Mouse Wine?

I was out a couple of weeks back to do some work on the tractor and wrap the bees up with the roofing paper like I did last year. The tractor has had some issues since last fall and since I haven’t been out to the property all summer I hadn’t done anything about them. So it was finally time to get it going again. Unfortunately the mice love the tractor. I don’t know why they like building nests in it so much more than anywhere else in the shed it is in. The shed is actually an old barn that they kept goats and cattle in back in the old days and I haven’t cleaned out much of it except for where the tractor is so it is basically a dirt floor building with a bunch of old wood and junk strewn about inside of it. You would think all those little nooks would give the mice ample nesting sites but, no, they have to build nests in the engine compartment of the tractor, just behind the fan blade. This year there was an add ed twist, though. They had gathered tons of wild grapes and stuffed them into most open spaces in the tractor. There was a pile under the seat, on the foot rests, inside the engine compartment, and my personal favorite, between each fan blade. I pulled a 5 gallon bucket worth out and then pulled out another 2/3 of a bucket. I guess they planned on eating raisins all winter! I didn’t even know there were that many wild grapes around. Looks like I will be have to find them and make wild grape jam next year! I finally got all the grapes, leaves, and dried grass out and could start the job of changing the oil. I finished that and decided to start it up. All the lights came on but it wouldn’t turn over. The battery was on the charger so it should be ok so I started tracing wires. Another thing the mice like to do is chew through wires. I could understand the coating but when you get to the actual copper wire it seems like it would be really irritating to continue to chew through it. But no, they love it. I found one that was chewed through but I didn’t have anything to fix it with so again the tractor didn’t get started. The one picture is from the front looking back at the seat, the second inside the engine compartment.

It was only 50 degrees that day and windy so I didn’t expect much activity at the hive and there wasn’t any. The cluster is big enough now that you can put your ear against the hive and hear them buzzing to stay warm. I started at the back of the hive and stapled the roofing paper around. I had done one corner of the front when one lone bee flew out to see what all the racket was about. I had to duck pretty quickly or she would have run right into my face and then I took a couple steps back. She did a slow flight around a bit, decided whatever was making the noise wasn’t worth getting cold over, and went back inside. I finished up without another one coming out. I did the "heft test" to get a sense of how heavy it was and it was very heavy. They should have plenty of honey to make it through the winter and since I never took any honey off this year it is all pure honey, no sugar water honey. After only 3 years I have already come to hate the winter waiting game to see if they will make it to spring.

Goldenrod

The goldenrod is done blooming, pretty much all flowers have stopped. The little ones that are left I don't think provide much nectar, maybe a little pollen. The extra box I put on the hive has partially filled a couple of frames. But it was enough for the bees to feed on for a little while so I don't have to feed them. I am hoping a more natural diet will help the bees make it through the coming winter. And it looks like winter is coming early this year. Here it is the end of October and we are getting snow in the mountains. Ug.

Back From the Dead

It has been an interesting year so far. Back in March I checked on the bees again and the hive was down to a very small cluster. So small in fact I gave them up for dead. It looked like the queen had just stopped laying for some reason. Then we found out short sale house we had a contract on finally came through after 9 months and in 3 weeks we had to close or loose it. Between moving and then doing work on the house that needed to be done quickly the bees got lost in the shuffle. Two weekends ago my wife and I finally got back out to the mountain to check on them. I was planning on cleaning out the hive hoping that the wax moths hadn't found the hive yet. As we walked toward the bee yard I see bees coming out of the hive, not a lot, but bees. Naturally I had to pop the top and see what was going on. Well what do you know, bees! And lots of them! And two boxes full of honey! I guess the queen must have started laying again right after I checked them in March. The good news is they lived. The bad news is that I probably could have gotten honey this year. Oh well, there wouldn't have been any time to extract it anyway. We have decided to let nature take its course with this hive and will do minimal intervention on it and see what happens this winter. I plan only on performing the Fumigilan treatment for Nosema, put a few empty frames in during goldenrod season to get some extra honey built up for winter, and wrapping the hive with roofing paper as I did last fall.

Warm New Year's Day

It was in the 50s on New Years Day so after we woke up my wife and I drove out to the mountain to check the bees and do some other work. A warm winter day is a good chance for us to check on the level of honey left, add some bee candy if necessary and move the frames around to get stored honey closer to the cluster. It is a good chance for the bees to take a cleansing flight, clean the dead bees out of the hive, and move honey stores around to get closer to the cluster.

Since December had been such a cold and windy month I was worried they may have gone through the stored honey quickly and since I felt the hives were light going into winter I was anxious to see how they were doing. Unfortunately we met with some bad news. The GA bees had died out. I did a quick look through the frames in the top and middle hive bodies and am stumped as to why. There was plenty of honey. There was plenty of pollen. You could see the cluster of bees was still fairly big and they were right next to the honey so they shouldn't have starved. I didn't see any sign of disease. A deadout like this is so weird because the bees don't shrivel up or anything, they look like they are just being very still and they would fly away at any second.

The good news is that the other hive is doing well. I pulled the top box frames and they were still full of honey and pollen. I didn't take the box off but I could see the cluster in the middle box and it appears to be a good number of bees. It looks like they made it through that cold December pretty well. Our long range forecast is for a fairly normal January, maybe a little below normal temps so I am optimistic that if they survived the really cold December they will be OK.