Tea time ....

Compost tea and Epson salt tea is probably a big factor why the plants at the Florida Bee Farm are so healthy.  The system can efficiently deliver large amounts of compost and epson salt tea to all the plants.  It's been a work in progress and does have a few bugs to work out.  There is a good amount of sediment in compost tea so it runs through a filter because we don't want the drip irrigation system to get all mucked up with clogged sprinkler/irrigation heads.  And therein lies the problem. 

After running for a bit, the system begins to lose pressure.  When I remove and wash the filter, pressure comes back but it doesn't take long before the filter is clogged again.  This is a problem that needs to be figured out.  So in the meantime I remove the filter and turn on the pump to route the compost tea into the garden hose.  Walking through the gardens and using a hose to apply the compost tea is the next best option for compost tea application.  It doesn't take too long although it's not as easy as allowing it to flow directly through the irrigation system.

After making and delivering the compost tea, the barrel gets washed out and then marries back into the rain collection system to collect rainwater.  When I'm ready to make another batch of compost or epson salt tea all the other barrel's valves get shut off and the tea barrel is ready for another batch and conveniently fresh rain water is already loaded in that barrel and ready to go.

Epson salt tea work without clogging the irrigation system's filter and makes adding epson salts to the plants a breeze.  The system is working pretty good but still needs a few tweaks.

Aquarium bubbler used to aerate the compost

Gentle Honey Bees again

Yesterday was hive inspection day and the influence of the new queens was quite apparent.  The bees are once again a joy to be around and are quite patient and gentle. 

Back in July when I opened up the hives it was quite chaotic with my bad attitude bees.  After doing inspections at least 50-100 stingers would be embedded in my gloves.  The bees would follow and harass at quite a distance.  Just working in the garden or even pulling into the bee yard would bring out the bully guard bees looking for trouble.   Thankfully, that has completely changed with the re-queening.

Now I can work in the gardens without concern and opening up the hives is a calming almost spiritual experience once again.  All 5 hives have plenty of new brood and seem to be thriving.  It looks like they've been dipping into their honey and nectar reserves but the fall nectar flow will be starting any day now so the supers should be filling up with honey again.  No stingers in the gloves, no pelting of bees against the veil and guard bees quickly lose interest when you walk away.  This whole cycle of passive to aggressive to passive was quite an informative lesson in understanding bee behavior.  The aggressive behavior was a combination of several factors.  The summer heat, bees protecting their honey, animals trying to breach the hive, and being queenless will ramp up a colony's apprehension level.  But I think the primary reason for (extreme) aggressiveness is when the a queen mates with an africanized drone to start producing brood (baby bees) with those genes.   My hives have experienced all the above mentioned factors which makes the Bee Farm more prepared for the future.   And as in most lessons, experiencing them firsthand is much better than reading about it in a book or online.   The first year of beekeeping is the toughest they say.  And the most educational.

Beekeeping tip of the day - Propolis

While inspecting one of the hives recently, I noticed the fine aluminum mesh screen covering the hole of the inner hive cover was almost completely sealed with propolis.  Since a feeder was being added to this hive, the screen needed the propolis removed.  The reason for this fine screen mesh is to keep out sneaky hive beetles that creep in through the top of the hive.  The other part of this anti hive beetle strategy is to seal underneath the screened bottom board with a slide out tray of  diatomaceous earth and fine mesh to allow ventilation.  Since implementing, we've gone from being infested with hive beetles to having zero in all hives during the last 3 inspections.  I didn't expect the results to be this dramatic.   It pays to NOT listen to conventional beekeeper books that are basically ignorant of hive beetles habits and their bag of tricks.     

But back to the inner hive cover with the propolis covering the aluminum screen.   Scraping the propolis is impossible and will tear the screen in no time.  Water doesn't work and using any solvents or chemicals is not an option when trying to achieve a completely organic chemical free hive. 

The natural solution actually turned out to be quite easy.  A heat gun was aimed at the wire mesh and a small container was placed underneath the inner hive cover to collect the dripping propolis.  As the propolis heats up, it drips into the collection container.  Simple and efficient.  And it only took a minute or two.

Crazy crazy crazy ...

It's been so busy on the bee front that I just haven't had the heart to write about all that's going on.  Because it's one step forward and three back.   After much work and effort, a good portion of our bees are dead or vanished.  Plus being out of town for a week just didn't allow much time to blog.

To sum up the bee situation.  The hive at home in the backyard is very strong and everything is smooth.  They may even get a honey super next week.

The hives at the bee farm are in pretty bad shape. Only one out of five hives is strong and a survivor.  And one hive has about a 10% chance of making it.  The others are gone.  Varroa mites, hive beetles and wax moths really took their toll.  Pesticides is also a possibility for some of the problems.  AND a virus that may have been introduced by the varroa.

After doing battle with all these bee killing dilemmas, I have learned A LOT.  My next batch of bees will be better prepared to combat all these possible threats.  The bee yard has been resurfaced with crushed shell which will aid in fighting the hive beetle larvae hatching into attacking beetles.  Plus I'm working with another fairly new beekeeper and we're coming up with modifications to the hives that will take into consideration the Florida factor and how hive beetles enter the hive.  Hopefully this will limit the bee losses.  Around the country beekeepers are losing on average 60% of their bees annually.  So far this year in only a few months I've already lost 70% !!!  But I'm in this battle for the long run and will continue to perfect my beekeeping.

And the other reason I'm not blogging is it would be one disaster after another.  The gardening has been consecutive problems one after another.  The way I'm trying to face that is instead of looking at all the plants getting decimated by insects, critters and mold, I'm will positively focus on all the plants that are doing well and thriving.  And plenty of them are doing well.   But the bottom line is that whole thing is also going to have to be rethought.  I tried using natural tonics from Jerry Baker's books to create organic veggies.  Only problem is the tonics don't seem to work and even make things worse sometimes.  So I need to talk to some master gardeners and get some solid advice before the fall planting season.  This summer I'll just focus on ornamentals and work on irrigation and shading some areas.  And that's ok ... another learning process which is how most people learn before getting a beautiful perfect garden.  Just like the bees, it will be much better next year.

We've harvested some honey already.  Tonight we harvested 5 frames of honey on our new motorized extractor.  And it worked great.  The extractor is a good quality American made 6/9 frame extractor.  Quite an extravagance but as I said earlier, I'm in this for the long run.  The frames came from a hive that needed to have the honey super removed.  Their numbers were so decimated that they were spending most of their energy fending off robbers.  No foraging was going on and I'm pretty sure this hive will be done by the end of the month.  No queen, no brood, no foraging .... things look pretty grim.  If I can give them some brood and a queen they may have a chance but that's a longshot.

The magic swarm trap / magic oak tree are unfortunately no longer attracting swarms.  Because I could sure use some more bees around now.