Working towards summer

We've had visitors this week, our friend Aleina and our god daughter Ophelia. We love those guys, and they're lots of fun to have around. Still, on Sunday of the long weekend we had to get some stuff done. It was time to fit the polycarbonate onto the roof of the entryway for the greenhouse. I manage to do a little bit at a time. Next I think I'll work on some vents as it was 134 degrees in there on Sunday. That's a little warm I think.

While I was working on that Crystal decided that she needed to paint the mailbox. I've wanted that mailbox painted since I put up the post in '98. (That was a wife-time ago). Other things we got done: dropped of Papo's truck for the new motor. Midnight Customs will also check the clutch and tranny and safety stuff like the suspension. We also went to Caitlin's Greenhouse and got some plants for Crystal's outside garden.

Today I got a little bit bored and moved an old car that's in the way of our firewood pile. It was kinda fun. :D I got roped up, moved it 10 or 15 feet, cranked the steering wheel and bungied it in place. Then I'd move another 10 or 15 feet and repeat. I only had to go a 1/4 mile and around a curve and then back it in.

Piece of cake.

It's super dry here. We keep hoping for some rain.

Buckfast bees.

And there they are. Our new bees arrived on Tuesday evening. We got them from R Weaver Apiarys in Texas. https://www.rweaver.com/ who uses 2 day air with UPS to get them to you in good condition. And good condition it was. Generally you should be pretty please with just a hundred or so bees that died during the trip, and you can see in the pic that only about 20 are there on the bottom. Shippers used to use a can of liquid syrup in the top of the bee box to ship, but current shipping regulations prohibit that (it's messy) so they use that sugar you see in the bottom. It seems to work just fine. I think we'll hold onto the bee box just in case I end up finding a swarm somewhere.

That's a 3 pound package of bees with a mated and marked Buckfast Queen. This will be our 4th try at hiving. We've had a number of episodes of this, all ending with an empty hive. The first try was 2 hives with Carnolian and Italian bees, one in each hive box. The wind blew them over even though they were staked and strapped down.

We moved the hives, but the damage was kinda done at that point.

Then we tried some "Valley Survivors" from a local bee keeper. They didn't over winter. Probably because they swarmed in July, taking most of the stores with them and leaving the bees that stayed with a deficit.

Next was a volunteer hive that moved into the empty boxes, they didn't move in fast enough to build enough winter stores and didn't make it either.

Last year we tried more Italians from Murdocks in Salida. I think the queen died early and I wasn't a good enough bee keeper to figure it out (hence the marked queen this time around).

My friend at work, the mechanic, (Brad) has been a bee keeper for much of his life and he's had the same struggles here in the valley. Last year he tried these Buckfast bees and they overwintered and did just fine. Didn't swarm either. They were so productive that this year he just ordered another queen and is splitting the hives so he'll have 2.

We'll hope for that as well. 2 seems like a pretty good number to go for, especially with the queens starting in different years. Buckfast queens seem to be productive for about 2 years and you then change them out.

So we'll see how they do. The morning after hiving them the hive was buzzy and busy. We'll keep feeding them starter sugar water and pollen packs for a couple weeks to a month then add another big super for them to keep building into. Next Tuesday we'll open the hive and see how they're doing. We'll practice more hands-on management this time around. We paid about twice as much for this hive, I'm really hoping it turns out well.

Working on the door still. :D

Yesterday I got back to work on my doorway to the greenhouse. Thursday we went to Denver to visit the dentist and pick up our friend Aliena and our god daughter Ophelia. We're pretty excited to have them visiting, which they do once a year or so. The dentist? That's all I have to say about that.

BUT

I went to work on Friday and didn't get called in on Saturday, so I got some work done on the greenhouse entryway. In a strange and quirky twist of fate I actually got done more than I thought I should on Saturday. It was a lot of up and down on the ladder, and a lot of moving the bracing around to keep things properly aligned while I moved from just having posts set to framing in for the screen door and inventing what to do with the roof. It worked out well. I only hit my head crazy hard once. :D Sure it left a neat curving cut on my head but the sweaty blood when I took my hat off entertained everyone.

So here are some pics:



Next we'll figure out exactly how we want the roof to look, what to make it out of, and get the screen door hung. That'll mean I need  to get venting installed and put in a cat door. Then we can finally start on the inside.

Life is good.

Today I worked on the door frame for the greenhouse. Earlier in the week I dug holes. Today I set up the framing to hold stuff in place and then poured concrete. In a couple days when it dries I'll work on framing up the rest of it. The job went pretty well, and I took the rest of the day off to sip a bit of ruby port. It was good. It'll be fun to have the girl home tomorrow, I've missed her.