What a wild weekend!

I don't even know where to begin!

Last week was so rainy and miserable (I think it actually rained all week.... a double curse and you'll see why!) So this weekend I tried to play catch up! Saturday I really only managed to clean out the chicken coop before it stormed again all day but Sunday was nice enough to be outside!  I started the day with cooking up some s'mores pancakes for the family (recipe to come!) then the clouds finally parted and I headed outside to do a bit of work.

I didn't really have any massive plans, just some gardening, inspecting my bee hives and possibly giving my horse a workout to test out his freshly trimmed feet that got done in the rain on Saturday (those farriers are a tough bunch!).

While I was in the garden helping my mum relocate some currant bushed to the new garden (so the chickens can stop feasting on the leaves....) we heard a pretty strange sound over by the house.... lots of buzzing. Looking over we saw a few THOUSAND bees flying en masse from the hive.

Not good.

Turns out pretty much everything that could have happened for that hive to want to swarm... did. The dandelion "flow" just ended, the weather had been rainy keeping them all in the hive for a few days making them think it was extra crowded, and the final nail in the casket.... I hadn't checked them in over a week. My bad.

So I watched $220 fly away. Crap.

Then I saw them hanging around a tree just at the edge of an area we had recently cleared to move the chicken coop to.

Score!

I called my "bee mentor" from our newly formed local beekeepers association and got together some necessary items to catch a swarm!

Before Tim showed up I laid a tarp under where the swarm had finally settled (thankfully it was only a bout two meters off the ground, this could have been a lot worse!), and brought out a pair of tree nippers, a pair of supers, one empty and one full of frames, a lid and a bottom.

Tim arrived, followed shortly by Susan (another member of the club who has had bees for a year now) and we got to work.

Turns out that capturing a swarm isn't as hard as I'd feared. We positioned the two supers (one full of frames on the bottom, the empty one on top) on the tarp under the swarm and Tim climbed up a ladder to slowly cut branches until he had a handful of small sticks with a few hundred bees attached to it (the Queen should be somewhere in the middle of the bees so it was crucial that they stay as undisturbed as possible so the Queen ended up in the hive!). I took the bee covered sticks from Tim and carefully laid the works on top of the frames. We lidded it and ratchet strapped the bottom, supers and lid all together (to be easier to move later)... and that's it!

The only other important piece of material I haven't mentioned yet is the queen excluder. Normally when you see a hive the queen excluder goes on top of the brood super (or supers if you have two)... but in the case of this swarm, the excluder was on the bottom, between the bottom board and the bottom of the bottom super. This means that all the worker and drone bees could come and go but the Queen was stuck. The reason for this is that the Queen might not be happy yet with this new location, so she needs a bit of time to get used to her new home. That's assuming she's in there! I went back after the lid was on a few hours later and saw that bees were coming and going just like they do with my other hives... She's in there!

After all that I now have three hives! One very strong one and two that are a little smaller (one with a bunch of brood and starting in on honey production, the other... thanks to Susan has one frame of honey, one frame of brood combs drawn but empty.... but nothing else! That's what you get for swarming right before the honey flow!!)

I'm going to be leaving original hive alone for a couple more days then I'll be getting in there to look for a Queen. I think I saw my original marked Queen in the new hive so I have to make sure that there is another Queen in her place in my old hive. I have spread the brood out in both of my original hives and given them something to think about in these last couple weeks leading up to the honey flow.

I learned a very important lesson in all this though! You can't procrastinate on a farm. When you need to get into your hive, get in there before they swarm! When you need to fix the fence, mend it before the livestock gets on the road!



photo borrowed from mainbee.com which is actually a BRILLIANT resource for swarm capture!!

Happy Solstice!!

Ok so I'm a couple days late, sorry! With the busy weekend I had I am just now looking at some photos I snapped over the warm weekend! Hope the weather is as beautiful where you are as it is here (even the rain we've been getting is beautiful!).

Have a couple pretty flowers!

Pink Lady Slippers are more common here but there were three of these beauties hiding on the property!

A Tiger Lily was growing near the road too!

Free the chicks!

The forecast for this weekend called for rain, rain and more rain, but for a weekend with rain scheduled, it was pretty dry! Precipitation managed to hold off until this morning (at 5:30am! It woke me up!), so I took advantage of the nice weather and got some yard work done.

But before the rakes came out I freed the chicks!

My poor little babies (who REALLY aren't babies anymore!) were left to fend for themselves for an hour before bed on Saturday then they joined the big girls in the coop for the night.

I realized that the bottom wrung of the roost is just a little too thick for the chicks to hang onto when I went in at 5am to put them back in their tractor for a few hours... they were all sleeping in a pile in the nesting boxes!

On Sunday I freed the chicks from the tractor again and they got the lay of the land. There was a little bit of squabbling with the hens, but for the most part they kept to themselves (except when one of the little roosters decided he wanted to get "down to business" with one of the bigger hens... not yet little guy!!). I trusted them all together and went in for a late breakfast (which of course was fried eggs and toast!).

While I was helping my parents sort out their garden we realized that I was down one chick! I walked around the house, behind the garage to the creek and even along the pipeline which cuts through the middle of the 25 acre property... still no chick! I went back to work (even though my parents thought I should have kept looking). I told my folks that either a) it got picked up by something while we were inside having breakfast (which I thought unlikely since we would have heard, also there were no feathers in the yard) or b) it went for a walk and was taking its time coming home. Either way, it would or would not come home... That's how free range works!

After about two hours I figured I'd be down a chick... even the hens never left the yard for more than an hour... and they always went in a group for their longer outings. My mum went back into the bush to look for it and on my way to the compost pile with a load of manure and hay, guess who came strutting from who-knows-where behind the garage! I guess there must have been some good bugs back there!

My new "puppy"!

One more bonus! This little guy (not the one who went on a hike, but it's twin) seems to be more friendly than your average chicken! It comes over to me and looks up at me like a dog does (which to me, quite plainly says "pick me up.... pick me up!")... so I do! It just relaxes in my arms and on Saturday I sat in the coop with it for a bit, while it tried out the roost, then perched on my arm, then sat in my lap, then tried the roost again.... I'm hoping that it stays this friendly... everyone should have a pet favourite chicken!



 

Chicken selfies are the best selfies!

I guess it was a bit premature...

Last nights little bunny died in my lap today. Might have been traumatized or injured internationally by the dig I saved it from last night... Either way I'm pretty upset by this little loss. 

I'm trying to bit blame myself and remind myself that farmers don't cry... Sometimes farming sucks. 

I'm hope it's not premature...

I rescued a baby bunny from the neighbours dog this evening, it's still a little young to be on its own... The neighbour thought it would be a good idea for me to take on the little guy... Here's hoping it stays strong!!

The little cutie is sleeping on my chest at the moment (I can't help myself!) this is definitely a cuter aspect of farming.