Weekend Warriors

Weekend Warrior used to be the term I used when thinking about how I used to get out of my zip code for a few hours on the weekend, taking a break from the home life.  Now that term refers to all the responsibilities I have to tend to on the lil' homestead; honestly, I'm loving it.  Taylor brought home another batch of kitchen scraps for the compost build pile.  We added the bread and apples scraps to the growing pile.  Then we cleaned out all of the leaf litter we throw underneath their coop, which is mixed with much chickity-doo-doo, and added that to the build pile.  When I call this leaf litter "brown material", it is not in reference to the poop, but the yard waste.  Taylor turned the cooking pile into the empty third "U", and we watched as the steam rose into the air.  To call that pile active is the understatement of the year.  Compost, what a wonderful thing to be a part of!

I checked in with the honeybees and they are doing their honeybee thing in full force.  I didn't know that I was suppose to transfer the empty frames from the outside of the hive box to the middle, encouraging the worker bees to fill up each frame.  So I went ahead and did that.  I am feeling a little nervous because the first colony is inhabiting a hive box, called a super, which was given to me from a former backyard beekeeper; he also gave me a bunch of plastic frames.  My trusty beekeeping reference, The Backyard Beekeeper, has informed me that this is a big no-no.  Using equipment that has already housed a bee colony has the potential of passing along any diseases that previous colony suffered from.  So, I removed three of the frames and replaced them with new frames from Bee Kind.  The bees have filled up almost 3/4 of the frames, so I am going to add another super on Tuesday, after I make a quick trip out to my favorite beekeeping supply store, Bee Kind.





One of our hardworkers with full pollen baskets.

 

The bees have created a huge amount of comb on the bottom of this frame.  It's quite impressive, but I'm not sure if I'm suppose to remove it or not.

The bees from one frame have made a "bee bridge" to the next frame over.  Why do they do this??  I don't know.

All in all, I have no complaints, I am loving the sunshine, and am feeling very blessed and very grateful. Happy Farming!