Okay, I think I'm buzzed...Part 4...

okay okay, enough with the bees...well maybe one last time then back to the garden and my other insane projects.

When last we were together, I showed y'all how I installed the bees. Well, that was 5 weeks ago. And how time flies.

This is what the frames looked like before I put them into the hive...


Here's what they look like now!



Quite a change huh?

Here's a close up...



If you look closely, you will see the white bee larva, the orange pollen and the caps of honey (located near the top of the photo)

Things are humming along. This week I added a "super". What is a super? Here's a photo...



The upper deep allows more room for the bees to grow and expand. The super will be for honey production. Right now, it just has a feeder in it. In a few weeks once the bees fill up the upper deep as they have filled out the lower deep, then I will add frames to the super and put a "Queen Excluder" between the "deeps" and the super. This will keep the Queen from laying eggs in there and only allow workers and drones in there to produce honey goodness. :)

The bees appear to be healthy and nothing weird going on.

However, here's a really good tip for anyone wishing to be a bee keeper. Always, and I mean always wear jeans that don't have holes. Yeah. about that...



and...



The first photo was a glancing blow, the second one...a direct hit.

So Imagine if you will Suburbandweller is inspecting the hive looking all cool in his bee garb, but suddenly, SuburbanDweller becomes all thumbs! And bumps one of the frame against the top of the hive.

The bees really didn't care for that too much. Suddenly about 30 bees (probably only about 10) swarmed out and started buzzing around me. I stood completely still, hoping they would quiet down. Nice little bees, nice little bees. Slowly, I reached for my smoker. I think they saw me.

Ahhhhh! Suddenly there about 3 bees in my pants. Here I am, still holding the frame, trying to shoo the bees away from my very exposed knee and to get the ones out of my pants and also trying to get the smoker! Oh for the want of the 3rd arm! Dancing on one foot. Trying to close the hole in my pants And trying to replace the frame gently back into the hive, the bees went in for the kill. Zing! The first one! Zap! The second one. Now I haven't been stung in quite some time. The last time was when I was about 20 and it was on the roof of my mouth! Yeah, Bill K knows all about that one!

So in goes the frame, out comes the smoke and I let them have it. I smoked the living heck out of everything that moved. Take that, you! It was a humbling experience. I had this very naive thought about me and the bees being buds. I feed them, they treat me right and all is fine in the world. But noooooooo, they have to be all protective of THEIR hive. Buggers. While my knee was still throbbing, I still had half a hive to inspect. I couldn't just leave it.

So I quickened the pace and tried not to P'off the bees any further.

I was happy to see they were developing comb in the upper deep...



And another shot...



This was a good sign.

So from now on it's just observing and hoping nothing infests or contaminates the hive.

My hive updates will be not as intense from here on out as I want to get back to my main focus of my blog. My garden. :)

What's going on in the garden? Lots...

I just harvested my first batch of onions (this is just under half)...



This photo of my eggplant is about a week old. They are about double this size now...(I have at least 4 that I have counted but I know there are quite a few more)



My peppers...



My cucumbers...



And as I special treat (I haven't mentioned them in a while) Potatos!



Yeah yeah, I know, only 7, but that's seven more than I had the last 3 tries! LOL I know now that I have to plant them a bit earlier, perhaps in late December. When the tops of the plant die off, that's time to harvest them. I thought they died off a little soon. The roots still had a ton of room to grow. So a bit earlier next year or later this year.

I did get a surprise out of my compost this year...



Acorn squash! This is the kind of surprise I really enjoy!

Lastly, one of my new readers requested a photo of my garden. I didn't get a chance this week, but I will be sure to include one next week. :)

In the mean time, here's a little bit more color from my garden.

Remember, Green is good. :)

Red...



Pink...ish...



Angry SuburbanDweller (very rare photo of yours truly)



Cheers!

Nice little bee...Ouch!!!! Why you little... Part 3

So when we last left our hero, I had just completed the "enclosure" for my little friends.


I won't bore you with the countless pictures I took ad nauseum of the progress of the fence as I was putting it up. I know that you are all just soooooooo eager to see the freaking bees.

