We stayed up late Saturday night so were up a bit later yesterday morning. The storms had moved off and it was a nice sunny morning. I was rather happy to see the sun out since that meant the bees could get moved into their hives.
First thing I did was make up a bunch of sugar syrup and set it outside to cool off. I ended up with over a gallon of syrup.
While I waited for it to warm up for the day I built myself a rack for hanging my extension cords. I have a bucket of these long bolts from the power company when some old lines were removed across our property that they let me have. I drilled four 3/4" holes and tightened the nuts and bolts good and tight.
The bolt head work well as the lip to help keep the cords on the bolts and I have just enough room between each for the cord s to hang. Before I had a piece of pipe across the corner that held all the extension cords but made it really hard to get one off from the middle. I have a bunch more bolts and nuts this size that I will likely use to make more like this for other things around the farm.
Around noon I got everything together, got suited up, got the pollen patties out, syrup in mason jars, and hives opened up.
Each package of bees got poured into the hive and the frames replaced. I popped the cork loose on the end of the queen cage but did not remove it, I am hoping the bees are able to get it the rest of the way out now. The queen cage is on the left side hung from the top of the frame. There was still a good amount of syrup in the can from the package which I placed on a mason jar ring over the center hole of the inner lid. An empty super got put on top and then the lid.
One of the queens in her cage.
The pollen patties got put across the top bars of the box before the lids were put on and the syrup put in place. I am going to give them a few days to get situated before I go checking the queen cages. I am going to keep syrup on them and hopefully they plow through it.
Some of the bees milling about on the pallet in front of the hives. I cleaned everything up an let them be for the rest of the day. By evening they were all in their respective hives save a couple stragglers that were hanging out on the top of the hives.
The next few hours I spent in the tool shed organizing more. I have boxes of misc wire and things that needed to be sorted out a bit. A lot of plastic things that I had saved over the years that I condensed to the more useful and trashed the rest. Lots of stuff has managed to be in overly large containers or boxes and just shifting to smaller sizes saved a good amount of space. It is getting a lot nicer and easier to work in the shed as I get the place cleaned up and organized.
The cherry and nectarine trees are in full bloom in the yard.
The cherry is full of blooms and hopefully the bees mass all over it so they get well pollinated this year. Hopefully we will get a good crop for once.
I had J get a fire going in the pit to grill the steaks that I took out in the morning to to thaw.
The chuck steaks went on to grill while @stryeyz worked on weaving on her loom and the veggies were baking in the oven.
I never got to the last row in the garden as it needs to get holes cut and seeds in the ground for the last row of kale. I plan on doing that today.
Our night time lows are now in the low 40s F so the seeds in the garden should start to germinate well this week and with a 70 F day called for Wednesday I hope to see signs of growth sooner than later. Both boys have school today, I have more cleaning and organizing like always, and I have more fencing that needs to get worked on around the inner yard.
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