Cut out

Went to do a cut out in a tree yesterday. A hive had set up home in the tree 4 years ago ,,,, it was a big hive. Unfortunately for me i went about it all the wrong way. I figured i wouldn't need my bee vac and boy was i so wrong. i started taking comb from the hive and putting it into frames. Ill never do that again. Next time ill use the bee vac to vac up as many bee's to start off with and then take the comb i ended up having to go home and get the bee vac and started vacing up as many bees as i possibly could. I also found i need a new bee suit, i got stung on the head, and back of the neck through the suit and on the eye and thumb as i was leaving to get my vac. Nick the guy i was removing the bee's for was videoing the whole thing so hopefully i post it and you can all have a good laugh at how not to do a bee cut out. right now i look like the hunch back of notradame with one eye all swollen up.

I ended up leaving a box to see if we can get the stragglers and ill go back and get that in a day or two

BEE PACKAGES

I had a quick looks at the new bee packages also today. one had drawn 7.5 frames of comb and another had drawn 10 frames so i placed a honey super on top off them both. The plan is when the honey season is over i will take those off and replace them with deeps for the rest of the year.

Previous Cut out

I think i need to re queen this hive. I had a peek at them without any smoke, i try not to use any smoke if i can help it as it puts them back so much. Anyway this hive is pretty aggressive in comparison to any of my other hives and its a trait i really don't want to put up with so sometime next week ill order a couple of queens and re queen that particular hive. I think i am going to get some carnolians as i think i will get a better build of bees for the spring flow here in Oklahoma. We only really have one flow and that's April through till about mid July. With the wet weather Italian's seem to take allot longer to build up and get going.

plodding along

It would be nice if it could stop raining for more than 5 minutes so i could start putting the mews together. For the last month now we have had nothing but storms every weekend and most of the week. The lake levels at Texoma are at flood proportions and i get text alerts every day warning of floods.

Things are pretty miserable on the falconry front really. Steve's birds are in full molt so there is no going out there. It is funny how much i have missed Sunday afternoon even the wife has asked hey is everything ok, so you know its pretty bad when the wife notices. To top it all i watched a brilliant Ariel combat this week between a Red Tail and 2 crows up at Calera on highway 75. There is the resident hag there sitting on top of the highway street lights and 2 crows bombarding her and trying to chase her off.

We also have the dumbest rabbit in the country moved into the yard. There must be 5-8 cats in our neighbourhood. This thing just sits out in the middle of the yard chopping away on the lawns. You try chasing it off into the undergrowth and it just runs around in circles it would be such an easy kill for a redtail. The only thing i can think of is there a nest near by and it is trying to deflect away from that. I saw something similar when i went hunting with Steve, Steve's wife and jay in Dallas fort worth. We saw a rabbit that would not bolt for cover , we later found the nest of young rabbits.

NAFA is coming to oklahoma in November ( 22-27 ) which is going to be pretty exciting , you can get more information at OFA . It's amazing some of the changes in law that have had to take place in order for this to go ahead. Ryan Vanzant has some interesting titbits on some of the changes that have taken. The biggest being that non-resident falconers no longer need a seperate oklahoma none-resident license there exsisting state license will do. House Bill 1691 Came into effect a few weeks ago and a copy of it can be found here . With section B being of note

"B. All falconers shall have the an Oklahoma falconer's license or equivalent license from another state and an annual Oklahoma hunting license unless legally exempt."

Rain, rain go away, come back another day!

Will it ever stop raining ! In between tropical storms i opened up this years package boxes to see where we are at. Disappointing but understandable to say the list. No point in building comb for new bee's if you cant fly to get pollen ! I was expecting 10 frames of fully drawn comb but instead saw only 6 and a half frames. In the last three weeks i think they have only had 1-2 days per week of actual flying time as its been so wet, They are drinking up the sugar water and had to put a new batch on. I sure will be glad when the rain stops or slows at least and the girls can all get flying !

I finally got some new feeders from Brushy Mountain

I'm using this on the two packages from last year. Bit more robbing but less bee's drowning There are some little lugs on the sides that i don't like as they let bee's into the hive so i am in the process of removing them or filling them in. I can see me moving over to these for everything in the not to distant future. I have closed up the entrances to cut the robbing down but i think I'm going to make some custom entrances reducers to fit these exactly.