First major tomato taste test of the season. Find out what the following varieties tasted like and which ones came out on top:
- Heidi
- Anna Russian
- Cherokee Purple
- Pink Berkeley Tie Dye
- Smiley
- Yellow Brick Road
- Emerald City
- Ruby Slippers
- Rosella
- Smiley Eagle
- Ann’s Sweet Pink
Life progression of a Zinnia
Wandered through the garden this morning and caught this progression of the life of a zinnia from initial flower bud to full fledged blossom. It’s pretty neat to see it emerge and unfurl it’s stunning colors.
Retrieving our first swarm
Well, this afternoon we learned what to do when half a hive decides to split and take up residence in the neighbors tree.
Step 1 - position a box under the swarm
Step 2 - shake the tree branch till a majority of the bees fall into the box
Simple as that. Also, the bees are very docile whenever they swarm like this, so you don’t really even need a veil or gloves.
Bees playing in the dirt
One thing we’ve noticed while beekeeping is that our bees like to play in the dirt. Not sure if they’re getting water from this flower pot, or just simply playing in the dirt. Looks like they’re having a good time though.
Week 3 Hive Inspection on 5-9-21 (Hive 1)
Here is our hive inspection from Sunday. We are starting to see new bees hatching on some of the frames. After this week, the populations of the hive is going to start increasing rapidly. One side of a frame contains about 3,300 cells. 5 our our frames were full of brood. That means, in the next week or so, we'll be adding about 30,000 bees to the hive. For reference, we started with 10,500 per hive. That's a LOT of bees! 😳🐝
Week 1 Hive Inspections April 24th 2021
After much anticipation, we finally got to inspect our hives this past Saturday; one week from when we initially installed our bees. Here is some footage from the inspection. Things we learned:
1. You don't need much, if any smoke when inspecting your hives
2. It's much harder than it looks to move frames in and out
3. It is important to remove the queen cage within 24-48 hours of installing your bee package.