Tobacco

The best thing about being stung is that I get to try to figure out new ways to deal with it. I don't have a pulmonary reaction; no anaphylaxis. I do seem to swell up at the site some however. the site turns red and is a bit hot to the touch. But, there really isn't any pain, at least there hasn't been any yet.

I got two stings on my neck. I haven't quite figured out how the bees got inside the veil, but I now understand the phrase, "a bee in your bonnet." The top photo is of the sting on the back of my neck. It has swollen to the size of a very small egg (in diameter at least).

The second photo is the sting on the front of my neck. It is about the same, but the red has gone down my chest some. It is the one I can actually see, so I understand it best.

The one on my ankle (the third photo) didn't really do much at all. In part, I think the sock kept the bee from burrowing the stinger in as deep.

The bigger question, is of course, how to treat these stings. Eventually, beekeepers build up an immunity to the toxins. Or perhaps they just develop a biochemistry that isn't as reactive, which is technically not the same. It occurred to me, at Eric's suggestion, that I ought to take some tobacco and use it as a salve. I'm trying to use it with judgment and skill, which is hard since I don't really have much background.

The good part is that we live in a tobacco neighborhood. There are 3 tobacco fields near the house. I've noticed in years past that leaves often fall off the trucks and can be found laying on the side of the road. So, on my way home from work today, I kept my eyes open as I drove by all three fields. Only one of them had some leaves laying to the side. The big harvest hasn't happened yet. I talked Jenna into jumping out of the car to rescue some for me.

I've never figured out exactly how to use tobacco. This is its only proper use, but my ability to use it properly is not yet developed. In the past, I've tried just laying the leaf on the affected area. That hasn't worked too well. Today, I thought I would take the brown part of the leaves that had already become crispy, chop them up and mix them with lotion that we have kept from hotel visits.



It's not awfully attractive, but it is staying on my neck. I think next time, I will try to totally pulverize it. If I had a mortar and pestle, that would do the trick. Then mix it with lotion so that it is smoother.

The final issue is how to judge whether or not it has had any effect. Since I'm not in pain, that can't be the measure. Size is hard to judge. Maybe I will rely on Kathy's judgment.

Doug's Angry Bees

My buddy Doug is moving to Memphis. FedEx closed his position in Greensboro and so the move to Memphis is the result. He was originally going to try to take his bees with him, but there were too many things happening. So I told him I would take them. He came over and made a spot in my natural area. It's where I'm going to move one of my hives from Clarence's when it's time, so this is a good preparation for it. Doug will take them to his new place in February when they are pretty much dormant.

He brought them over this evening. One or more of his hives were not pleased to be moved. Doug had been stung at his house before arriving here, so he was a magnate for his angry bees. He must have had 20-25 stings by the time he was done. They transferred their anger to me as well. I got stung twice on my neck and once on my ankle. They followed us all the way from the natural area into the garage.

I am now lathered with and ingested of benedryl. Once the stingers came out, the pain has subsided, but the stings feel hot. Alas, no anaphylaxis. I hope they settle down a bit. Fortunately, being in the natural area keeps them away from a lot of stuff.

It's amazing what we will do for those we love! Doug does love his bees!

Water Flow

I had Jenna help me with a little test today. The question was, "How much water flows through the hose when different numbers of barrels are engaged?" I took a quart canning jar out and, when I started filling the jar, Jenna started the stop watch on her cell phone. She timed until the jar was full. Here are the results.

Hoses Opened	1	2	4	8
Seconds to Fill a Quart Jar	17	14	14	14
Gallons per Minute out the Hose	0.88	1.07	1.07	1.07
Gallons per Minute per Barrel	0.88	0.54	0.27	0.13

It is clear that the second input adds a bit to the overall flow of the hose, about 20%. However, above the second hose, there is no benefit to flow into the garden. Having 4 or 8 barrels feeding the water did not yield an increase. At the same time, adding more barrels did decrease the per barrel flow to the Y connector.

My conclusion is that I will get the best results from using two barrels at a time, perhaps for multiple rounds or at least until they have been significantly depleted. Then switching to different barrels on a subsequent round. After a round is completed, I plan to open all the lines so that the emptied barrels can refill, further helping keep the hoses clean of junk.