I will leave you with one photo...


Notice the cut outs? That's for me when I get bored and need to spy on my neighbors! They think my fence will stop my snooping! Bah! I say Bah! The up shot is, Paulie likes them too!

Okay, the bees.

These photos I'm showing now are 4 weeks old. This is when I first got them.

Box O'Bees...



That's how 3 pounds of bees, (roughly 10,000 bees) plus the queen, arrives.

The postman delivered them in one of those plastic US Post Office boxes. He gave me a side glance, "here are your...bees" and nudged the box with his foot toward me. I was so happy to finally get them, (they took a week to get here), I just picked box right up and handed his US Postal box back. "You want this right?" I said. He sort of just snatched it back. "Yeah, thanks" and took off across the lawn.

I. Have. Bees!

It was still early in the day so I had to wait a while. I sat them on top of a trash can in my garage in the dark. I read somewhere it was suppose to calm them down.

Each time, I would have to go out in to the garage to get a tool or something, I would flip on the lights. Oh boy, the bees didn't like that. "We're trying to sleep over here!"

Just like humans, bees "sleep" at night. More like naps. I mean, heck they are working none stop all day long they could use a little shut eye.

So anyway, around dusk is the perfect time to introduce them to the hive. They are winding down after a long day and a long trip to my house.

Now, I have a lack of photos regarding the actual procedure of introducing the bees to the hive because my much more significant other was working. So I was flying solo.

However, before all this could happen I had to assemble the frames.

This is an assembled frame.



These are frames with a "foundation". Meaning the bees have something to work off of. There are "foundation-less hives but that's not something, as a first timer, I want to try right now.

I assembled them by putting the wax foundation into the frame. It's not as easy as it sounds.

I had 16 of them. One for the upper and lower "deeps". A "deep" is another term for the brood chamber where the bees lay their eggs, store their honey and pollen. When you start out, you only have a "lower deep" or one brood chamber so the bees can get accustomed to the queen and the hive.

Okay, The queen...



That's her on the left. On the right you see some sort of "cloudy" mess. That's sugar. It's a time release sort of thing.

You see, the queen is not raised with the bees that I received, so she has to be "introduced" to the hive. Which means they have to exchange pheromones back and forth. Basically, the bees are sizing her up and figuring out if she will be a good queen.

Bee #1: So what do you think of the new queen?

Bee #2: I just hope she doesn't get all, "oh look at me, I'm the queen!" I'll have none of that.

Bee #1: You only live 5 weeks she live 2 years.

Bee #2: then we should be more special, no? She should be kissing our feet!

If I just chucked the queen in there without first introducing her, the bees would kill her by stinging her to death. Nice image, huh?

So over a period of about 5 days, she eats through one side of the sugar and the bees in the hive eat through the other side. All the while checking her out.

Thankfully, they didn't reject her. Yay!

Okay, so the procedure goes like this. I take out half the frames and hang the queens container in-between two of the middle frames. Then I dump half the bees on her and the other half into the bottom of the hive.

Then I add the remaining frames.



You can see the queen box set between the frames and the bees running around trying to figure out their new digs.

On the side, you will notice a yellow thingy. That's their feeder. Yes, you need to feed bees. It's a sugar water mixture at a 2:1 ratio. Thick syrup.

That helps the hive get up and running. Without it, they probably would either slowly starve to death, or just take off and swarm away. Until they can establish feeding areas and have an adequate supply of nectar, they must be fed.

Now I just sit and wait. This all happened one month ago.

Just what have they been doing since then?

Well tune in next week and find out!

Whew! That was a lot of typing and a lot of info!

I will leave you now with some relaxing pict of my garden and flowers around my house.

Pink...



Purple...



Violet...



Green...



Well, that's it for this week! Next week, more bees, and the next project in my yard, which I like to refer to as the Concrete Path of Death. :) Cheery, no?

As always, Green is Good!

Buzz, I say, Buzz Part 2...

