Honey harvest

I finally was able to get into the hives to check for honey.  I pulled a medium box with 8 frames off the top of Dolly's hive - the last box we needed to pull off this combined hive to get the brood chamber back down to the size where I like to maintain my hives:  3 medium brood boxes.  Because we are in a dearth (very few flowers for the bees to use as nectar sources), we went ahead and fed the honey from 6 of those 8 frames back to the bees.  All we did was cut off the wax cappings, and then set the frames out in the yard where the bees could find them. This allowed me to get the hive back to a manageable size, without depriving the bees of honey they may need.  They have been going wild getting every last drop from those frames.  

From Loretta's hive we harvested one shallow super (shallow box placed over the brood boxes to collect "superfluous" honey) of 8 frames.  The first photo shows a frame with fully capped honey (a thin wax covering over the cells of golden honey).  The next photo shows the process of cutting off the wax cappings so we can extract the honey.  The final photo shows a pile of wax cappings, with the freshly opened cells of honey shinning in the tip right corner of the photo.  The opened frames were then placed into the extractor basket, and we turned the crank to spin out the honey.

The honey from this harvest is delicious.  We harvested 2 quart jars, 6 one pound jars, and 24- 8 oz. jars of honey.  In addition I have piles of beautiful wax cappings to use to make beeswax lip balm and beeswax furniture polish.   I left two more supers on Loretta's hive and three supers on Dolly's hive, in hopes that we might get another harvest of fall honey.  All in all, it was a good weekend harvest from the bees.

Desperate measures, fighting hens, new seeds

The pear crop has been decimated by the birds.  Look at this pile of ruined fruit!  They peck out a hole just large enough to make the pear useless, then leave it to rot and fall off while they move to the next one.  I kept leaving the pears on the tree, figuring I would share the bumper crop with the birds, but apparently they really don't want to share, and every day another 4 or 5 pears were destroyed.  All the apples had already been destroyed.  In desperation today I picked 19+ pounds of still green pears.  Pears are supposed to be picked before they are fully ripe and then ripened off the tree (that reduces the number and size of the gritty stone cells inside).  Most of these, however, were not yet to the proper stage (when the background color of the pear goes from green to yellow-green, but the pear is still hard).  The birds were not waiting, so I figured it was worth a try to just harvest what I could and see if they ripen over the next few weeks.  Keep your fingers crossed for me.  If I get any edible pears the early harvest will have been a success.  I need a plan for next year:  either tent the tree or bag the individual fruit.  A few fruit are still on the tree, maybe I will try bagging them.

Look how calm and lovely our pretty black Pauline looks here, pecking away beside Lou.  Don't let her fool you.  Pauline has been just plain nasty mean this week to Lena and Expresso, who have moved to the big coop.  She doesn't just peck, she grabs and pulls and keeps chasing and following for more attacks, no matter how hard the kids try to get away.  It is hard to watch, but so far there are no lost feathers or blood, so we are trying to let them just work out the new pecking order.   Because Expresso, who is a rooster for sure now, will be leaving us before too long, I needed to get the youngsters introduced to the existing flock.  If I waited, poor Lena would have been all alone against the big hens; at least now she has a friend to hang out with while they work out the kinks of the new social order.

Finally, here are the seeds that are going in the garden as soon as the temperature drops below a thousand degrees.  (OK, just a little exaggeration there.)  Although kales and collards are usually transplanted as young plants, I am going to try direct seeding them.  Why?  Because it is fast and easy and I am all about doing things the easiest way.   If it works I saved a little money and time.  If it doesn't, I go ahead and put in some transplants.  The squash you see there is an Italian variety that is supposed to taste alot like a firm summer squash, but have the keeping qualities of a winter squash.  I think I have enough time to mature some before frost, so I will try a couple of the seeds now.  Lettuces and other fall plants will come later. 

garden doldrums

Well, we have reached the summer garden doldrums.  Every vegetable has fizzled out in the heat and humidity except the tomatoes, and they are starting to look ragged. Despite the ragged looks, while I was away this week, and in the couple of days I have been back, the tomato bed yielded almost 17 pounds of beautiful fruit.  Have you noticed the subtle change in all the plants, and in the light and shadows in the garden?  Summer is waning, hard as that is to believe.  I have gotten out my leftover seeds and my garden calendar, and am planning what to plant this week in the now empty spaces where the squash and beans grew.  It is time to start putting in the fall garden! 

In the non-edible parts of the yard, the zinnias are flourishing, and I picked a huge bouquet of reds and pinks and oranges yesterday.  A pale purple weed in the bindweed or morning glory family is climbing up the brush pile back near the marsh, making a beautiful picture.  

I had every intention of finally getting into the bee hives today to harvest any summer honey they may have up in the supers, but the little tropical storm off the coast is stirring up the weather just enough to make it necessary to leave them alone yet again.  I hope that there is some honey still there whenever I finally get a chance to look in the hives.  If I had been on top of things I would have taken these honey supers off a month ago.   Look at how large the hives are with all the honey supers on top.  Despite the size of both hives, the bees have again multiplied to a point that they were not able to all squeeze into the hive last night, and I found a clump of bees out in the rain on the front of each hive this morning.  Luckily the rain has stopped, and they were able to dry off and begin foraging late this morning.