Supersedure Cell

Sarah came over this weekend to watch a bee inspection. We have been blissfully floating through beehood. But there were a few bumps in the road this last time. Our second hive is not flourishing like we had hoped. We got them started too late, their numbers were too low and one thing I didn't mention when we installed the hive is all of the larva that was lost. They were in their temporary box for 2 weeks and spent all their time drawing out the comb and raising young. However, our box was a different size, so we couldn't take those frames when we took the bees. That means they had to start from scratch, drawing out the comb and raising new brood. It takes about 3 weeks to "grow" new bees, so by this weekend we should have a new batch to help the hive out. The main nectar flow is about over though, so we will have to feed them sugar syrup to get through the winter.
The main point of this point though, is about our first hive. The hive with the black queen. We never saw this queen, but we did find a partial one of these (not my picture):


Which we mistook for a swarm cell. A swarm cell is made when the hive runs out of space. They stop feeding the old queen so she is light enough to fly, they make a new queen by feeding a substance called royal jelly to a larva, the larva turns into a queen and half the hive leaves with the old queen. This is where both of our sets of bees came from. Swarming is bad when you are trying to make honey, because you lose half your workers.
This however was a supersedure cell. The difference is the location of the cell and the reason for the cell. Supersedure cells are high on a frame, while swarm cells are low. I haven't kept up on my reading, so we saw the cell and immediately removed it thinking they wanted to swarm - something that is almost impossible to prevent once they want to. Supersedure cells are made when the queen dies, when the queen isn't productive enough or if the queen runs out of sperm (she mates only once in her life). After reading this I was really worried we had ruined their only chance for making a new queen, especially since we had not seen her. Aaron opened them up again today to add a new super (box) and found the queen and a new supersedure cell. I was so relieved that she is probably just not laying enough from the worker's point of view. A commercial beekeeper would requeen with a queen ordered from a beekeeping company. We are taking a more natural approach and letting the bees do what is best for them. They know how to fix their situation better than we do. It will be interesting to see how it plays out. I read somewhere that sometimes in this situation the two queens will coexist until the older queen dies. I always thought there could never be more than one queen, so I'll have to look into that some more. We are definitely always learning something from those bees!

How it All Began...

It was decided today that we will be getting chickens, something I have been looking forward to the last 11 years. I took an embryology class in high school and we raised chicks from eggs and imprinted them on us. There is a window early in their life where they will imprint to something around them, usually their mother, but in an unnatural setting you can imprint them to a pair of shoes or a stuffed animal. What it really means is that you will get some super sweet and tame chicks.
I apologize for the terrible quality of these photos - our scanner doesn't work, so I just took pictures of old pictures. At night. I'm sorry!

I raised 7 (I took classmates that couldn't keep them anymore) chicks at home until they were big enough to go to a neighbor's house.


A friend and I stuck them in Easter baskets and took pictures



This was my favorite chicken, Leilani. She was horribly neglected by her owner (not his fault really, we weren't properly educated on how to care for these animals). She had been fed oatmeal and kept in a dark box for most of the day everyday. When I got her, her down was falling out from malnutrition and when I gave her water she drank so quickly she threw it all back up. It was a sad state.


Leilani all grown up and beautiful!


My mom and I would go and visit them almost every night. My mom grew up with chickens and loved spending time with them too. I called for them when I got there and they would all run to me, happy to see their mother! I would sit in the barn and they would all hop up on my lap.


And sleep in my arms. Awwww, I can't wait to have chickens again!


We have been talking about getting chickens here for a year - our landlord is all for it. We just didn't know where we were going next or if we would be able to keep them. We still don't, but I decided I didn't want to put it off anymore! The landlord is coming over tomorrow to talk about plans and once we settle on a design, Aaron can start building. We've gotten a ton of wood from around town, so hopefully we can keep costs low. Our little farm is taking off!

Garden Plot

In addition to my home garden I decided to also get a community plot at a park near our house. I initially did this because there is a chance we will be moving out of our house at the end of August. I wanted to grow winter squash and those would not be done growing by then. Things like peppers and tomatoes will also go into September. It's nice to have a big space with full sun and unlimited water! There are a few potential challenges with this plot that hopefully won't be too big of an issue. People picking things, deer eating things and the homeless man Larry who likes to help water things, but tends to use too much water pressure. I planted on Saturday, and so far so good. I have about 15 winter squash plants - several types of pumpkins, acorn and the one I'm most excited about, marina de chioggia. I also have about 15 pepper plants, all different kinds. Aaron would like to try his hand at making hot sauce after trying some of our friend's. The last thing I planted, and I hope it makes it to maturity with this late summer start, is popcorn.



