I'll start with the bee's, we decided after our spring tests came back to split the 'snow' hive. We moved the empty 'dots' hive out to the friends property and got set up for the split. We took from 'snow' 4 frames of baby bees in varying stages from egg, to capped brood and one of honey/brood mixture. First we made sure that the 'snow' queen was not on any of these frames we took (that's important or you have serious bee drama on your hands). Once the frames were moved over into the 'dots' hive we closed 'dots' up and locked them in for 24 hours. They can't fly and so can't get back to the original queen. By leaving them locked in for 24 hours the bees loose the sent of the original queen and will be likely to accept a new one. I contacted our Master Beekeeper and got a queen from him. We installed her 12 hours after the original lock up. Came back 12 hours later and freed the bees, making sure to put tons of weeds/grass/branches in front of the hive to make the forager bees reorient to the new hive. Jake also faced the hives in apposing directions, to further make sure the foragers would get back to the right hive. Happy to say they did accept her and have been working strong for the last 3 weeks. We should have a huge population boom in the next week or so!
Next on my giant list of things to do was pick stinging nettles. I missed my opportunity last year and by the time I remembered the nettles were well into flower. This year mom and I went out with a giant green tub and filled it with nettles! Mom will probably be horrified that I put a picture up of her rain-fuzzed-out hair! LOL!
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The last is a video I made for the YouTube followers, livestock update mostly about the bunnies.
Happy bees! We LOVE happy bees! Jen, the gardens are gorgeous, even though they've hardly had time to get going yet.
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