Weekly Update: 5.4.24
Hanging honey bee swarm traps in a tree isn't as easy as it sounds. For one thing, scout bees look for a new home 10-feet-to-15-feet up. For another, the swarm traps are large -- about 1-foot-by-two-feet-by-two-feet-- and they weigh about 15 lbs. That's not bad for carrying around on the ground, but it gets tricky once you are up on a ladder. Thankfully, I have a six-foot-two brother who did the awkward climb-and-lift action of hefting the traps into trees and securing them with ratchet straps. Jeremiah made it look almost easy.
To be completely honest, when we put out two of our traps on Saturday, I was skeptical that we would actually catch anything. I know from experience that many things are not as simple as they sound. You can follow all the instructions for raising this or that plant or animal -- and then find out that all of your efforts are futile. There is always more nuance than simple instructions can explain.
According to Dr. Leo Sharashkin, you only have to check your swarm traps every week or two. I couldn't wait, though, so after a stormy Sunday, several of us trekked out Monday evening to see how the traps were doing.
First we checked the trap by our spring. It was still in the tree (a small relief after the storms), but there were no signs of bees. Then we checked the trap at the other end of our property, in the tree line at the edge of our woods. And there they were -- bees. They were doing a sort of back and forth dance around the trap entrance, as Dr. Sharashkin had predicted.
I was taken aback. It had actually worked.
The next day, there were even more bees doing the dance. After another rainy few days, we checked again. And this time, instead of scout bees checking out a possible home, we saw bees flying in and out of the door -- a sign they have moved in and are now busily building their hive. At our other trap, scout bees buzzed around, doing their little dance. It appears we are soon to have two swarms ready for hives -- and we haven't even finished hanging all of our traps. With all the blossoms and blooms bursting in every corner of our property, I guess I really shouldn't have been surprised.
I had expected catching a swarm to take weeks, if it worked at all. But here we are, with only a couple weeks until we need to move our swarms into permanent homes. We have one Langstroth hive ready to assemble (a Christmas gift from Jeremiah). I scrambled to put together a supply list to build two Layens horizontal hives, using free plans on Dr. Sharashkin's website. We picked up everything we needed last night, and we plan to put our hives together over the weekend.
We also picked up our electric supplies. We paid $36 to have most of our supplies picked by Menards, as we knew we would have limited time Friday afternoon. Unfortunately, we arrived to find several items in our order were missing -- including three expensive coils of wire we had already paid for. Once we realized some things were missing, we went through the whole order, counting electric boxes and checking for missing supplies. The Menard's clerks helped check the order over and retrieve the missing items, but the whole ordeal took nearly 45 minutes. They refunded about half of the picking cost, but after our experience, we are planning to pick our own order next time.
The rest of our week was rather uneventful. We did quite a bit of yardwork, and we attempted to get lots done in the garden. The rain chased us inside over and over, making our progress slower than we wished.
We are thankful, though, for the water. Our spring is running more than usual -- a blessing compared to how low it gets in the summer months. Our dogs have loved visiting it on warm days, as they romp through it until it turns into a muddy mess.
After a particularly rainy day, Bonnie-Jean and our niece Eilley found a tiny baby bunny in the woods, completely soaked and squeaking wildly. She carefully picked him up and dried him off. We think his home was probably flooded. We put a pet taxi filled with shavings in the woods where she found the bunny, and we left it there with the door open. We don't know how long it stayed, but it had a dry spot at least during the next rainstorm.
We also were slowed down by another bad cold working its way through our family. Our dad and all the kids have had a nasty cough. We can't get over how often we have been dealing with sickness these last months -- it is abnormal for our family, but we are trusting God about it.
Aside from the bees, the only real excitement came from one of our cats this week. Arwen had five kittens Sunday evening. She showed up on our property last summer as a kitten herself. Her mother lives on a nearby ranch, and it appears she brought Arwen and her brother Gandalf here on purpose. She left the kittens, and both have been a part of our homestead ever since. When Arwen started looking plump over the last few weeks, we thought kittens were on the way. While I've had lots of farm cats over the years who had kittens, I've never actually seen the process. In the past, our cats seemed to wait until no humans were around. When Arwen started her queening (what cat birth is called), she meowed loudly and only seemed to calm down when being petted. So, our sister-in-law and our nieces attended her through the whole process (much to our nieces' delight), with the rest of us peaking in occasionally. The kittens are all shades of black or very dark gray and brown, but the kids couldn't be more delighted with them.
While all of the rain makes life more difficult out here, we love seeing how it is bringing our land to life. Each day the trees look greener. More and more birds are appearing. Splashes of red stand out in the bright green foliage as cardinals and summer tanagers dart through the trees. Ruby-throated hummingbirds have begun to frequent our feeder again. We've caught indigo buntings skipping through the grass along our tree line. The family of red-headed woodpeckers has returned to live in a dead tree in the dry creek bed. We hung up orange slices in hopes of attracting some orioles, but so far we haven't seen any. The birdsong wakes us each morning and serenades us throughout the day -- only taking brief breaks during cloud bursts. We are blessed to be surrounded with so much life. It's encouraging -- no matter what large and small difficulties we face each day.