They look like jewels to me, I hope we get beautiful popcorn like that! I'll probably do a post on this other garden once my root bound plants start looking a little healthier!

Featured Artist: Anna Wichman!

Aaron's sister Anna just graduated with an art degree from Western Oregon University. I commissioned these paintings of me and my parents after seeing some other similar paintings she had done. My parents are avid birdwatchers, so I thought it would be fun to have them painted with their favorite birds. She threw in Aaron's painting as a gift.
Here she is with all of the paintings:


Aaron with an American White Ibis - not his favorite bird, but more so his "animal". Meaning he kind of looks like an ibis. Anna thought this was funny and tied it into the series.


Me with a Western Tanager, my favorite local "pretty" bird.


My mom with a Hoopoe (say who-poo) from India


And my dad with a Western Bluebird


We love our new paintings!!! It's amazing to me how much they look like us! Anna doesn't start work for a few weeks and has lots of free time to paint! If you or someone you know might be interested in some of her art, contact me, and I will put you in touch, or contact her via her website. For Corvallians, she has some of her art displayed at the downtown Beanery on 2nd Street right now.

Here is her website with more of her work, in addition to painting, she also does awesome prints. Thank you Anna!

Strawberry Picking!

Yesterday I went strawberry picking with Amber, Tuesday, Sarah and Sciarrino.
I nearly made a best friend just by handing Tuesday strawberries.
Yum!





So cute carrying around her new gardening tools


Sarah found me this awesome tooth strawberry!


I love it!


Already a good brusher! Well sort of...she likes chewing on it anyway.


Okay Amber isn't going to like me posting these, but I thought it was awesome...
Let me preface this by saying this was at the end of long day, used to prevent complete Tuesday melt down and it worked. Amber has these baby videos that teach signing. Tuesday isn't speaking quite yet, but she does sign a few words; please, jacket, I need to go to the bathroom, I'm hungry and I saw her sign "shoes" in the car while watching the video. So cool to watch her watch the video then do the sign!


She also had fun emulating mom :) She put it up to her ear a few times while watching the video.


So fun to hang out with you all! I only got a few strawberries, but hey I got a lot of socializing in!

Hello Summer!

We started this morning off by installing a new swarm of bees with a friend. I will hopefully get pictures from him soon. We decided to get a second hive for a couple of reasons. The main reason is that we have room and it's fun. But if anything goes wrong with one hive, like the queen dies or something, we can pull a frame full of eggs/larvae from the other hive and hopefully fix the problem.


We were pretty worried about working the bees today, it was cold and cloudy, both no nos for working with bees. They get cranky when it's cold, and if the sun isn't out, that means everyone is home. No problems though and no stings. However there were a few casualties today. When the feeder gets placed to close up the hive, a few always fall in or get smashed no matter how careful we are. But I felt horrible today when I opened up the top to look in the feeder and saw that two bees had been "treading syrup" for 6 hours. I quickly fished them out and put them in front of the hive so their sisters could clean them up. I don't know if they will make it or not though.


I saw these two going at it, and tried to separate them, but they were not having it. When we installed the new bees we kept the older hive closed in to try and prevent a war from starting. With honey and sugar water all over the place, it's easy for the established bees to come in and begin robbing. This is obviously bad, especially when your own bees are killing each other. These were the only two that had issues, and I found them dead in the afternoon, each had stung the other to death, their stingers were still embedded in each other. We saw the queen this time, she is gorgeous! I know I probably said this about the other queen too, but this one is a beautiful golden color. I'm hoping our friend got a picture of her. We watched her drop down into the frames, so we know that they're good to go.


It turned into a beautiful day. I planted some more carrots, lettuce and chard. Fertilized everything and put some peppers in the ground. I also painted the new hive bodies we got.


Lots of sugar snap peas! The plants are over 6 feet high. I'm hoping they keep going for a while.


The raspberries are starting to pick up as well. Summer, please, please stick around this time!


Happy Solstice to you all!

What We Did With All Those Truffles...

We infused olive oil

We traded with friends and neighbors, and felt a little like drug dealers.


In return we received:
10 pounds of frozen blueberries
2 nice pieces of frozen salmon
1 Truffle ID book signed by the author!
Some ground elk, sausage from a well loved 4-H pig, and some venison
Some Ranier cherries (remember these from last year?)
Some dried morel mushrooms
2 jars of homemade pepper jelly
Hot sauce
1 bottle of homemade Cabernet

We froze some


I shaved them on fresh pasta with a light cream and butter sauce


And onto delicious whole wheat bread from the Co-Op.


We also infused some arborio rice to make risotto. It's definitely been fun experimenting with them!