Bee Swarm 2012.

Seems like about this time every year, I’ve gotten to catch a swarm.  This year it was from a hive I am ‘maintaining’ at a friends house about three miles away.  I say ‘maintaining’ because in theory, if they swarmed, I wasn’t doing my job very well.  But hey, they are Italian…  A dinner guest of theirs was able to shoot a video of me hiving the swarm.  Enjoy!!

Also, for the curious, I have been taking photos, and gardening, fairing, planing, mowing, milking and such at a rabid pace.  As things slow down after all the food is put up for the fall, I’ll get back to sharing ‘what I did on my summer vacation’.

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Still buzzing!

We actually saw some sun yesterday and the bees loved it. Its a lot of fun to watch them come in with dandy lion pollen during the spring. Like little bits of sunshine.

We are still keeping our fingers crossed for honey this year! I am managing a hive for a friend a few miles away (they want to have bees, and support the beleaguered little pollinators, but don’t want to actually ‘work the bees’) and the package went in on the 21st. They are doing well too.

What a week….

It has been. A long week. I was really hoping to have some photos to post of the new little critters, but when I finally drop back into the house after chores at midnight, and have a 5am wake up for morning chores so I can go off farm to work for half the day, some things just don’t happen… In fact sometimes a lot of things just don’t happen. Especially when you add in a golden retriever with the trots…. Who doesn’t love carpet cleaning at midnight?

It’s been good though, One of our two does has kidded (twin girls YEA!) and the other looks like she’s ready to go. OK so I’ve been saying that to our nephew for the past two days (he’s staying with us till she pops, he wants to see the babies, and loves doing some ‘part time’ farming). We still have a brooder full of growing chicks on the porch. The garden is a slow start this year (we have had hard frosts for the past two nights), but I think once it get’s rolling, it will explode! Bees come in a week (or so..) and this weekend is gong to be a lot of mowing!

Hopefully we will also be posting some photos of the last week or so here by the end of the weekend, before we dive back into another full week of work, and farming.