I'm back. Yeah, I know, hard to believe. Another post so quickly after what seemed like forever before the last post. Now you can't get rid of me. I scoff! I scoff! No, wait. I don't scoff! I need readers. I humbly apologize. I'm sorry. I'm not worthy of your readership. I slink away now and chain myself to my computer. Bread and water is fine.

Well, then. That was odd.

ANYwho. Where was I? All that groveling got me off track.

Oh yeah, bees.

Well the fence is done. Blog post over.

Oh? You want the second part? Alright! So demanding.

You know what's really weird? I'm having this conversation at my computer as if you all are really talking to me. Freaky. I better check my meds.

Okay, when last I left you I showed you an awesome Harry James video and how to sink a post. Kind of an odd combo, huh?

Now this...



Then this...



And this...



And a sexier shot...



Okay the basic frame was now finished.

I now had to make the gate. Weeee...



Pretty straight forward. Two long pieces of cedar for the sides and 3 for the cross sections. (once again, I threw caution to the wind and sort of made this up as I went along.) I got my measurements for the size of the gate via the width and height of the opening to the bee "enclosure".

Much like how I built my now infamous clothesline, I created some "lap" joints for the gate as well.

Before...


After...



And here is the gate all fitted together... (like the dramatic lighting?)



That evening I glued and screwed the joints together.



(sorry for the miss-formating of this photo. for whatever reason Photobucket just doesn't like it. I've resized and rotated it several times and it still shows up over sized and on it's side. Hmmm, there's a joke in there somewhere. UPDATE: it appears as if it reoriented itself but now shrunk the photo! fine. it works).

The next day, on went the hardware and it was time for mounting.

Here are the hinges...



Here is the latch...



And the completed gate...



Not too bad if I say so myself. As you can see I put up the fence pickets as well.

But this is certainly not the end of the bee, fence, gate saga. Oh, yes, there is so much more. I know you are all on the edge of your seats! Look, I have to lie to myself to keep my spirits up, okay? So just humor me. I will believe that you can't wait for my next post and you just smile and nod and give me the half sane look of, "oh sure, we can't contain ourselves", before rolling your eyes. Deal?

So next week...can you guess? Part 3! I don't think anyone could have anticipated that! ;)

In the mean time, here are some fresh photos for your viewing pleasures.

Squash...(I know this is similar to a photo I posted last week, but I just love the color)



Colorful...



Daisies...



Eggplant...



Nose...



So there it is another installment of my insane mission to turn my yard into a food factory. Tune in next week as our hero finally finishes the fence and, gasp!, we actually get to see the bee hive!

Cheers!

Remember, Green is Good!

Buzzzzzzzzzzzz........Part 1

I know, I know, it's been a while.

I could snow you under with one excuse after another and frankly, what would that solve? Well, it would give me a false sense of satisfaction. :) And isn't that what life is all about? But the truth goes oh so much deeper. I like to call it writers block. But wait, Surbandweller, that's crazy talk!

I have all this stuff I wanted to write about, but it builds up to the point where I don't know where to begin.

So rather than trying to play catch up, I will clear the table, start anew and over time, drop little tidbits of stuff that I had been working on.

In the mean time, I will update you on the thing that has been occupying my life for the past several months.

No, it's not Tequila induced base jumping. Although that does sound fun. Ah-hem.

It's been this...or should I say these...

Yes, bees.

But wait, don't they, like, sting?  Well, yeah! But just like people, they won't sting you if you don't mess with them.

For the most part, they keep to themselves. I mean they're bees afterall and they sort of just tolerate us humans.

As far as hobbies go, they are pretty low maintanence.

So why have they been occupying all my time? Let's step back into the Wayback Machine, shall we?

The year is 1977. Star Wars was a big hit, people wore bell bottom pants and The Ramones (the greatest band of all time!!! Don't argue with me!!) was all the rage on the music scene. Me on the other hand, a young Suburbandweller, or Suburbanteen, if you will, saw a documentary on PBS about bees. "Gee" I said to myself, "as god as my witness, I will keep bees one day!" shaking my fist toward the sky. Actually, it was more like, "huh, that looks pretty neat".

