Slugs and swarms

Things have been quite busy as of late, but while Anna's making dinner, I figured I'd get something out there.

We started our seedlings for our garden inside in March/April -- perhaps a tad too early, but we were getting anxious.  Once they were big enough and the weather was warm enough (we thought), we put them in the garden.  About a week later, we had a hard frost over night and lost most of what we had planted.  We were super bummed, but we still had a bunch of seeds so we just direct sowed the plants that we lost.  Since losing our seedlings, our new plants have been under attack of a different sort...

We collected this lot an hour after a rain storm. It is definitely the most we've gotten at once, but we rarely get none.

I shake my fist at you, platter of slugs!

Lucky for us (and them) the ducks LOVE slugs.  So, every morning, we go to the garden, walk around and pick up slugs.  It's a pretty gross job, but our plants are still too small to let the ducks roam the garden freely.  We're hoping the toads and snakes will catch up to the slug population soon.  We are, however, continually amazed at the number of slugs we have.

YUM!  SLUGS!  The ducks come running at the sight of us with a jar 'o slugs.

Shifting gears a tad -- as we mentioned previously, we have two bee hives.  Anna has been doing most of the work for the bees, but I've been learning a lot too.  About a week ago, we were taking the dogs for a morning walk, and we noticed that there was a pretty constant stream of bees coming out of one of the hives.  We both instantly got nervous that they were going to swarm.

Bees swarm naturally when the hive gets too full or if there isn't enough food.  We know there is plenty of food around right now, but we weren't sure about the space issue.  Anna had checked the hives a few days prior, and there still seemed to be plenty of room. She wasn't concerned enough about space to put on more brood boxes or honey supers, but obviously the bees had other plans. When a hive decides to swarm, they start making a new queen.

How do they make a queen?

Well, all the while the bees are collecting pollen, they are increasing the number of bees in the hive.  They start feeding all babies what's called "royal jelly." Royal jelly is a super nutritious substance that the bees themselves produce. After a while, they stop feeding the babies royal jelly....unless they want her to be a queen.  The queen is always fed royal jelly until she's ready to hatch.  This super nutrient rich food allows her ovaries to develop while the other babies get other food and end up with undeveloped ovaries.

Just before the new queen is about to hatch, the old queen leaves with half the hive.  How do they decide who stays and who goes? The world may never know.

Back to our bees streaming out of the hive...after our walk, we saw it...they had swarmed.  Our bees had swarmed onto a branch high up in a pine tree.  If you're ever lucky enough to find a swarm, find a beekeeper!  This is great!  If you can collect the swarm, bam! Instant new hive.

Our ladies -- high up in a tree. :(

We didn't know what to do, and we didn't have a swarm trap to try to collect them ourselves.  First, we tried this...

Despite our best efforts, the bees stayed in the tree.

After that didn't work, we called a local beekeeper (there's a swarm hotline), and he came over to check it out.  He climbed the tree and put up a trap.  In theory, the bees will see the trap (just a box with old comb in it -- smells like honey) and think, "this is a GREAT spot to live." They will then enter the trap, and you've got 'em!  Our bees didn't get that memo.

Here, we're putting in the swarm trap.  They weren't fooled...

They were still in the tree the next morning, and after lunch, we were going to try to climb the tree.  The plan was to cut the branch out, lower it carefully, and put the bees in a new hive.  After we finished our leisurely lunch....they were gone.  Crap.

We now have a swarm trap and a few more skills.  Hopefully we can catch the next one should this happen again.  We still have two hives, one of them is just half as big as it used to be.  This is fine, but it pretty much guarantees we won't get any honey from that hive this year. :(