- bananas, Red Russet, French fingerling (March 31)
• Row 2: peas (March 31); potatoes -- Yukon gold (April 7)
• Row 3: lettuce; red onions (April 7)
• Row 4: potatoes -- Kenebec (April 12)(eastern third)
These rows are pictured to the left (looking east), and it's apparent that not much is happening above ground right now. I hope the right things are going on below the surface.

Now that it is mid-April, some of the more beautiful blooms are appearing. The dogwoods are out and about to peak. We have a lilac bush in the back yard, and that is blooming now for the third year in a row after years of being dormant. I have seen the first bachelor buttons and buttercups in the pasture. It's a wonderful, colorful time of the year, and a clear day like today makes you appreciate it even more.

And to add to the joy, baseball season is in full swing, and the Cardinals, surprisingly, are winning.

Later in the afternoon, after I had finished with the work, I walked around some with the camera. There is always something to take a picture of, so I tried to include a lot of what I had just talked around. Everything is in the slideshow below.

Enjoy.

Tilling, lilacs and beehives

A coolish, blustery day on the farm -- and lots to report.

We spent a good deal of time on the farm this weekend mowing and trimming and other beginning-of-spring chores. I started tilling last week, and the main garden is ready to go. My sister-in-law Jane, our Planter-in-Chief, says nothing should be planted until after Easter, so we still have a week to go. But it's all ready. Sally and Jane have already been to the co-op to buy seeds.

There's a lilac bush in the back yard that hasn't bloomed in 30 years. Last year, we made serious attempts at cutting back on the old wood to see what would happen. We weren't expecting much, but this week we noticed buds. And by this weekend, those buds had turned into blooms (right).

We will be doing more of whatever we did to the lilac this year. Sally says the blooms on the lilac are a good sign for our growing season. I remain skeptical.

Speaking of blooms, the blueberry bushes -- all five of them -- are alive and well. I tilled around them this weekend and remulched. They all have blooms, beautiful delicate little things. The smaller bushes, the three we planted in January, have the most blooms and the least height. The taller bushes, the two I planted last month, have fewer blooms but lots of leaves. All look healthy.

We have high hopes for these bushes. Both of us like blueberries a lot, and it would be thrilling if we could grow our own. Blueberries are a little hit-and-miss around here. Some folks don't have much luck with them, while others say they have more berries than they can pick. I need to get our soil tested because that may be the difference. Blueberries need a high ph, and I may need to do some adjusting.

The big activity of the weekend, however, was getting the beehives put together and getting the "beeyard" set up.

I first thought I would put the hives on a set of bricks, but I didn't like the stability of the bricks that I had stacked. So I took the bricks down and used some cinder blocks that I found around the barn and elsewhere. Then I placed a couple of planks across each stand. The blocks are old and chipped and a bit wobbly, but they're pretty stable now. I'm going to find some new blocks to buy, however.

The bees are due to show up on Tuesday afternoon. My friend Howard Kerr is going to get them on Monday and says they will be wanting a home on Tuesday. I hope that Howard has the time to help me get them installed in the hives since this is a multi-step procedure that I don't really want to try alone.

But, as of Tuesday, I can take the asterisk off my name on the right.

Here's a slideshow of how things looked this afternoon on the farm.