Kamikazes and Yumminess

    How would you react if someone just walked in your house like they owned the place and started looking around? It seems that bees feel the same way about it...including bringing weapons to bear on the situation!

 Sweet wife and I recently became beekeepers. We ordered packaged bees from R.Weaver and drove to pick them up in Navasota. We could have had them mailed but we thought the drive would be fun and we didn't want to freak out our mail lady. After a peaceful country drive, we brought our buzzing box home and hived them,  which you can watch below ( i highly recommend turning on captions/annotations). Keep in mind, we are complete novices.

  As you can see from the video,  I'm not one of those cool guys who can do this in underwear and flip flops. I went full Wuss suit. :) 

 That was near the end of April. We have been back to check on their progress a few times since then. They started building comb at one end of the box and every time we checked back they had gone a little further but the population you start with is fairly small (as bees go) so it was slow going at first.

---Fast forward to today--

 It had been about a month since we last checked on them, so we figured it was about time. When they were a tiny fledgling hive, they seemed very docile and sweet. Today, however, they were ferocious !

  Sweet wife has been going out there with only a veil and gloves for a while now to check on them with no problem...until today. It seems they forgot all about her feeding them sugar water for the first few weeks and were only interested in our abrupt intrusion. Apparently, prying the well-sealed lid off of their home was seen as rude. The soft buzzes we heard when we first approached turned into an angry roar of vengeful kamikazes. Beth got stung three times before she backed away. I was in my wuss suit, so i replaced the lid and went to check on her.

 After rubbing the sting for a second, Sweet wife put on her wuss suit and we went back to finish our inspection.

  I didn't expect much since the growth has been fairly slow so far, but was shocked to find they've filled the entire hive box! The hive has at least tripled in size and population. I was completely amazed and impressed. It seems they have been busy as bees.

  There was a small piece of honeycomb stuck to the lid, so we scraped it off to take back with us. We decided that we saw what we came to see, so we replaced the lid back and went inside so they could stand down from DEFCON 5 and we could see about our bit of honeycomb.

Our bit of honeycomb

   It may have been my imagination and the pride of the harvest but that was the best honey I've ever tasted. As you can see, most of the piece was dry but that bit on the end was fantastic. I can hardly wait until we are able to rob them for real and get pints of the stuff.

   It was fun to see how far they have come. We'll definitely have to get another hive body next week so they can continue to grow. The only sad part of the day was Beth getting stung and how many bees died (our suits were covered in stingers). We'll definately use smoke next time to calm them a bit first.

 

Making the most.

    I've often fantasized about having the perfect homestead with everything arranged just so. We'd have this many cows over here and that many chickens over there.There would be a super-duper rain catchment system with filters and pumps that run on solar power and automatically water my beautiful orchards, massive garden and fat animals. We'd have a storage building with long aisles of every kind of good food, perfectly organized in awesome FIFO roller shelves. I'd even have an underground propane tank and a sound-insulated generator shed as a backup.

  The thing is, we have a smallish plot of land and an even smaller house (26 x 30). Our land is covered with huge oaks, magnolias, hickories and a half dozen creeks. It's very beautiful and nice to walk around on but it doesn't lend itself to gardening in most places. Definitely not a massive garden. It is also too small for standard cows and too shady for anything resembling a real orchard. And If all that weren't enough, I have yet to win the lottery to pay for all the other stuff!
   
   Most of those things seemed like serious limitations at first. I have learned, however, that most things are a matter of perspective. With a little creativity, flexibility, and a good attitude, almost any liability can be easily turned into an asset.

  For example, our tiny house is easy to cool and the mortgage is cheaper that a 1-bedroom apartment. The  same abundant tree cover that blocks the garden's sun also  shades my house from the scorching Texas sun and helps protect my chickens from flying predators. Those many creeks that wind through the property churn out crazy amounts of bugs and help keep my chickens fed, cool, and laying eggs throughout  the summer. Beef is beautiful, but cows don't eat bugs. The small, sunny area i do have is extremely fertile due to once being forest floor. It may not be massive but time has shown that it can be massively productive!



   You could wait a lifetime for the perfect land, the perfect time, or the perfect situation to come around,

      -OR-

 You can take what you have now and look for ways to make it as productive as it can be. There are always ways to make your home productive if you look hard enough. Even if it's only a small salad garden in your apartment window, you can grow or raise something today!

Back to Basics

  Beth and I moved back to the East Texas woods a few years ago to embrace our country roots and to learn to do things like our grandparents did. Not forsaking technology, but not bowing at the alter of electricity either. We bought a little place,  

 raised some animals (and lost some animals ),

  grew a garden,

and started canning and storing food.

All in all, things were going good. Beth stayed home and took care of the animals (including this one), while i went to work at a little shop up the road. We slaughtered chickens on weekends and talked about our plans in the evening.

  We were already raising chickens and selling eggs so we decided to start  a hatchery. Building a hatchery costs $$$$$,  but i was only making $.  We ate good and paid our bills, but we had no money left over to expand our little hobby farm into a real farm. So, in an effort to turn our dreams into reality, we sent Beth back to work. Since my check was already paying our way, Beth's check was to go solely toward homestead expansion. As I'm sure you've guessed, the money found other uses.

 Shortly after starting back, we burned up 3 cars in a row--$$$$.  Other stuff broke, gas went up, we found neat toys we 'needed' ..more $$$$.  But the 'BIG OUCHIE ' was the house fire that ate our bathroom and the ensuing renovation that left us crapperless and showerless for months --$$$$$$$$$$. We had insurance but it wasn't enough. After it was all over, we just fell into a 'relieved-to-not-be-having-an-emergency' trance. And there we  stayed for months...

Until Last Weekend!

 Sweet wife and I  had a long sit-down talk about our plans and goals and on pushing reset on our motivation. Then, we had a  'walk-around-the-yard-and-point-at-where-to-put-things'  talk and got even more motivated. It turns out that both of us had been waking from our collective fogs about the same time and had been feeling uneasy about our recent lack of direction. We are now re-focused and back on track. We even have a  few NEW exciting plans for our little paradise.

  I'll go into more detail soon, but for now i can tell you...

• The hatchery is back in the active planning stage.
• The bees are scheduled for a big expansion.
• The ducks are getting a small pond.
• The food processing and storage area is getting its own building.
• Water pumping / catchment / and storage are all due for a major upgrade.

  Sometimes your plans come off track. Sometimes it's your fault and sometimes life just happens. Either way,  its easy to lose your way after the plan-wrecking events are over and slip into an aimless daily grind  unless you stop and re-focus. 

Live on purpose, dear friends!