A quick update because I should be working. Mother Nature is going crazy out there, I’m kind of glad to be indoors.
We checked the bees yesterday. Hive No. 1 no longer has a queen. We didn’t see any eggs and I saw several anomalies that I think are queen “cells” where the hive is attempting to re-queen itself for the second time in as many years. I believe they’ll keep making queens until they find one they like and there you go: new queen. Other than the queen issue, the hive looks strong. We took out two frames of honey out of the top medium super. The other frames in that super had either small amounts of honey or brood in them so we left them in the hive. But because there isn’t much room left, we did add another medium box up top.
It’s a tall hive.
I spotted queens in hives No. 2 and No. 3. right away. Hive No. 2 is nearly filled up with comb, honey and brood so we added the next “deep” to that hive. Hive No. 3 is lagging behind a little so we left it as is.
I did get to taste the honey from hive No. 1 and it tasted like, well it tasted like honey. It’s a nice medium color. Incidentally everything (honey, comb, bees) in hive No. 3 is really light comparatively. It’s interesting to compare and contrast now that we have three hives.
Here’s a frame from hive no. 1
I don’t know enough to say for sure but this may be one of several queen cells being attended to in hive no. 1.
Checking hive no. 1.
Here you can see a frame from hive no. 3. the honey, cells and bees are really light in color.
Walking past the peach trees we noticed we have little peaches growing where there were flowers just a few weeks ago. At least something is growing properly. Fingers crossed we’ll have peaches right out of the gate this year. The service berries are coming in nicely as well.
We have peaches. 🙂
Allegany service berry buds are forming. Actually may be a good crop this year.
The wife’s red oak, that we planted last month, has grown a foot this spring. All the green shoots are new growth.
As I was working today I was distracted by a disturbance on the front porch. A pair of what I believe are ‘Eastern Bluebirds’ evicted the House Finch from its nest. I thought of intervening, and went outside a few times, but in the end I’ll let nature take its course. If the are Bluebirds, then they’re actually a lot rarer than a finch, so maybe it’s okay in the end. I just feel bad because I watched the finches tirelessly build the nest all Spring.
There is another finch nest on the next column down, so not all is lost.
I wish I had a nice zoom lens for my fancy camera. I can’t seem to get a good photo from inside the house of the birds.
What I think are ‘Eastern Bluebirds’ evicted mama House Finch from her nest today.
I wish I had a zoom lens for the nice Canon camera. This is good as I could do. Do you know what kind of birds these are? They are blue in the daylight; I think they are ‘Eastern Bluebirds’
One other note, inside I tried to clean my sink drain. But I can’t get the trap off. The plumbers mounted the pipe too low, so the trap hits the bottom of the cabinet. Turns out most of the excess long hair clogging the drain was accessible from up top. Eventually I’ll have to saw a hole in the bottom of the cabinet to clear the trap and make it removable.
It’s always something around here.
If you know what kind of bird took over the nest, let me know.
nine apple trees 