Awesome Weekend

This weekend we headed down to Celina to see a gry/peregrine cross fly. We watched in awe as this bird circled around gaining height and then it was stopping so fast you could hear the wind of it's wings. It hit a pigeon so hard that the air was full of feathers and there was an audible thud.

The bird was stunning , ill remember a camera next year and Jay the current handler has done a brilliant job training it and getting it to the stage he has. Next season the plan is to hit ducks and hit them very very hard.

We then went south towards Dallas. In McKinney, Frisco and Dallas there are a number of flood fields that have been surrounded with housing and construction. This has forced rabbits into isolated pockets. There is no predication , no coyotes hence lots of Rabbits. We had bunnies bouncing out left right and center. Steve's bird smash was full on and all about them. We ended up bringing some home in the game bag. Smash would have continued hunting but we where all worn out after about 2hours of falling over one rabbit after another.

On our way down to these fields we saw so many red-tails it was unbelievable , nearly every other telephone post had one if not a pair of redtails. Redtails were soring hunting and resting.

In some ways i was very jelous of steve and his hawks. The flights where spectacular and rewarding but i couldnt help but feel , when is it going to be my turn ! The fall can not come soon enough.

Spring Inspection

At the weekend i did a full inspection on both hives, Hive 2 is doing allot better than hive 1. In fact i was surprised at how well hive 2 was doing it was so much more advanced in that it had brood and so many bee's that fairly soon i will have to do a split.

I was lazy last fall and didn't remove the spare deeps i had put on and at one stage a medium went on there as well. so as it was in the upper 70's here in south Oklahoma, i decided i would remove the unused boxes and try and make it so i can get the medium supper off or moved in the next few weeks.

The removal of empty boxes from hive one went pretty straight forward, most of the frames where empty of supplies and not many bee's on them. The removal of boxes from hive 2 was a bit more difficult.

I want to try and get the queen to go down into the bottom brood box. so i placed a queen excluder on the medium and put a deep on top. So the hive has a deep, a medium, an excluder and then another deep. the plan is to open the hive back up in a week/2 weeks and see if i can find the queen in the medium, if she is I'm going to switch the deep and the medium round and carefully place her in the two deeps . I'll then place the excluder on top of the two deeps, any brood will hatch and start filling this space with honey and pollen. Hopefully this will give me back my honey super and we will be all back to normal

Bee Vac

Today i had Katie at home she's been sick all weekend. Whilst she was asleep i started building something that i have wanted for a long time.

Last season i caught 3 swarms , unfortunately none of them made it and one even flew away the next day after capturing them. I think the reason behind this was i didn't get the queen in two cases and didn't transfer the other swarm from the cardboard nuc to a hive body.

I've been reading various ideas regarding a Bee Vac. The problem with most commercial available vac's is that they are small and then require you to transfer the bee's to a deep after the event. This stress's the bee's and adds another step in the process. Wouldnt it be better to vac the bee's straight into a deep. The other problem is there over $200.

Rob at Robo's World is a very good beekeeper with some good ideas and after reading his artical on his bee vac i thought i would be myself one. I had found an old shop vac, 1 gallon , 1 hp Vacum in a dump. So i borrowed it as they say in england and went to Lowes to get some wood and addtional hose for my little project.

Mine is not as alaborate as rob's but i think i did a good job. The vac is curently waiting its second coat of paint and then ill take some photographs off it for you all to see.

Had the day off yesterday so went out with Steve and another would be apprentice. Nice chap called Terry hopefully will be able to bounce ideas off each other and help each other out with the exam. I still planning on doing mine the beginning of May.

We didn't get anything, smash turned his nose at all the birds but did make an amazing flight for a rabbit, never seen anything like it. Smash went head long into some brush like a bullet out of a gun. This brush was about 25 feet by 100 feet with smash chasing the rabbit the entire length. The Rabbit got away

Spring might be here

The recent change in weather down here has really got the bee's going. Highs around 65-75 during the day and just above freezing during the night. The bee's seem to be bringing pollen in by the bucket load ! Every other bee must have two very bulging pollen sacks as they enter the hive.

I haven't seen any drones yet but to be honest they only just got rid of the last drones a few weeks ago. When i see drones i should know that the hive is building up and ready to go for another season.

I've put sugar water on the hives but they don't seem to be taking any but then again i never took any honey last year . I've not opened them up yet as they is the first real week off being warm every day and next week looks the same. I will probably open them up on Saturday ( High of 75 ) to see whats going on and see if i can pull out any deeps that i know are empty. I also need to rotate the boxes at some point.