The Rest of the Honey

The supers that we extracted weeks ago were filled again by the bees. Some partially capped ones went back for the bees to finish up for their winter stores.

Lissa did all the uncapping with just the scratcher comb, finding it works the best for a few supers. She uses it to lift off the tops of the cells. In a big operation, that would be too time-consuming, but we are, mercifully, a very small operation. I once was urged to have more hives and the whole thing became no fun at all. Now, one hive is plenty to manage and provides more honey than we need.

We got another thirty pounds of  wildflower honey, bringing the total for the season to seventy pounds.

My method of raising bees is to disturb them as little as possible and let them get on with their lives. They know what they are about and do not need pharmaceuticals to do what they have been doing for ages.

They run the hive in very dark conditions, so pulling the frames out and checking their progress is the equivalent of shining bright lights on the poor things. They don't have eyelids to squint.

Some beekeepers evacuate the honey supers by using a fume board that drives them from the frames. I feel that's sort of like using tear gas. Perhaps the bees feel abused and look for a nice hollow tree where they will be able to breathe. Call me radical, but using the one-way bee escape seems much kinder.

Leaving a super of honey on the hive for the winter seems sensible. It appears greedy to take too much and leave them just enough to barely survive. This approach is definitely not mentioned in the beekeeping literature.

If I'm wrong about how to treat the bees, I will try another track, but this seems to work for now. I have plenty, they have plenty. What they do is miraculous, so who am I to try and manage that?

A Trained Chicken

We left off in our tale of two chickens (April) with Buffy the Buff Orpington spending her days on top of the nest box, to avoid the randy rooster. She would only come down for food and water when I was standing guard. Rupert the Rooster was obsessed with her blondness. The other two hens, out of their tiny minds with jealousy, were not kind to her.

The neighbor dog, Sandy, had snatched her tail feathers off when Buffy  got out of the run. Sandy understood that I was not happy with her behavior. Still, I didn't know if she would find the  loose hen too hard to resist.

Well, it just wasn't much of a life, even for a chicken. She no longer laid whole eggs, just the occasional round yolkless one. Deciding that it was the only thing I could do, I shooed her out of the fence to spend her days in freedom. She had her own water and feed and plenty of greens. She could go under the coop to escape Sandy.

Chickens are notorious dumb clucks, but surprisingly, over about a month, she became trained with bread bits to get out the gate first thing and come in the gate at dusk.  She is so dim that now she has forgotten there was a treat involved. Such a bird-brain.

When I come with the afternoon treats (over-ripe tomatoes) she comes running for her share. There is something terribly comical about a hen running; power-walking thighs and drumsticks..

Now, she is adding her egg to the others in the nest box before leaving for the day. She stays near the run and has a nice spot in the shady tall grass behind the coop fence.

Sandy stays well away from the chicken coop now. She is rewarded with rather a lot of dog biscuits for such a small dog.

My experiment with letting the rooster and two other hens out for greens was not so successful. Looking out, I saw he was leading them on what amounted to a cross-country trip for chickens. I had to lure them back at dusk with a trail of bread crumbs.

Meanwhile, Buffy is enjoying her life on the outside.