Today I hope.
I have placed a red rug underneath the hives so that the weeds don’t grow through but now that I think abut it maybe I should turn that upside down. Can bees see red? I can’t remember. I shall look it up and fix that before I load the bees in.
Yesterday was dark and cold with rain and snow. Snow that flew past at a terrible face biting speed, on the way to somewhere else in a great hurry.
It was a rotton day yesterday.
Big Hugs. Today is dawning fine and clear, maybe we will even have sun after almost a week of rain and cold weather. Will spring come now?
Good morning. Daisy had her first once a day milking yesterday. I brought her in for a morning feed, her homeopathic anti-mastitis remedy and a good clean and check of her udder. Then I milked her in the afternoon. So far so good. I do hope that this time she will transition without any trouble. The sheep are out on the grass and after a few dry days I will let Queenie and her crew have a few hours of green grass a day. Though not until the ground is dry enough to take their weight.
This weekend the little chicks will come out of the basement and into their own outside run.
I shall get busy now and after feeding and managing my morning chores, I will finish the set up of the hives, load my sprayer with sugar water, and off we will go to collect the new bees. It is only about an hour away. I will pop you all under my arm and take you and camera house with me. We will have an outing today and I will show you the pictures tomorrow.
I hope you are all going to have a lovely, lovely day. Already I am enjoying this one!
your friend celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
54 responses to “Waiting on the bees”
Fingers crossed for a lovely sunny springtimey day – just right for bringing bees home 🙂
All the best to you and the bees, C!
One day you will be able to get some too, just not quite yet i think.. hope you and angel are having a lovely morning, i bet you get out in the gardens!.. c
We now have the Niko as well…he and my daughter are with us for a while. It’s been an interesting week…
You house is heaving with little ones, what an exhausting joy that must be! c
I’m fairly sure its blues and maybe yellows for bees. Hope all goes well with the new arrivals!
Christine
Morning christine, i do hope you are having a lovely warm weekend, you will be winding that B&B up again soon? c
Just dribs and drabs of guests since Easter, but May is looking quite busy. A gentle ‘launch’!
Christine
No, Bees can’t see red. We are 16C (60F) grey wet and have had two rainy days here. Freezing for us, but have decided I can’t complain after horrible winter and spring you have all had 😦 Looking forward to seeing the bees arrival on the Farmy. Laura
Morning laura, you are allowed to complain, we sure do!!! c
Good morning Celi I have sun up already in all its glory slight wind will be an awesome day may your bees be blessed as we pray for you and the bees.
have a blessed day. mike
Morning mike and missy, I am thrilled that you all have sun too, are the girls milking honey once a day yet? I push pop over to missys to see.. c
Good luck installing the bees, Celi. Mine arrived Tuesday morning and I feel so sorry for the little beggers….coming up here from the sunny South to freezing temperatures and little in bloom for them around me. I use a black stall mat under my hive with I cover with grass clippings when it gets hot. Here’s to being surrounded by bees again 🙂
Jan in Eastern Illinois
Good idea to use the grass clippings, and lets hope both you and i have a good summer for bees, once my clover starts to flower i breathe a sigh of relief, it will be a while yet, are you feeding sugar water?.. c
Yes, and they are going through it at a great rate. You’re so lucky to be able to find bees locally. Everything here seems to be holding it’s breath, just waiting for the temperature to warm up (again) so it can burst into bloom.
We’re ready .
I’m excited about your bees Celi ! One of our hives did not make it this first year, but the other is thriving. So we will get a new queen the end of this month and take 3 frames from our strong hive and put them in a hive with our new queen, and hopefully it will become a strong hive too.
