Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Garden and Bee Update

This Mockingbird was taking a bath in our little water table.


We will get honey from two of our hives this year!   One of our older hives swarmed so we'll only get a little from it this year, but, we added another hive in the process.   We also had a hive swarm last week but they came right back in the hive.   There were lots of queen cells, so we went ahead and split the hive. 




This is a frame from the new nuc.   It's foundationless and the bees are drawing out comb so fast!   You can see the queen marked with a green dot.


Finally....a carrot!  


So, in our transition to foundationless frames, we're having to learn the hard way.  We don't know any beekeepers who use foundationless frames so we're left to figure it out on our own.  Thankfully there are some great websites for us to reference.   We were really disheartened to open up a hive and find that we had made the mistake of not putting an empty super UNDER a full one.  The bees had built some beautiful comb but it was not within the frames and would have been impossible to harvest or even inspect.  So, we had to clean it all off and start over.  












I have had a row cover over my zucchini, yellow squash and potatoes and could not believe how fast they grew!   They were so much bigger than anything else.   SO, I moved the row cover to cover my cucumbers and within a couple of days they had more than tripled in size.   





We have lots of these purple peas.   The kids have been eating them like crazy but we still have a ton.  We might actually get to bring some in and shell them this year.


This one hive has been bearding due to the heat.   


Mint is taking over!


Lavender


Green beans, pole beans, dragon tongue, and chinese red noodle beans.


My first time growing onions.


Lots of green tomatoes!


Peppers



Spaghetti Squash starting up the trellis.


This is our first time doing lasagna gardening and so far I'm really happing with it!   We've been weighing our produce and so far we've harvest about 8 pounds of greens, kale, collards, chard, lettuce and radishes.   

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