So started the private quest to one day raise bees.

Now let's jump in the Wayforward machine many many many years later to about 1 1/2 years ago. Among the dozens of other projects I had going, I causually said to my much more significant other, "You know, I would like to raise bees". SO just rolled with it. I love that she tolerates my brief moments of insantity. Little did I know, it would turn into reality. Hmmmm, is it really a good thing when insanity turns reality?

ANYway, beside reading a few books on the subject and having a desire to raise them, I hadn't a clue. So when you don't have a clue, what do you do? Go out and buy a hive! (don't worry, the bees are sold seperately. Good thing, I probably would have killed them.) However, it was too late in the season to get a queen and the bees.

In the interviening time, Paulie, the dog with a thousand teeth, came along and my dream of raising bees wained. Awww...



We sweltered through the summer, my garden died, my fig tree died and my blueberry bush died. (and had a little snow, a very little bit of snow)

It's now Feburary of this year. I want those bees! I have to put in my order. So $125 bucks later (they better make honey!), my bees were to arrive the first week in April.

I had to get to work. There are several regs that I have to meet in order to keep bees in my back yard. A couple of which, if not met, makes raising bees a no go.

1) They have to be at least 25 feet from the nearest neighbor. No problem

2) The entrance and exit of the hive has to face a wall or fence. This way, when the bees go out to do their daily rounds, they swarm as bees do and because of the fence is placed in front of their hive exit, they will swarm upward instead of casting straight out and scaring heck out of all my neighbors. This part was problem.

I had taken down our old fence that came with the house about a year after we moved in. It was a mess and needed replacing.  Now was the time to do just that. And putting up the fence solved 3 issues 1) we needed a new fense 2) the bees needed a fence and 3) my very nice neighbors who never wave back to me when I wave to them, nor respond to me when I say hello to them; have collected a nice pile of disgarded contruction debris that looks, to be polite, not very nice. A pile which we have had to view for the past 3 years. A pile that has now been so completely overgrown with weeds and hack trees that it could be movie set for a post apocolypic film; now needs to been not seen, by me or my SO. Oh the sweet joys of suburbia!

So starts the planning, well more like making it up as I go along. :) 

Putting in the posts. At first I did the whole mixing in the wheelbarrow deal. What a colossal pain in the patoot! Until I discovered a wonderful video on Youtube about how to mix the concrete right in the hole!





This saved an enormous amount of time...and my back. And yes it works.



So the process was: dig hole 2 feet deep. Take 8 foot post and cut 1 foot off top. (why? because there is apparently a rule of thumb when it comes to digging holes for posts. You want the post hole to be at least 1/4 the height of the post. However, a 8 foot post was too tall so I lopped a foot off so they would be easier to deal with. So technically speaking, I had too much hole. Hmmm. I'll just leave that one alone). Then fill with concrete. So dig, cut, fill, dig, cut, fill, dig, cut, fill, etc...

However, while digging, cutting and filling, I had to make an enclosed area for the bees? Why, you ask? Again, I have a very curious dog who thinks nothing of putting his nose in to things that, well, he shouldn't and I didn't frankly want to have the bees in a constant state of being PO'd, so I have to put a fence around it. Weeeeeee!

And that little wonderment will be part two of this epic endevor!

In the mean time, here are some photos from the garden. :)

Flowers...







 Acorn squash...



Lemons...



Potatoes...



Tomatoes...



Coffee...



Wait what? That's not from the garden! That's a preview of a future blog!

In the mean time, remember, Green is Good!

Cheers!

The schvitz comes to an end!

Where have I been?

Right here, where else!

Okay, fine. It's been a hell of a summer. I know, I breached the no swearing ban. But actually, it's been like hell.

The heat tsunami has finally broken.

After 80 days of 100 degree heat and 40+ of those over 105!!!!!!, it's finally over.

My yard looks like Death Valley on a good day.

The garden is long since gone and I went into survival mode. Just trying to keep what plants I still have alive.

The grass, if that was what still could be defined as that, is dry dry dry straw.

