The bees have been doing well all year. So well, in fact, that we had a swarm in June and still ended up with enough honey for us and some to give away! I'm slightly frustrated with the swarm, though, for the fact that the newly mated queen seems to produce more aggressive workers.
 | ||
| Capped Honey Comb |
 |
| We don't have an extractor, so we do things the sticky way |
 |
| Our first yield |
 |
| Bee's Wax Candles |
Final note on the bees: The girls seem to be on the right path for the winter. We haven't put the entrance reducer on the hive yet, as they seem pretty capable of guarding against mice and such. We tried to put the reducer on one night and both of us got stung in the process. We froze the honey from the super, as it wasn't capped yet, and we'll feed it back to them if they make it to the spring. My hope for the winter is to have a little extra money for a second hive, so we might be able to prevent them from swarming again next year.
Just a few weeks ago I finally started our cob greenhouse. Don't get too excited yet, though. I haven't come to the cob stage just yet. The boyfriend finished digging the rubble trench and I sifted through the removed dirt and came up with a good amount of gravel to put back into the trench. (Our soil is super rocky here) I still have to collect more rocks for the foundation, but I have a lovely friend who has loads of big rocks she does not need, and I've been scouring craigslist for concrete chunks and more rocks. Here's what we've started so far:
Last, but not least, this weekend I searched the free craigslist adds yet again and decided to collect a couple free pallets to make some porch furniture with. Here's the result so far:
 |
| Porch Swing (w/ friendly, seasonal jack-o-lantern) |
So that's all for now. I'll try to update more often. Cheers, and thanks for reading!
