Nathan Thomas Olner

Today is my sons birthday. It seems not to long ago that there was initial scream of him being born in a Manchester hospital in a land now across the sea.

Today i drove my daughter Katie to play school. The last of the winter frosts on the car and ground with low flying fog crossing the country roads as we drove. Its not that long ago i used to walk the Manchester streets with Nathan on my shoulders also to play school.

Katie reminds me allot of Nathan, She looks like him in many ways, blue eyes and Blondie hair. Happy children laughing in delight. As you can tell i miss him like crazy and cant wait to see him at the end of may. Nathan is the clown of all my children. Often goofing around . He has a very dry sense of humour and is very quick with comebacks and jokes. My other son, or as a Chinese actor once said "Number 1 Son (Matthew), is the thinker always thinking over what was said or the problem in hand.

Life for me now is so different to how they knew me, Hunting, Hawks, Dogs and Bees i sometimes wonder what they make of it all and in lost of ways i cant wait to share it with them on a more personal level.

The weekend has been packed with Bee's and dogs and unfortunately Zoie got pushed to one side. Had t pick up a Bee hive from a house in Grant and then take the Dogs and the cat to be spayed. HSUS have finally come up with something that's useful. Oklahoma has a spay network. HSUS have shut down there animal rescue facility here in Southern Oklahoma and have taken a different track. Rather than find homes for all the litters of puppies, Kittens and abandoned animals they just Spay them. For $35 dollars you can get your animal spayed. Turns out Lilly ( the springer) had already been spayed but Emma and Kat are a little sore tender today. I am assuming because of all the negative publicity with putting down unwanted animals and finding them homes its now cheaper to do the spay network. The logic is less animals giving birth to unwanted babies then less animals running around.

I also spent some time scrubbing down the mews and cleaning things up a little. in a few weeks I'm going to call it an end to the season and start keeping Zoie out in the mews.




Happy brthday Nathan, Can't wait to see you soon.

Thanks to Honey Bee News I've been listening to the commentary on the videos that they have. Im not allowed to actually watch the videos at work but the commentary in the back ground helps pass the day as i work. One of the thing i really want to do this year is get better at my mite management. I'm pretty sure that's been one of the contributing factors in some of the losses last year. So this year I've been reading u on different methods. I have always wanted to be as chemical free as i could be. I have used IPM boards and standard bottom boards . I have noticed here the bee's do seem to build up better with IPM boards. So I'm going to be changing all mu bottom boards to IPM. I've also done my first sugar shake. 2 of the hives where not to bad about it but one of them is very hot ( Will have to re-queen this year) I got a sieve and just dusted each box down. I'm also looking at getting some drone frames. The idea is once a month with your sugar shake you take these frames out and freeze them for 24hrs. I'm not sure if on a commercial front this would be practical or viable but I'm a hobbits so something new.

Lastly i have noticed i have a few hive beetles. This is new in the 2 seasons we have been doing this i never saw them before but they turned up towards the end of last year and look like they are here to stay. I have AJ's Beettle Eater and will be installing them shortly.

I wont be buying packages this season but i will be collecting swarms and doing cut outs for people. I have still to go and check on my hive in Texas and will probably bring that back with me and use it for splits.

I have been looking at queens to use in re-queening and will think about doing that once the main honey flow April-June is over.

The weather as always is being particularly unusual in that its been very cold until a week ago and constant rain, So I'm feeding pollen patties and sugar water (1:1) to build them up ready to attack the clover which has started to bloom already.

I have been flying her around the park the last few nights to try and build her strength back up. So last night i took her over to one of our spots where we have had some good chases. We had a flush on one one but she gave up pretty quick. It always makes me smile when she has had enough and walks behind . I imagine her as an old man in a a formal dinner coat with tails walking along with her hands behind her back. Well that's the nearest thing i Can describe it too.

Whilst i was there i was disappointed to find the rotting carcase of a doe. It has been striped down to the back bone and head everything else was missing , someone had obviously been doing some out of season hunting.

Ill take her to another spot tonight that has held some rabbits and see what happens. The plan is to get her flying and keep her that way for a bit so the wing can heal.