Paul, the dog with a thousand teeth, running none stop, has worn much of the "grass" down to dust.

My neighbor, in typical suburban fashion, comes out after sun down and hand waters his lawn. (sprinklers are a no no. We're in stage 2 water rationing). He has the only green lawn on the block. Such a colossal waste.

Trees in my neighborhood are losing their limbs because they are drying out. At least a few times a week, I see people out cutting up split off limbs.

Last weekend was the absolute worst. 112 degrees for 2 days straight. It was like some sort of cruel grand hurrah by mother nature. "I'll show you hot!!!"

I'll give you an example of how bad we want rain. Last weekend the much more Significant Other and I went to the movies. We went to see, "The Help". (Good movie, go check it out). There was a scene were it started raining cats and dogs. The whole audience moaned with jealousy. I'm not kidding.

So finally, there appears a break on the horizon, a tropical storm in the Gulf! Yayyyyy!

The screams of joy didn't last long as the storm took one look at Texas and shrugged us off. However, while we didn't get the rain, we did get the winds! And when you combine, high temps, high winds and very dry plant life, it doesn't take much to start a fire.

At this very moment, there are no less than 7 wild fires burning around Austin. Some within the city limits.

Last night as I was hand watering my plants, I smelled smoke. That fire was just about 5 miles away.

The big one, east of here in Bastrop, is directly effecting 3 of my friends.

Two people I work with and one SO works with. One of those two people I work with, she and her husband are in the volunteer fire dept. They are currently on the front lines fighting a massive fire. The biggest of the bunch. It's burned 20K acres already and still is going strong. Many folks have lost their homes.

The person SO works with, she has a farm and raises animals. Goats, chickens, pigs, etc. She had to move the pigs to another area to get them out of harms way. The fire shifted and she believes that the farm that they were at, was overtaken. It will be a few days before she finds out for sure, but she doesn't have a good feeling. She is now asking us and a mess of others for water for her remaining animals. We are giving what we can.

So while the heat has finally abated today, the wind hasn't.  After going to a local sports/hunting store to pick up some collapsable 5 gallon jugs, I could see the plume of smoke east of town were our friends are dealing with trying to piece their lives together.

Still no rain in the forcast. Still dry as a bone.

We are experiencing the worst one year drought on record. It's never been this bad in a single year before.

In the 1950's Texas went through a 7 year drought. That one still holds the recorded record for multi-year drought.

I sincerely hope what we are experiencing isn't a harbinger of things to come.

What scares me now is when this drought finally breaks. When ground gets rock hard dry then gets inundated with water from a massive rain storm, it doesn't soak in. You would have better luck trying to saturate a piece of steel.

That's the other shoe waiting to drop.

I know, this got a bit serious, but things are getting a bit interesting.

Just letting you know, I'm still alive and yes, hope to plant something this fall. If I could plant Oxygen and Hydrogen and grow water, I would. ;)

Remember, Green is Good! But it's even better when it's actually green and not straw colored.

Cheers!

Edit: I just learned that my two friends, that are the firepeople out in Bastrop fighting the fire, lost their home. Crap.

Edit #2: The pigs are okay. :)

Edit #3: A new fire has cropped up. Not far from SuburbanGuys home. Brushfire. Hope it doesn't grow. It started from sparks thrown off the wheels of a passing train. Yeah, it's that dry. It's about 3 miles (as the crow flies) away. A co-worker who lives in that area had to evac.

Edit #4: 9/8/11 The Bastrop fire is now 35% contained. I heard that 2 more of my friends lost their homes. Austin was socked in with smoke yesterday. My friend, who is the firefigher with her husband (who lost their homes), was recounting to me some of what she experienced. She told me that all of the volunteer firefighters in the Smithville/Bastrop house lost their homes.

One image she related to me was eerie. As she  wsa driving down hwy 71 (still closed to the public), the area was all burned flat. Like a "moonscape".  Little "pocket" fires were still burning with no one working them, because the firemen were working the big one. Suddenly, she saw several of her friends Arabian horses  running free trying to find safety. Arabians and ash.