Week 26: An Explosion of Bees!

While tending to the gardens this week, Marianne heard a great buzzing behind her.  She turned around and it literally looked like all of Aaron's bees left his hive!  There was a huge, almost storm like cloud of bees swirling around, and they looked like they had all the intentions of swarming, and therefore leaving the hive.

We suited up, and by the time we got back outside with the smoker most of the bees had returned.  Inspecting the hive it looked pretty crowded in there so we added another super on top.

We then inspected Marianne's hive and her hive looked pretty bad as there was no brood.  We ended up removing her super and the difference between the two hives is now very apparent.  We will check in a couple of weeks and see how they are doing.

The current state of our hives. Marianne's is just hanging on. Photo by Marianne Balkwill

Momma White had kittens this spring and now they spend all their time around the deck playing.  She has four kittens altogether with two of them being fluffy.

Mini bums.  Photo by Marianne Balkwill

We planted the cabbage, broccoli, kale and brussel sprouts from the greenhouse to the back garden.  Our peppers and our pickling cukes are beginning to grow in the greenhouse.

Hot peppers on the benches and pickling cukes on the floor.  Photo by Marianne Balkwill

 

Though not a huge crop, our snow peas were harvested this week and were quite delicious in our supper.  The next crop to come off looks to be the brambles.