Quick Swarm

After church today, I got a call from Clarence. One of his grand daughters, Catherine, was walking in his backyard and saw a swarm in his youngest apple tree. I thought I had taken care of the risk of a swarm when I split the hive and added a super. Evidently the bees didn't agree.

So I dropped everything and went to Clarence's. Fortunately, the swarm was located on several smaller branches of the tree, easily within reach. They were heavy enough to have bent the branches, so the swarm wasn't a small one. But then, I'm not that exerienced with swarms to know if they are all about the same size. Clarence took his loppers and cut the branches. He actually had to do it twice because there was a sizable swarm still left on a branch that wasn't cut the first time.

Before I left to go over to Charence's place, I had to rescue some hive parts. This is where I should have been a bit more diligent in taking care of things last year when the moths took out the hives in my yard. I was just upset and, assuming that I would not need them again, I left the base and brood box and telescoping cover in the yard. I had new foundation on frames that were in the garage. This is not the way to start a hive, but it was the best I could do on short notice. Fortunately, I had a small super that was drawn out so the bees will have a place to store honey when they start foraging. I plan on returning tomorrow and swapping out some brood frames from other hives to give the queen a place to start laying eggs (other than in the supers).

Of course, I'm not totally sure the queen was with the rest of the bees when I shook the branch into the hive, but I presume she was. They seemed content to have a hive to be in.

So, now I have three hives. I had already planned to go in tomorrow to check them out. I hear the nectar flow is very good. I hope I have enough supers to supply them. Doug has offered to help out.

The only other comment I want to make was that it must be very humid outside. I came back home totally drenched from the half hour of work.

Slow Tomato Progress

Gardening is a always a philosophical endeavor. It is entirely practical, of course. But when you fail, like I seem to do often, it makes you stop and think. I'm not sure thinking does me any good, but I'm bound to do it anyway. I've taken stock of the state of my tomato plants. Here is my brief report and analysis.

I have one strong Hungarian Heart plant (shown on top) and smaller one planted last week (not shown). The strong one seems to be doing everything I would want a plant to do. i am hoping the smaller one will survive and starting growing new leaves soon. I've planted two seeds directly in the garden in hopes that something might happen. I understand what my problem has been. I planted the first batch too soon, probably the second batch, too. But I think there is another problem that I need to figure out how to address if I am going to start tomatoes from seed. I think the planting mix I used is very low on nutrients. There was just too much yellow instead of green from the moment the plants got true leaves.

My pride aside, I want tomatoes. So, for the other 12 spots in that raised bed, I went to the Farmer's Market and bought some Rutgers, which I planted yesterday evening. They plants (second photo) also have a little yellow in the lower leaves, but they are hardy otherwise and will surely grow.

I assume the nursery planted the seeds at the same time as the rest of their crop, so I have benefitted a bit by waiting. I think they will do just fine. I was tempted to ask how they do it, but I doubted I would get an answer that would really do me any good. There is something technical I need to learn. More than anything, I think I need to find out what the missing ingredient is and learn where to buy it.

The John Baer tomatoes (third photo) are all alive and are about the same size as the Rutgers. They are a little spindley still, but are green and seem to be growing. I added some 10-10-10 to boost growth a bit. I'm not sure what else to do other than wait. At least there are 16 plants that are alive and growing. New leaves have come out on all but a few of these plants.

This time of the year is a little frustrating for those who want quick results. Tomatoes need to establish themselves and the roots need to grow before the tops are going to take off. I remember feeling this way last year and then, all of a sudden, things take off and the tomato plants seemed to grow too fast. I understand that fast stem growth does not equate with productivity. Except for the Rutgers, these are all untried varieties for me.

The Italian Heirloom are doing well in terms of color. They were smaller in the jiffy pots when they sprouted and they are still a bit smaller. But I think they like the place where they reside. I gave them a little extra 10-10-10 yesterday, too.

So, instead of 48 plants, I currently have 46 with the potential for 2 more if seeds sprout and grow.

Tomato Cage Solution

There may be no real solution to trellising tomato plants. I know Mel Bartholomew advocates a trellis structured by weaving netting over conduit frames. I've tried that in the past and for other plants, like cucumber vines, I like it.

Last year I just used wire cages and when a big wind came and the vines were heavy, they all fell over and couldn't be righted. I am trying a different solution this year. I already have conduit hoops over the three raised beds where tomatoes are growing. My idea this year is to anchor the wire cages onto the conduit hoops.

I used cable ties (cheap, strong, and easy to use) to tie each cage to the conduit hoop it was closest to. I made sure a vertical member of the cage was adjacent to the hoop so I could catch it in the tie. I also adjusted the height of each cage so that one of the wire hoops in the cage was also in the cable tie.


As an added measure, I put cable ties around the top wire hoop of the cage where they touched.


I gave it a quick shake test with my hand to see how sturdy this system felt. I suppose there are things that can still go wrong. A strong wind in the right direction can still move the cages by sliding them along the conduit. The ties may break. Who knows? I think it will be better than last year. Time will tell. However, given that the conduit was already in place and the cages were in hand, it seems the logical thing to do.