Looking at the barrels, I saw that my water from the air conditioner had turned yellow. I disconnected it. Something must be growing in that hose as well. Probably due to the fact that it has to travel uphill a bit to get to the point where it is disgorged into the master barrel.

Honey Pests

It's yellow jackets. They are the pests.

I set the equipment and supers after extracting honey out into the yard. Bees immediately found the stuff and began cleaning it off. But I guess I left it too long, or maybe this is a normal part of the process, but I got hordes of yellow jackets, too. After the bees had long gone, the yellow jackets hung around.

I finally went out in the yard with my bee suit on to carry some of the equipment away. The yellow jackets followed and seemed to find me more interesting than the equipment. So I stood there for 30 minutes, waiting for them to get on my arm or belly where I could kill them. I probably got a couple of dozen. It didn't put a dent in their colony. It just felt good.

Now that the equipment is gone and the wax more or less cleaned up, I see just a few. It will help next year if I have a hive in my own yard again. Then I can put the supers back on the hives. I will remember (I hope) to move everything further away from the house.

Beans and Water

The middle of August is not usually the time to start planting. Most people are probably slowing down and just putting their garden to rest. I decided to keep things going. This is especially true because I hired to young men from church to help clean things up and (eventually) process the new horse manure I got.

I had them clean out one of the beds in which I had raised onions and garlic. It had gone to weed mostly. They brought in 8 loads of manure using the small barrow. It filled the bed to the brim. All that was left of me was to use the garden fork to turn it, fertilize, plant and water. (More about water in a moment.) I planted blue lake beans, 4 per square foot yesterday morning.

I had actually found enough ambition prior to their help to clean out the other onion bed by myself and plant Lima beans. The Limas have now sprouted. About 90% came up. Of these, I lost another 2-3% to animals taking off the first leaves. They seem to be growing well. I planted Limas at this time another year and had a fine harvest. Since I will probably be eating them by myself, there will surely be enough. I have more seed, but don't feel the need to fill out the bed.

Now about the water. When i was watering the blue lake bean bed, I sensed that, once again, I was not getting the water pressure I expected. I've had this happen before and found that it was the nozzle I was using that seemed to be the problem. I took off the nozzle and got a little better result, but it made me curious about whether or not there was something else going on.

I went to the place where the hoses all meet. In the past, I found a bit of blockage where the hoses meet the Y connector. I disconnected the hose that ran from the connector to the garden so I could see what was coming out and systematically eliminated all hoses but one and opened up that one's line and let the water run. When I did this, the water that came out of each was initially pretty dark with junk. Probably some sort of algae.


Here's what I think. The junk doesn't wash away because the water pressure is too stable and the flow is too slow when I turn on the hose. After all, there are 8 barrels feeding the one hose and the size of the connectors and size of the nozzle reduce what can go through the system at any given moment. So, algae start to grow in the hoses. The water pressure is probably even lessened a bit because there is junk growing in the hoses.

When this will become a potential real problem will be when (if ever) I finally get a slow drip system installed in the garden. Then the water will flow evenly, but slowly and junk will grow.

In the short run, one solution might be to cut off all but one or two barrels and just take water from those barrels. The water would flow faster through those hoses when they were in use. And, when the entire system was opened back up, the pressure of the backwash as the barrels filled back up again may help further clean out the hoses. Overall pressure during the partial shut down might be a little less, but I can live with that. I may only need to do this periodically as preventive maintenance. The other solution is to pour chlorine bleach into the system to kill the algae. Not a good idea. If the water in the hoses is as stagnant as I think the chlorine might not get where it was needed and there are doubtless environmental impacts I would rather not have.

3 gallons

I pulled two supers last Saturday, one from each of my hives. I left them in the Volvo wagon, partly because there they wouldn't attract other bees who would start robbing honey and partly because I was lazy or busy (I can't remember). I had intended to spin them out last Saturday, but Doug hadn't finished spinning his own out and, toward the end, he started getting stung quite a bit because he couldn't keep the bees out of his garage. We knew it was time to quit. I picked up the extractor on Monday, but didn't get to any spinning. By Wednesday, Red came by to mow the lawn and noticed that something was leaking in the back of the Volvo. So, I clearly left the hives there too long.

