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. 

Tooling up.

There was a giant wind storm. I worked a LOT.

SO now we're getting stuff to work with. A hoard of battery operated Milwaukee tools are showing up here this week. Crys ran down to Lowes in Espanola today with the trailer to pick up a big order I made on Sunday. Man, you always want Crys to do this kinda thing. Lowes made a few mistakes in the order, and she got it all corrected.

So now I have the stuff to frame the greenhouse door and the tools to get it done with.

It's kinda funny how I've gotten to be this age (57) and am now, finally, collecting the things that make working easy. how cool would all that stuff have been when Crys and I built the house. It's like lots a stuff, seems to work a little backwards but it's all good in the end I think.

With any luck there'll soon be some pics of stuff getting done.

Trying out some new beers

         I got hooked up with a place on the left coast that sends out the occasional email and gives folks the opportunity to order beers to have shipped to home.

These are the ones we're trying out this time. Not too sure how often we'll get into this, it's not like it's inexpensive and how much should one spend on beer anyway?

    This one is a sour I ordered for Crys, she's a sour fan. It was a bit higher alcohol than a normal sour which was fun, and she says it's good.


  As stated on the label, Salted Carmel Stout. It tasted a little bit salty, and a little bit caramelly, but mostly it tasted like a pretty good beer.


    This is the IPA that we got. Ordered 2 of these and they're pretty good.

We're running the sauna this weekend, and relaxing. Life is good.

A free weekend

Once a month, Fridays, I head to Denver for a union meeting. Since I have to take a vacation day to go, the weekend is free of call out. I kinda like this.

It's like a free weekend where you get to do what you want with out having to get interrupted. It's not like I really every do much that is earth shattering. Today I oiled up the studs on Crys' trailer so I can pull the wheels and get new tires put on. That and I cut up all the cut up all the slab wood so we can fire the sauna.

Now we're watching a movie, and chilling out. Who knows what we'll get up to tomorrow.

Geo Dome Greenhouse, working on the doorway

It is definitely time to get the door put on the greenhouse. We got the polycarb put on last September and then I ended up working way too much, then it got way too cold. 

 So I finally got started, last weekend on the retaining walls I wanted to put in so that the door can go on. Since we designed the space to have a slightly lowered entryway I had to dig in a ramp, the rototiller sure helped with that. Then some old crossarms from work helped to form up the space and make it ready for a door frame.

 The first weekend I just got the lower entry way done. This weekend saw the rest of the ramp go in along with the retaining wall for a more finished look.

And then we have the goofy walk into the space. :D