Neighbors, and Bees, and City-Inspectors, Oh My!!

I came home from work today and started working in my Garden that sits next to my Hives. About ten minutes later a City pickup pulled up out front. I can't say I've been waiting for this day, but it wasn't overly surprising to me either. The city worker inside walked up and asked if he could look at my Hives, Well they were sitting right there 10 feet in front of him. As a matter of fact they sit in full view of the street. Anyway, he just mentioned that a neighbor had called and was wondering if I needed to move the Hives at all. Apparently the neighbor told the City that the bees were "Attacking" them while they were mowing and working in the Yard. I told him, that that was rather strange since the Guard bees couldn't even see the neighbors yard. I work out in my garden that is 5 feet away from the "View" of the guard bees and they rarely even mess with me, and even then they just come up and say hi, sometimes landing on my arm and take a sniff. I also told him that my son literally runs our lawnmower right against the fence that sits 6 inches from the bees, but since they are blocked by a tarp they don't ever mess with him either. Well apparently the Inspector from the city has seen a few hives in his time. He said "Well they look to be at least 10 feet from your neighbors fence and I don't see any reason why you'd need to move them." I pulled out my Beekeepers License from the state, he glanced at it, and told me to have a good afternoon. I am thankful to see Bee friendly authoritarian figures in the world. Especially in my local world lol.


You can see the neighbors fence to the Right, And the back part of the fence that my son Mows past.

Mulch Ado about Nothing!

Slowly but surely. The weather here has been pretty stormy off and on over the past month. Not only has it kept my bees in doors (Their house not mine.) It has thrown several monkey wrenches on me getting my garden ready for summer. Now I'm mostly a pretty patient guy, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna wait too long for my Tasty Tomatoes to ripen later this Summer LOL. Anyway, I've gotten quite a lot done this week on my Square Foot Garden Area Version 2.0. Here is a Pic I took this evening when I was wrapping up for the day.

First big Inspection

Honey Bee Hives require inspection periodically. At least that is what all the books and online experts say. I kind of wonder how all those wild bees made it without having some funny looking guy in a space man looking suit coming along and prying them open occasionally. Anyway, the thought is to make sure the queen is laying, and the bees are drawing out honeycomb like they are supposed to be doing. In addition, during inspections you can look for any Bee pests that are trying move in and give the Bees a hard time. Apparently with all the modern bee keeping techniques the bees have lost some of their natural resistance and protection to certain things in the environment. Many beekeepers have changed some of the things that have contributed to the problems, and have attempted to go back to Natural methods of Bee raising. That is, getting rid of a lot of the chemicals and pesticides in the hive, Allowing the bees to raise their own queens from local mated bees, and also allowing them to make their own Honey comb. I will attempt to try a lot of these things. Because I think Even Bees should go "Green"... Ironically. (Shouldn't they have just stayed green from the beginning?) Anyway, Below is a Video from my first Inspection last week.

The Bee Pub!

Bee's get thirsty too, well they don't drink Beer (lucky for me), But they do need lots of water especially when it starts getting warmer, So I decided to sit down and build them a "watering hole".

Drove up North and picked me up some ladies!

About 10,000 of them anyway. On April 20th me and my son, drove up to Logan to pick up our Honey Bees. I ordered them in February as "Nuc's". Nuc is short for Nucleus Hive. This is One of three ways that most people start off as a Beekeeper. The other two is buying a package which is basically a box made of screen filled with three pounds of female worker bees, and a queen in her own small cage (Because she is normally not the mother of the bees, so they need a few days to get used to her, if not they might kill her before accepting her.) And, the third is catching a swarm. Swarm's can occur in the spring and usually are a result of the spring buildup of the hive that is pretty rapid. If the bees are not given enough room to expand and feel crowded they will raise a new queen and approx half of the hive will swarm (Go find a new Home.) In all the horror movies featuring bees, the swarm is what you need to watch out for. Actually, in reality when bees swarm that is when they are at their tamest and if you find them before they establish a new home they are rather easy to capture and transfer to your own hive. The first way that I mentioned is the Nucleus hive, and this is what I chose to go with. Basically The Apiary (beefarm) will allow a hive to raise a virgin queen, they will allow her to mate, and then throw her into a 5 frame mini hive with some worker bees (either made out of wood like a big hive or a waxed cardboard box.) They will do this about a month before the buyer is scheduled to pick up the bees. During this time the Queen will lay eggs and establish brood, while the workers build up comb, work out in the fields and bring in honey and pollen. That way by the time I picked up my bees they were already established into their own Nucleus Hive... Nuc. We brought them home, set up our Hive boxes and basically just opened up the cardboard boxes and transferred the frames over to our hives. Then we added a few empty frames for the bees to fill up and left them to their work. I installed the first nuc, and while taking Video I allowed my 17 year old son Rodney to install the second one...

Starting from Scratch? or The Easiness of Square Foot Gardening

The whole point of Square Foot Gardening (Per the book) is that once you invest the initial time into preparing the boxes and soil, it makes the rest of your gardening easy. That being said I tried square foot gardening last year, and I liked it. And I did really well with it. However, I built some boxes and set them "over here", and built some other boxes and put them on stilts "over there" then as things grew I thought 'Next year maybe this will work better "over there", and maybe those boxes on stilts will do better on the ground "over there". And I could add some more boxes that will get full sun all day "over there" and that will make my Tomatoes go crazy. So I'm sure in theory Square foot gardening can be and is easy once established. But my mind isn't easy and its never idle, and this year not only did I want to add more space and move all the stuff around that I did last year, I also decided to get me a few garden helpers. So I drove up to Logan and picked me up a few ladies, well for a price. Now don't worry I got them for a good price approx .02 cents a lady. I got about 10,000 of them. Honey bees that is. So now I'm a gardener AND a Beekeeper.

I started Square Foot Gardening last year, and I really enjoyed it. This year I will be expanding my garden and moving things around some. I will try to post a Video here from last year showing my garden boxes and tomatoes growing up trellises 8 feet in the air.

Micro Ag and BurbFarming

Seems like there have been a multitude of movements covering backyard farming, gardening, beekeeping, raising chickens etc. Even in the big city you have folks stashing chickens and bees on their roof and growing tomatoes off of their balconies. In my opinion (and I have many) they are doing this to try and get back some of what we have lost when we all packed up and stuffed ourselves into the towns and cities. Well I don't want to start a movement, I have my political opinions and ideas, but I'm hardly "Political" by any means. I just want to do whats fun and enjoyable to me. There are a lot of things in life that you can do that causes a lot of sweat and dirt and sore muscles at the end of the day that you really don't enjoy. However yard work, and gardening etc. Is a hobby I found that I can get all of those thing and still enjoy at the end of the day. Also I like to build things, and invent things. Not necessarily for the act of inventing either. If I need something I'll walk around and brainstorm till I find enough tools and objects to throw together what I am making. Its not always pretty but usually its functional. For example: The handle on one of the toilets in my house broke a few years ago. I walked out into the garage and found some tools, I knew what it would take to fix it... Roughly. I just needed to find something that would work. Turns out an old spoon in my kitchen drawer fit the bill. Well that spoon is still sitting there as the inside workings to that toilet years later. Like I said I don't want to start a movement or change the world. I just want to have fun and enjoy what I do. So when I use words like MicroAg and BurbFarm I'm just taking the spoons I find in the drawers of my mind and using them in unforeseen ways.