We are so looking forward to eating our own honey this year!!! I’m not sure about bees seeing color. Here is what I just read. ” A bee’s color vision ranges from ultra violet (which we can’t see) to yellow/orange. To a bee, red will appear the same as black, but they will be able to see any ultra violet reflected from what is to us a red (or black) surface. So, I’m thinking it probably doesn’t make a difference which side it up. Have a fabulous Saturday! Di PS: We are so looking forward to eating our own honey this year!!! xoxo
can you identify your queen from the strong hive?. How will you know that you are not moving her too.. I could never find my queens, hopefully this year I will be better at it. Yes i read that too, red is the only colour they do not see, it just looks like dark green i guess, How do people know this? Anyway, I think it will be alright.. now how are all the little piglets, no losses?.. c
The piglets are just precious Celi!!! Soooo adorable!!! All six are big, strong and healthy. What was simply awful was the castration!!! Yes, we did it ourselves after watching Youtube videos. On the first little guy we followed one video and cut on one side and got both testicles out that way. But we had to cut too deep, and it took too long and it was traumatic for all of us. Probably even more so for us than him! They squeal the whole time! Anyway, we felt so terrible after that we put off doing the other one (thankfully we only have 2 boys!) until later in the day. We found another video that was much, much easier, faster, and cleaner. So the 2nd castration went much, much more smoothly (Thankfully!!!) and the little guy healed up in about 2 days. Our first one is almost healed now. Quite a traumatic day!!! But at least we know what we are doing now! It will always be a chore that is not relished, but we know we can do it quickly and easily and that they will heal quickly. Did I tell you we have finally found a heritage Gloucestershire Old Spot Boar and he and another female Old Spot will arrive next week??? Looks like we are getting into the heritage pig business!!! 🙂
Oh you really are pig farmers now!!! excellent, do you have any buyers for your piglets, I intend to start advertising the moment I am sure Charlotte is pregnant.. c
What we must do is to find out the prices in the area. How do you do that in your area??? We only have to sell 2 this time, as 4 are already spoken for. You are just going to love Charlotte’s piglets!!!
Good luck with the bees Celi. Hope you get some decent weather soon.
I think today is going to be a pearl! you have a lovely day too barb.. c
I always read about people using sugar water for their bees. Do you know if there is a reason that honey water isn’t used instead? We’re still milking 2x a day. As long as she does well I don’t plan on drying her up. She’s still giving over 3 gallons a day. We’ll milk her until 2-3 months before she calves. That is if we can even get her bred! Hoping to try for a late June or early July breeding.
I am going for the same, with the breeding, then we will get spring calves, hope you can find someone to breed her for you.. c
This is all frightfully scientific, mixed in with the bee lore. I hope you have a wonderful time and that all goes well. If I could send you some of our sunshine and clear blue sky, I would. I have planted loads of stuff in pots to make the verandah look nice, but that’s the limit of my gardening nowadays.. After that, I slept for four hours in the armchair!
Well it’s mighty sunny here in Chicago so chances are its beautiful there too.. I love all this talk about bees and queens.
Am also thinking you have one huge wall for a chart to keep straight who goes where each day: chicks up, peahens down, pigs out, daisy in, Blue under, lambs over. Or just plain EVERYBODY OUT!
I am working on everybody OUT, i guess the peahens will be the last out.. c
I am really curious how someone figured out what colors bees can
and cannot see…..anyway, C I hope your bees settle in well .!
Cheers to bees and spring and sunshine !
Both bees and dogs will have trouble distinguishing red from the surrounding green grass. Bees vision is mostly based on ultraviolet.
all good then, as long as they don’t think there home is above a bottomless pit..morning bill.. c
An outing is always nice..a little break. Then when you return you will have bzzzzzzzzzz new friends and we will have an adventure! It’s cold here again and is supposed to rain…April showers bring May flowers they say…I wonder if April snow bring any flowers. We heard that lots of the fruit trees in the area were actually heavily damaged in our February in April weather. My heart goes out to the poor orchard people. When I grew up Eckert and Cedaredge were loaded with orchards (I lived on a huge one) now mostly all the orchards are sub-divisions, but there are still a few.
Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com
http://deltacountyhistoricalsociety.wordpress.com
Bees, how exciting! I saw my first bumble bee of the season today, happy days !