new hope

Well I found a new dog today at the humane soc. Her name is Sugar, she's 3 years old and was abandoned and found 2 months later in an apartment. The vet says she's a 3 year old puppy, o joy, but the high energy can be fund to watch except she wants to catch the chickens. I may have to rename her Sugar the sanguineator. Other then that she's the spitting image of Ginger. We will see how it goes but looks like a lot of training. O happy day

A Hard Loss

I just wanted to let everyone know, the Mighty Ginger has fallen.

I rescued her from the pound when she was about 3 and had her for 5 years or so, and while she didnt do much, she was always there and happy to see me.

I will miss you my old friend.

The years end

This was an interesting picture to get. It seems that for all her liking the lime light, she didn't want me to catch her sporting antlers. But it the time of year when all deers that can, grow horns. So ...

From Grumpy and the Dogdeer, Mary Christmas and Happy New Year

Baby Adventures

It seems the babies are flying better then ever. As you can see there is one on the eves of the coop, when I went to get the pictures there were three of them sitting up on top. They seem to enjoy stretching there wings.

Bad Buzzzzz

O this is bad, this is wax moth damage. As you can see they have eaten wax and made tunnels.


This hive was very weak. It went queen less for several weeks and had few bees and no brood. I added a queen and some extra bees but it seems it was not enough to hold off the pest. I will sanitize this hive and frames ad reuse in the spring.

On a happier note, some of the white rocks are laying, I think, here's a pic of one of them, she posed nicely for the camera.

Always something to do

The babies are growing bigger everyday, as you can see. They are now eating about 5 lbs of feed a day for the 25 of them. They have discovered that they like pumpkin, while the adults seem to not eat it, they babies devour it. Yellow squash and zucenni is also high on there list of favorites.

I've recently added some new concrete pads for the bee hives. I didn't like the leaning block foundations so i poured some larger pads. 1 pad will hold the block for 1 hive so it will be more level then before and more stable. The bees get lost if you move the hive a Short distance like this so I move it a foot or so every 2 days. This way they can find there way home and soon the hives will be on new foundations.

the big buzz

Well hello again, It's been a while. The bee story continues. About a month again I sold some frames to a friend to expand some hives and noticed 1 hive was looking a bit weak. I moved it to a smaller box and waited a week to see what was going on. That's the small hive on the right.

After a week i opened it up and looked it over real good and could see no queen. Without a queen the hive will die, bit i did notice some larva, so i decided to wait and see if the larva were capped as brood or drones.

After another week i opened it up and saw all capped drone brood. Bummer! While i was in up to my elbows I opened up the other weak hive, no queen, BUMMER! Time to order some queens if I could find any.

The queens arrived on a Thursday afternoon so i watered them and left them on the kitchen counter for the night. The next morning I suited up and jumped in with both feet for a major queen replacement project. The small white hive went with no problems so i tackled the big hive. Second on the left with the maroon hive on top. I added a queen to that hive and moved some frames around to the small maroon hive. I added the queen in there and i was done. Now to wait.

Today I opened the hives to see what progress i was making. the small hive has accepted the queen and got her released from the shipping crate. So far so good. The maroon hive was looking good also, queen was out and everyone was happy. very good. The third hive the big one has also released there queen and all are happy. Woohoo 3 for 3, this is very good.

In case your wandering why the hives are stacked up like they are, the maroon hive was the weakest and by placing it on top of another hive, the workers will keep both hives working and healthy. So now i need to keep them all alive throw the winter so maybe i can get some honey this next spring, isn't this so much fun?