Weekly Update: 3.8.26
Of beekeeping and wood stain
The rainy week has started to green the earth, casting verdant hues on the westward horizon outside the bunkhouse windows. It has been a week of woodstove fires as well as open windows. It’s still winter, but spring can be felt, as the sun tips back toward the north. Daylight savings time begins today, promising lighter evenings and what will at least feel like longer days. We hung a feeder next to our mom’s smart birdhouse, and we have been watching eagerly for activity.
The rainy, soggy weather kept us indoors most days. Grace and I finally began the long-anticipated project of staining our upper kitchen shelving. It’s a project we have been meaning to start for literally months, but something has always happened to push it off. Once we started, I was surprised at how quickly we finished. We had almost everything done by Friday (aside from a few awkwardly long boards we will stain outside). We now get to look forward to assembly and spraying spar urethane.
When the weather allowed, we worked outside. Bonnie-Jean has helped with lots of yard cleanup and upkeep. Grace and I spent almost a whole day taking care of our bees. Sadly, only one of our hives made it through the winter — it appears that both of the others froze. One was a small, autumn swarm, so we weren’t too surprised. We were sad to see that we also lost one of the large colonies in our Layens hives, but again, we had thought it had split itself late in the year — the partial colony left behind looked very small.
Grace and I fed our surviving colony, then we fixed up both of the other hives for new inhabitants. We cleaned out dead bees and other debris. We removed awkwardly placed comb. We refitted the used comb for our swarm traps. The bees had been rather creative with some of their comb designs, so Grace and I trimmed off odd pieces and secured them better to the frames. Once everything was fixed up, Bonnie-Jean hung up one of our swarm traps.
We had our first real storms of the season this year. As we watched them roll in, we were thankful we prepared our storm shelter last week. We didn’t need it at all last year, but still — it’s nice knowing we have a plan should the storms get out of hand. With all the area tornado warnings late Friday night, we really thought we would have to take shelter, but our warnings were never upgraded past severe thunderstorms. I’ve never worried too much about storms, but living in a tent for a couple years made me realize just how powerful they are. As I fell asleep Friday night, listening to the rain pelt the roof and sides of our bunkhouse, I was especially thankful for the four walls we built here ourselves. We still have a long way to go to make our homestead dreams a reality, but we really have come a long way.
