I gots a stick!
Yeah, yeah, Graham, I'll be right with ya...
Going...
Gone.
Friday, May 8, 2009
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Moon Over Miss Aria
Fabulous moon rise this evening.
For a particularly spectacular moon shot, check out Thoughts From The Road.
Yes, I realize I've posted twice today and neither post contains a daily dose of Keebler (and Graham Lamb) cuteness. I have some goodies saved for tomorrow though. I thought we'd show Aria a little love tonight.
For a particularly spectacular moon shot, check out Thoughts From The Road.
Yes, I realize I've posted twice today and neither post contains a daily dose of Keebler (and Graham Lamb) cuteness. I have some goodies saved for tomorrow though. I thought we'd show Aria a little love tonight.
10,000 New Babies!
I've kept an extra bee hive set aside in the hopes that one day I might try to capture a swarm. I honestly figured we'd never use it for anything more than a dust gatherer in the barn, but I got a call about a swarm yesterday. Just around the corner.
"Stella! Want to go get into something?"
The swarm was about 14-16 feet in the air, hanging just off the side of the road. I pulled the truck bed under it, set up a ladder and Jane, Stella and I stared at it just long enough for the first neighbor to show up. Two fearless high school guys. Just what we needed!
I wish we'd had a video camera running or at very least had the camera out. Brandon climbed up on the ladder, I handed him my fancy swarm catchin' cardboard box, he clunked the limb onto the top edge of the box, most of the bees fell into the box textbook style and the rest of them lit into us. We scattered like the LED firework sheep ;-).
Here are the bees we left behind. I'm not sure what happens to them (they left soon after) and I'm sorry we weren't able to get them, but we figured we'd had enough excitement for one day. Hopefully they found a hollow tree or something?
So, now we've got 'em. How do we get them in the hive? For these next pictures, keep in mind that this was our first time to gather and hive a swarm. If you more experienced beekeepers are out there scratching your head, trying to figure out what we were doing, we were temporarily snafu-ed by the fact that our box was smaller than the hive body and we were worried about a bunch of angry bees coming out from the sides when we turned it over.
Interestingly, they were pretty cranky out in the tree - they'd been there at least 2 days and it had rained like crazy on them all morning and early afternoon. However, by the time we got them up the road to Jane's, where we wanted to set the hive, they had calmed down considerably. We didn't know that though and were trying to figure out a safe way to get them from the box into the hive - hence the sheet (Don't spend too much time trying to figure it out).
Eventually we got up our nerve to just uncover the box, turn it over and hope that the bees did the right thing. And they did. And we finally remembered we had a camera with us.
Here I'm trying to ease the inner cover down onto the big mound of bees as they work their way down into the hive body.
There were some stragglers out on the sheet and on a piece of extra cardboard. I set the cardboard up to the hive entrance and sure enough they just walked right in and it wasn't long before all the bees from the sheet were in as well.
We'd removed a couple of middle frames so they'd have some extra room to get into the hive. I was impressed that they didn't seem to mind when I scooted them all over and slid those frames back in.
At the end of the day, I think we were all very impressed with the whole event. We learned a lot that we can hopefully use again at some point in the future. The bees seemed happy to be out of the weather and sipping on some sugar syrup. There is no guarantee a swarm will stay where you put it, but hopefully they'll like their new home next to a beautiful stone wall in an old cemetery on a big farm in central Kentucky with lush alfalfa fields, vegetable and flower gardens, clover patches, fresh water and good company.
"Stella! Want to go get into something?"
The swarm was about 14-16 feet in the air, hanging just off the side of the road. I pulled the truck bed under it, set up a ladder and Jane, Stella and I stared at it just long enough for the first neighbor to show up. Two fearless high school guys. Just what we needed!
I wish we'd had a video camera running or at very least had the camera out. Brandon climbed up on the ladder, I handed him my fancy swarm catchin' cardboard box, he clunked the limb onto the top edge of the box, most of the bees fell into the box textbook style and the rest of them lit into us. We scattered like the LED firework sheep ;-).
Here are the bees we left behind. I'm not sure what happens to them (they left soon after) and I'm sorry we weren't able to get them, but we figured we'd had enough excitement for one day. Hopefully they found a hollow tree or something?
So, now we've got 'em. How do we get them in the hive? For these next pictures, keep in mind that this was our first time to gather and hive a swarm. If you more experienced beekeepers are out there scratching your head, trying to figure out what we were doing, we were temporarily snafu-ed by the fact that our box was smaller than the hive body and we were worried about a bunch of angry bees coming out from the sides when we turned it over.
Interestingly, they were pretty cranky out in the tree - they'd been there at least 2 days and it had rained like crazy on them all morning and early afternoon. However, by the time we got them up the road to Jane's, where we wanted to set the hive, they had calmed down considerably. We didn't know that though and were trying to figure out a safe way to get them from the box into the hive - hence the sheet (Don't spend too much time trying to figure it out).
Eventually we got up our nerve to just uncover the box, turn it over and hope that the bees did the right thing. And they did. And we finally remembered we had a camera with us.
Here I'm trying to ease the inner cover down onto the big mound of bees as they work their way down into the hive body.
There were some stragglers out on the sheet and on a piece of extra cardboard. I set the cardboard up to the hive entrance and sure enough they just walked right in and it wasn't long before all the bees from the sheet were in as well.
We'd removed a couple of middle frames so they'd have some extra room to get into the hive. I was impressed that they didn't seem to mind when I scooted them all over and slid those frames back in.
At the end of the day, I think we were all very impressed with the whole event. We learned a lot that we can hopefully use again at some point in the future. The bees seemed happy to be out of the weather and sipping on some sugar syrup. There is no guarantee a swarm will stay where you put it, but hopefully they'll like their new home next to a beautiful stone wall in an old cemetery on a big farm in central Kentucky with lush alfalfa fields, vegetable and flower gardens, clover patches, fresh water and good company.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
1+1=Cute
Keebler and Graham Lamb were out in the "playground" this afternoon (with Iris and Weaslie babysitting) and I had peeked over the fence and saw them sleeping in one of the "big boy" feed troughs. I was able to run back to the house for the camera, but Keebler got up before I could get focused properly :-/.
You just can't be mad at a face like that though, eh?
Monday, May 4, 2009
Graham Lamb
Keebler has a buddy!
"I guess there's enough grass out here for both of us."
"Why did he have to come here?"
Because you might like having someone your own age to play with, cootie pie.
He wasn't so sure about this. "Um, excuse me, but this is my hay here. And this is my bed, see? And this is my bed too. And this is my food bowl. And this is MY mom..."
Because you might like having someone your own age to play with, cootie pie.
He wasn't so sure about this. "Um, excuse me, but this is my hay here. And this is my bed, see? And this is my bed too. And this is my food bowl. And this is MY mom..."
We all took a little nap together though and Keebler got to keep the number one profile spot and when he woke up, he thought he'd maybe give the new lamb a chance.
"I guess there's enough grass out here for both of us."
"But I still think he's kinda stupid 'cause he wants to sleep on scratchy and pokey ole hay."
This little (BIG) two week old lamb is 3/4 Blue Faced Leicester (BFL) and 1/4 Romney. He came from a very nice fiber farm, Tanglewood (beautiful blog), in Versailles, Kentucky, and I've been looking forward to getting one of Dianne's special sheep for a couple years. I took this lamb sight unseen and was so surprised to see that he too has brown feet like Keebler and has brown ears to match Keebler's brown leg.
I think they'll be good brothers ;-).
I think they'll be good brothers ;-).
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