I pulled the supers into the garage and made sure I kept the doors closed. I put tin foil under the supers to gather any honey that leaked out (and there was a bunch leaking). Thursday I had a church meeting that went until late. I think I got home at 11:15. So, my major work started on Friday morning, when I spun out the frames.

I ended up with three gallons of honey out of a small and medium super. The small super actually provided more because there were no brood frames. I should have check frames before I pulled the super. Actually, I did check on the top super, but the comb had not been capped, so I went one below and didn't check on that one. Next year, if I can remember, I need to check all the supers I pull, frame by frame to see if there is any brood. i should pull those that have any brood and put them together into one super.

I gave three quarts to Clarence, my arrangement with him is to give him a quarter of the hone for keeping the hives on his land. I've bottled the rest and let the bees and yellow jackets clean off everything that is left on the surfaces of whatever I used to extract. This year's honey is quite a bit darker than my previous batch. I'm not sure why. It tastes just as good.

Tomatoes in the Pantry

For us, tomato season is over. The leaves have all gone small, then spotted, then brown. There is no more (or at least very little) fruit that has not turned orange or red and been harvested. And, I think I can say it without offense, Kathy and I are tired of canning tomatoes.

I took stock of what we have in the pantry. There are 34 quarts, some of it in pint jars, of canned tomatoes. We have 4 quarts of chili sauce, a quart of spaghetti sauce, 3 quarts of tomato sauce, a quart of tomato paste, and a couple of quarts of tomato juice. It hasn't been a bad year.


I have also saved seeds. I used a fermentation method I found on the web. I saved, Hungarian Heart from the one plant that survived early planting. I also saved Italian Heirloom, John Baer, and Rutgers. The Rutgers didn't grow well, even though I planted pretty hardy looking plants from the Farmer's Market. I hope I don't have wilt in the bed they were planted in. Next year, I will have to plant them in a different place. I think that for canning, Rutgers and Italian Heirloom have been the best. If the John Baer would just get a bit bigger, they would be very nice because they have small stems and easy to remove skin.

manure and compost

I pulled the onions that had gone to seed in one of my beds. The replacement crop is going to be Lima beans. I noticed that the soil level had dropped about 3" from where it was originally. Some of it is just because it has become compacted a bit. But I can't help but think some of it disappears into the plants that it supports.

I put what was left from one compost bin into the soil as I prepared it. Eight loads in the small cart, probably not filled all the way to the top. It raised the soil level back to where it had been a year or so again. Of course, mixing it helped a little to as it freed up the soil a bit.

Then, out of the blue, Jessica told Kathy that the farm where she manages horses had manure ready to pick up. I got a trailer full. It is pretty lumpy and dry. I really want to run it through the shredder/chipper and mix it with other things that have been thrown into the compost bin in the past six months. I expect it will take another six months to be ready. At least that's the way things have gone in the past. It sounds funny to say it, but I'm glad to have manure again.

Different Kind of Split

It had been weeks since I went into the hive. Clarence needed to cut the grass in front and he had been stung a while back. I also had left an entrance reducer in on the swarm hive (No need to leave a colony vulnerable because the entrance is too big when they are weak.) But, the hive had grown strong and it was time to pull the entrance reducer out. I also wanted to see how crowded things had become. So I gave Clarence the spare veil and we went in.

The bees were indeed starting to show signs of being crowded. In both hives, the top set of frames were drawn and loaded with honey. I went back today and added extra boxes to each. None of the frames are drawn and I don't expect them to change much between now and when we harvest. But they have more room.


I noticed one thing that was very odd. The swarm hive had a lot of bees hanging around the back. At first, I was just totally confused, wondering if my smoking them had driven them back there. Then I realized that the brood box doesn't sit quite right on the bottom board. There is a small crack -- a different kind of split if you will -- that runs around the back corner. The photo below is actually of the right rear (facing from the front) corner of the hive. The crack is very slim, but it is enough to let them out and they seem to really like hanging out there. I'm not sure how this happened exactly, or how I will fix it, or if I will fix it. The hive seems happy otherwise.