Strawberries

The boxes in which I planted strawberries last spring were full of weeds this year. I didn't expect the strawberry plants to actually survive. So, I was surprised when we started cleaning out the weeds to find a relatively productive crop at hand. If there is any value to the weeds, I think they kept the strawberries hidden from the birds. The crop is still coming in, but so far has been more bountiful than I expected.

The Split

I went back in the hive with Doug and decided it needed to be split. The challenge I didn't anticipate was how quickly the bees would multiply and how quickly they would store honey. When the hive become too crowded, they did what bees have always done; they decided it was time to swarm. There were a number of queen swarm cells, one of which was already capped.

Doug provided the extra brood box and I used a super that I had left at Clarence's place last year to make the split. (Fortunately, the foundations were still in pretty good shape, but not yet drawn out.) We swapped out 4 frames from the super, all but one with swarm cells on the bottom edge. We also took three frames from the brood box, two of which were loaded with capped brood cells and one of which was loaded with honey. The original hive was still loaded with honey and lots of bees, so I brought another super over a little later and put it on top.


The new hive does not appear very busy yet. There are fewer bees and I think most of them must be nurse bees and not foragers. They will have new bees and a new queen soon, and they have enough honey and pollen to survive until then.

After working on my bees, I went with Doug to inspect his hives. All was well until I took off my gloves at the end as I was walking away from his hives. I guess there was a bee on a glove that didn't appreciate my presence. I don't mind a sting every now and then. I just wish I would have taken off my wedding ring as soon as I had been stung.

Very Healthy Hive

It was past due for me to check out the hive that I requeened. Jeff and I went in to look. The super was totally full of honey. They had capped a fair amount. Getting it off took some effort it was so full. And this is only May and I thought that the new queen would barely have laid any eggs. All the frames in the super were full and there were plenty of bees. This photo was from the edge frame and it was already full of honey.


Indeed, when I took off the super, they were already creating swarm cells, the hive was so crowded. So, in the end, losing the Georgia queen wasn't a bad thing at all.

I added a super I happened to have. It has no drawn frames, but if the bees have been as successful as they have been so far, I have few worries.

pH and Tomatoes

Today was the day to plant the John Baer and the Italian Heirloom tomatoes. The weather has become warmer and the lows are predicted to be above 50F for the next several days -- perhaps from now on. I have two beds that I have decided to use, one for each variety. I spent the day preparing the beds; turning the soil, adding lime and ferlizer and planting.

The bed that the John Baer tomatoes are in is a bed that has older (relatively) soil. It is the soil I got about 4 years ago from Oak Ridge Schrubbery and has become quite nice in that time. It is like having pristine dirt. The only challenge I found this morning was that the soil had a very acidic pH. (The needle pointing left on my meter is towards acid.) I probably added 10-15 pounds of lime pellets to it to try to bring it around before I planted. I used the same spacing as I used with the Hungarian Hearts that I planted earlier.

The Italian Heirloom bed is the new soil I got from Oak Ridge Schrubbery last year. Nothing has been grown in it yet. I don't know if I really trust it. In another bed, I had planted some spinach, but it came up very spotty. I planted rhubarb in the third bed with this soil and so far haven't seen a thing. Interestingly, the pH in this bed was about perfect. I still added some lime, but not as much.

When I planted in the John Baer bed, I took out some of the soil and kept it aside and then, when I planted in the Italian Heirloom bed, I mixed 4-5 handfuls of the soil from that bed with 4-5 handfuls of the soil I had saved from the other bed. The problem as I see it is that the soil in the new beds is really just rough compost. I see toadstools and other fungi in those beds. Give it a couple of years and it may get to be soil, but for now it is not what I really want. I asked the woman who sold it to me if there was actually any dirt in it. She lied when she said yes.

I put my drinking straw collars around each plant. Some of the plants were still very small. Some were very spindly. I expect to have to monitor and water them frequently until they get established. The Hungarian Heart that survived seems to be doing well now and looks like it has taken root and is growing. So a couple of week of decent weather and regular water and I hope each of these will do well, too.

Clogged Connector

In between periods of rain, which have gratefully been pretty regular this year, I have started watering the one surviving Hungarian Heart tomato as well as the onions and garlic. The water barrels sat all winter. I watched the hoses that feed into my connector system to make sure they didn't rupture. I guess my primary indicator would have been if all the water disappeared out of the barrels, then I would have looked at each to see where the water was coming from. But that didn't happen.

However, I did notice that there was something amiss because the lead barrel, the one that gathers the rain from the drain off the roof, had a higher water level than all the other barrels. Water in all the barrels levels because it normally flows freely between them. All the other barrels were level. There could only be one cause: there must be a clog somewhere between the lead barrel and the connectors.

To test, I turned the faucet off on the lead barrel and disconnected the hose there and turned the faucet on just enough to make sure water would come out. There was no problem there. I reconnected the hose and, keeping the faucet shut and shutting off the Y connector to shut off flow from the remaining barrels, I disconnected the hose from the Y connector. There was scum that had accumulated at the junction that was impeding the flow of water. I cleaned it out and opened everything up. There was gurgling that told me water was flowing again.

There was also some scum on the top of the water in that barrel. I don't necessarily think that the two are related, but you never know. I guess a little maintenance is necessary every now and then.