I was reading Fox news and came acrros this artical The Right to Hunt it would seem only a few states have the right to hunt. Oklahomas came in a consitiution change in 2008. Only 9 states in the USA have the right to hunt. The artical is an interesting read as is some of the comments that come after it

Calls for Bee Removals have started early this year, I ahve already had two calls . One to remove from a tree and one to remove from a house

I took Zoie out hunting for the first time in almost 3 months, It was probably to warm as nothing was stirring. A friend said he would show me a rabbit field that only recently he and another guy had seen a number of rabbits in. unknowingly i have been in this field before with the dogs , there is no rabbit sign of any kind in this part of the land i have access too. I don't think Zoie would have been able to catch anything even if there was anything. She was understandably unfit. She eventually flew to my fist and didn't bate once whilst i carried her back to the truck. I have a new telescopic pole for my T-Perch which seemed to work with Zoie allot better as i could get her higher to about 20 feet, She was far more content to sit on it ( but that could have been down to the lack of conditioning). I'll hunter for a few more weeks and then call it quits for the season.

I got a chance to wear my rattler chaps for the first time. These are awesome. climbing through brush was not a probable for the first time as brambles, wild rose and thorns where just brushed aside.

Lilly is coming along nicely but took her to the vet on Friday to be wormed and inoculated. She has a very bad outbreak of Tape Worm and still wasn't putting any weight on. Hopefully this will have broke that cycle and we will be free from it. She is also coming when called and walking nicely. I've been teaching her "woah" and working on her retrieval skills.

Spring

I helped my sponsor out with a little demonstration n falconry to a bunch of school kids yesterday. He brought smash , his Harris hawk and i brought Zoie. It was fun and Zoie was very well behaved.

She has started to change i noticed in the talk how her eyes have started to change colour and not in a uniform way to a dark brown. Her wing is allot better and I'm going to take her flying at the weekend. However the next copuple of days are going to be short flights to build her strenght and wing back up. Shes back down to weight and ready to go and i can't wait after a 3 month lay off it will be good to get a few weeks of hawking in before calling it a season and putting her up for the summer.

New home

I've been meaning to do this for ever and finally got around to finishing it off today. There are 5 nest boxes inside and a number of perches for my pigeons the top bar window rotates to open so i can allow them to fly around and open and close at will the door is a small service hatch that you can squeeze through to get in if necessary.

I ended up putting wire mesh around the bottom as the dogs and Lilly in particular were going nuts. Lilly kept pointing them out and then after 20 minutes the excitement got to much for her. She is a great dog and a joy to be around. We are haviong alot of fun and Emma loves having a companion.

The plan is now to clean out the mews and get Zoie in it for the summer.

Feeding

It's spring so the bee's are flying and its time to feed like crazy for the main honey flow in April. I haven't bought any bee's this opting to build up what i have got or find wild ones and then re-queen if i have to. So this year its really important to feed constantly for the next few weeks.

I mix 4lbs of sugar and 4 litres of water to make my sugar water, the bee's devour it but the delivery of it as always been an issue for me. I have used various types of feeders and to be honest i haven't found one yet that i was 100% happy with. I some hive top feeders from Mann Lake.

I have three of these and drowning has been minimal my only complaint is the wire mesh.
After a season the wire mesh breaks down, not sure why but the following season you have to replace. This year i bit the bullet and ordered the replace meant mesh from Man Lake.

As you can see they are pretty corroded and i cant help but wonder what this did to my bee's. The replacements came in yesterday they are a few bucks a piece so i got a few spares cleaned the feeders up and swapped the mesh out.

The feeders are pretty good in that they can hold 4 gallons of sugar water , which for me normally lasts about a week max per hive. I have other types of feeder that i will comment on.

Brushy Mountain Bee Farm produce a plastic entrance feeder that's $3.25 each and holds about 1.3lts of sugar water. So far they have been pretty good and have survived being outside in heat and cold for a whole season. There are two things that i don't like about them. They encourage robbing. My friend Albert suggesting modifying my bottom boards so that they could be placed in the back which i haven't had time to do yet. Because of the fit of the bottom to the cup there is a capillary action which results in the bee's being able to feed on the outside further encouraging robing.

I have also noticed this year that the ones from last season the plastic has gone very hard and britle. I got some more this year so i will check on them and see if they fair any better.

I also have the internal black kind. So far there are a number of things i don't like about them. First they only fit in a deep so you have to take the hive apart to get to them and secondly they seem to drown a large number of bee's. I am interested in the new kind from Mann Lake with the Bee lander and might make something similar for mine to experiment with this year.

Spring is coming

We are down to 3 hives, usual fatalities of the winter. All three seem to be doing ok, but i have started feeding sugar water and placed a pollen Pattie in each hive to kick start the season.

I have also bought a new jacket, In comparison to my old one this is so much thicker and more comfortable and the price wasn't to bad either. I'm thinking of spliting one hive and building up the other two. We may even get to rescue some wild bee's this year.