Swarm Cells

Just what no beekeeper wants to find in his beehives swarm cells. There were 5-6 of these on the bottom of the second box in my hive on Sunday.  I was giving my girls a powdered sugar treatment of varroa mites. I had to share with you this photos of  these 5 girls working on this swarm cell. Hoping they will stay put until Thursday, when we are doing a small split, by setting up a 5 frame nuk with a few frames of bees. The reason I'm doing a nuk is I want the rest of these bees to make lots of honey this spring. If they swarm half the bees will leave, then no honey this year.

I found this Pickerel Frog along the driveway on Sunday, it posed nicely and was in no hurry. When they call in the pond it sounds like squeaky leather on a saddle.

Meg pointed out to me, the dog swimming pool now has 2 kinds of eggs in it. The larger ones I'm certain are Spotted Salamander, the other are likely Upland Chorus Frogs. We have been hearing them a lot in the swimming pool.

Meg's school got a lot of small shrubs from the Agricultural Building next door. The whips have been in bags at the back door. Sunday she planted 29 - 3 gallon pots with  Swamp Dogwood, Elderberry, Crab apple and mulberry. We have no space here for any of these, I have no idea what she is going to do with them. Living in the woods on a slope, non of these would thrive here, too much shade and very dry. Any of these plants interest you, PLEASE come take some.

Sunday we planted the new hellebores and other plants. Also uncovered all the cold frames, weeded them and planted seeds, mustard, Simpson Lettuce, Bok Choy. The peas are 8-9 inches tall now, somebody nibbled one end of one trellis. The compost I bought at the landfill is already half gone.

The Other Rain Tote

Took us a while to figure out where we wanted to place the other 300 gallon rain tote. The back corner of the house seemed good lots of roof to fill it with rain water but not a great location to water the front garden being on the down hill side. So we decided on the workshop ( I always called it my shed until we had the house appraised). As you can see the roof is smaller on the back side, yet it was the best location and up hill of most everything in the garden.

I dug and poured 4- 12 inch x 16 inch footers the other day, this rain tote will weight 2400 pounds and we don't want it falling over. The stand was built out of cut off or left over over 4 x 4s and 2 x 8s. On the inside of the stand I doubled up the wood with recycled 2 x 6s from a tear out. Each corner of the stand has 12-14 3 inch deck screws holding it together and the legs are notched so the band boards rests on the legs.

Once the stand was built I dragged the 300 gallon tote over to the stand and somehow lifted it up and onto the stand, it is about 3 foot off the ground on the lowest side.

 You can see I also gathered up scraps and built a small bucket shelf. Tried it out by flooding the gutter with the garden hose. The shelf works great for filling buckets. The white elbows in the downspout got painted brown but the 2 elbows at the corner of the shed leak I'll have to glue them together.

I then the next day, did I mention it was 100 degrees yesterday? I picked up some extra downspout elbows(brown is no longer available) and hooked up both downspouts. Yes the one across the window looks ugly I know... Once I got the downspouts to the tote it occurred to me that leaves and stuff would be going right into the tote and the spigot is at the very bottom and it would quickly clog up and be a tub of water we could not drain. So I called the engineer(in my head) and came up with this pickle bucket (Meg Sorry). I cut out the hole in the top of the tote with a jigsaw and dropped the bucket in about half way. I then drilled hundreds of 3/8 inch holes in the bottom of the bucket for drainage. Then cut out two pieces of 1/4 inch hardware cloth for a screen in the bottom of the bucket. I'll likely get some 1/8 inch hardware cloth to make the screen a bit finer.

 

This Red-spotted Purple butterfly was great help for me today as well. It landed on the tote many times during the day as I was working. We have several of these around the yard, they like damp spots and we have been watering a good bit. Guess what it is expected to reach 100 degrees Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday (yeah the tomatoes love it). Usally we get one or two 100 degree days each summer, by Sunday we will have had 6 100 degrees days already.

When I took the thermometer off the wall of the shed to install the rain tote, I found this Gray Treefrog behind it. We find these treefrogs all the time around here. Currently you can not walk around the house without seeing 5-10 baby toads. 

 Gray Hairstreak on Mountain Mint, we had three of these little butterflies yesterday in the Mountain Mint.

 A look at our tomatoes about 8 foot tall, the temporary fencing has kept out the deer. These plants are 8 foot tall and covered with green tomatoes. The cucumbers trellis is on the right.

 it pays to add lots of compost and water the garden look at these 7 foot tall tomatoes. That is a 4 foot tall Serrano pepper plant between the tomatoes.

Our first cucumbers of the season. Oops, corrected the first cucumbers from the seeds we planted, we harvested one cucumber that volunteered.

 Our first tomato this year a sandwich sized Rutgers Tomato. Not tasted it yet, guess who bought tomatoes at the farmers market yesterday.

We have lot of green tomatoes under those giant plants see.

Sounds like spring to me!

Have you been out in the garden and heard a funny sound like someone dragging their fingers over the teeth of a hair comb? It is our first spring frog to call the Upland Chorus Frog, Pseudacris triseria. Listen to the call here at Herps of NC. These are in fact tree frogs, only tree frogs have the sticky toe pads. There are several species of chorus frogs depending on where you live.
Impossible to find, so feel good just to hear them calling. Wanting to get your own photo? Good Luck :) It took me at least 10 years to find and photograph them, sorry I can not divulge my secret to photographing them. Anyway these photos were taken in 2004 in the back yard and along our pond.

These are razor sharp images, shame Blogger degrades them when I upload them.

Male calling for a female

This male seems to have a call the female liked!!