Breeder Hogs

Well i decided to step into Breeder Hogs and try my hand at raising hogs on pasture and piglets. I purchased this weekend 3 hogs, a hampshire sow (black and white), a Tamworth sow (big tan/red), and a Duroc boar (red hog). They are great looking hogs and are very gentle already. I cant wait till i finish the 2.6 acre fence with pasture, woods, and creek access.

Below is a picture of the 3 hogs and then my current hog lot i have been using to raise 2 feeders for the past 3 years.

Splits are done

Well went through 8 hives and in most cases was able to make extremly strong splits. I feel real confident I will have plenty of bees when the Russians arrive.

One note to make in many hives I had backfilling of the brood nest occuring, so I doubt very seriously the bees would have hung around until my russians arrived...

Swarm season IS going to be 2 weeks early and strong IMO...

Not only that but in some cases I still have a full double deep untouched since about a month ago I had placed entire boxes of drawn comb on my strongest ones. For three hives I had three deeps of solid top to bottom brood patterns. All I simply did was locate the queen, verify I had eggs in my split portion, and lifted an entire box. I also repositioned the parent hive with the laying queen and placed the split in its place, thus mimiking a swarm! The old queen is gone from the hive,and left behind is brood, no queen, and reserves, so the returning foragers believe the hive has swarmed!

Not for the Faint at Heart

Well today i will dig through ALL my hives and make splits where i can and the hives can aford the brood and bees. i have a few hives in mind for this, 9 in particular. I dont really expect to be able to make 9 splits, but we will see. I have a bunch of drawn comb and stored capped honey so maybe bewteen the two things will work out.

My biggest concern is not temps etc, but that i have 10 Russian Queens coming the week of April 11th, exactly one full brood cycle. So i am praying that i wont wind up with a bunch of hives that i pulled splits from that dont have enough brood and or bees to make 10 more splits when the queens arrive!!! I am hoping with good weather and drawn comb the queen will go right back to laying in the comb and by April 11 week comes around i will have the same number of eggs/brood frames as i do today...

We shall see.

Failing Queen or Hygenic Behavior????

This is a post written by Randy Oliver on Bee-L which really sums up how to identify if your "spotty" brood pattern is from a failing queen, disease, virus, or expression of hygienic behavior (which is good). I believe it is important enough to post for documentation and to share...

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: randy oliver <randy@randyoliver.com>

Date: Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Subject: [BEE-L] Intermittant brood pattern

To: BEE-L@community.lsoft.com

> 

> > How does one tell the difference between a failing queen and brood

> > that

> has been removed due to hygienic behavior.

Mike, there are other possible reasons for the shot pattern:

Miticide or pesticide contamination of comb Virus mortality Fast-acting AFB strain

All above, plus failing queen, could be ruled out by inserting a drawn comb in the center of the brood nest.  The queen should start laying immediately.

 Then simply follow that brood up to capping, and a few more days.  Hygienic uncapping won't happen until later.

If queen is failing, then you will see a poor egg pattern.  If larvae or eggs are removed shortly after queen lays them, then suspect nutritional stress.

If the egg and larval development pattern is uniform, and the larvae uniformly develop through capping, then you can rule out the above.  Removal after that would likely be due either to hygienic behavior or virus mortality.  If hygienic, the removed pupae will be white and solid during removal.  If virus, they will be miscolored (gray) or disfigured.

Hope this helps!

Randy

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Here is a picture of a solid brood pattern (top) and a spotty brood pattern (bottom) i found at University Of Ga's site http://www.ent.uga.edu/bees/disorders/non-infectious-diseases-pests.html

My Little Farmer Girls

These are two pictures of my 2 yr old twins walking across what was my watermelon patch and now is back in pasture seed for our Alpacas and soon a Angus Steer for beef...

Capped Drone Cells???

Capped Drone Cells???

So this past Sunday I completed my inspections on my last three hives. They are loaded with bees and brood, I have come to be a believer of annual queen replacements especially for your so-so hives, obviously I would keep my proven breeders. Anyway, in these three hives I saw tons of brood, but what surprised me was the amount of capped drone brood! Technically I could start grafting although I am going to hold off for a few more weeks for more certainty on warmer weather. So keep your eyes open for upcoming swarm cells. I have a feeling with this warm weather, unusual long flying days, tons of pollen, etc coming in swarm season will be early this year especially if the weather continues like it has been!!!

I also wanted to mention that I combined two hives this weekend, one with tons of resources (bees) but queenless and the other with a laying queen but low on resources (bees) so she couldn’t lay anymore than what she was doing, a queen will only lay eggs up to what her workers can tend to. So I decided to combine the two hives using two sheets of newspaper. I will keep my fingers crossed. With the increased number of bees the queen should be able to ramp up and hopefully catch with the others because she is a long ways behind.

All other strong hives received entire deep boxes of drawn comb to help any swarming instinct they might have. I was going to Checkerboard but I was a week late it seems since they all had brood in the top and bottom boxes so checker boarding them would have broken the brood nest up risking chilling brood. So I figured having that dark empty brood comb above them might entice them to continue to expand the brood nest and not contract it and swarm… we shall see it worked last year.

So in the end I have 14 out of 18 living (3 dead-outs and combined 2 to make 1, so I count that as a single loss since I caught it, but would have led I am certain to both hives being lost, Chalk one up to actually inspecting the hives!!!!)

Bees and Bluegrass???

I often wonder why my bees are so happy, i just figured it out. Its because usually when i am inspecting my hives my truck is on Bluegrass Junction on my XM Radio...

Incase you dont know what Good Bluegrass sounds like check out these links

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XV7mxfIIr0&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3IrnNAweM0

and check out:
Larry Sparks (my favorite) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJpkMNbGvC0
Blue Moon Rising
Dale Ann Bradley
SteelDrivers
and plenty more i can't think of right now...