Flock Friday for May 8

This week on Flock Friday, replacing the chicken run roof netting, and a bunch of pictures of ducks, chickens, and fish.

The new chicken run is fully enclosed. When I originally built it, I used lightweight netting on the roof, but it tended to collapse under the weight of snow. I had a plan to replace it with welded wire fencing, though that would have been difficult and expensive. Then a comment on the blog inspired me to use knotted rope netting instead, which I did last weekend. A 25×50’ roll of 2”-spaced knotted rope netting was perfect to cover the run:

Knotted rope netting

Knotted rope netting

Hopefully that’ll cope with snow much better. We’ll see next winter!

On to the usual pictures. Here are the ducks coming to greet me next to the old chicken coop:

Ducks

And looking to my right, the chickens waiting for me too:

Chickens

Lola (the introverted chicken) has been feeling broody in the new coop of late:

Broody chicken

Standing at the back of the pond, looking through the tree branches towards the duck house and deck. You can see the ducks below the deck:

Pond

A koi in the corner of the pond:

Fish

Ducks:

Ducks

Ducks

Ducks

The ducks coming to greet me on another day:

Ducks

Ducks

Did you see the video of them quacking at me?

The pop door on the duck house has been having issues over the last few days, not closing at night. Here’s me replacing the batteries in the door opener:

David replacing batteries in duck pop door opener

Fish:

Fish

Ducks and fish:

Ducks and fish

A chicken on the roosts above the nesting boxes in the new coop:

Chicken

A bunch of chickens waiting for their mealworms:

Chickens

That isn’t where eggs are supposed to be laid:

Eggs

Eating in the duck house:

Duck

The duck house pop door opening, and a duck going in before it fully opens:

Ducks

Duck

Transplanting volunteer trees behind the shop and pond

This afternoon I dug up some smallish self-seeded fir trees from behind the shop, and transplanted them around that area, and in a couple of places by the pond.

Previously I’ve transplanted volunteer trees from the “back 40”, what we call the wilderness area on the east side of our property. There are lots of self-seeded trees there, but when I surveyed them today, they were all either too big to dig up, too small, or too hard to access due to blackberry vines.

So instead I went to another seedling nursery, near the south boundary behind the workshop. There are lots of seedlings of various sizes there, so I dug up a bunch that were too close to more established trees.

Here is one of those areas, after I dug up the seedlings. There are actually piles of rocks under the grass and dirt; this area has been left to naturalize, so is rather overgrown:

Dug up trees

I put the trees to plant elsewhere in my cart:

Trees in cart

While I was there, I transplanted five small seedlings into the adjacent grass area behind the shop. I used to mow this area, but have decided to extend the wilderness area by several feet, as I want to encourage trees around all of the boundaries:

Trees behind shop

Part of me thinks there isn’t much point in doing that, since we’re unlikely to be here long enough for them to get to a decent size, but you never know. As the allegedly Chinese proverb goes, “the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”

I transplanted four of the tallest seedlings in a gap left of pond, where we can see a neighbor’s house from the duck house. If they all survive, they should eventually provide good screening:

Seedlings left of pond

Another angle of the seedlings left of pond, plus existing trees (I know it’s hard to see green against green):

Seedlings left of pond

I added two of the shorter seedlings in another gap behind the pond, replacing a taller one that died:

Two seedlings behind pond

Finally, I was pleased to see a bunch of small self-sprouted seedlings popping up in the slope of the back 40:

Seedlings in back 40

Cat update for week ending May 2

For Caturday this week, a couple of alien cats, a couple of GIFs, Pepper, Poppy, Spud, and mushrooms… sounds like ingredients.

The light-orange alien cat visited the breezeway again, without incident:

Alien cat

Pepper watching me in the workshop:

Pepper in the shop

An animated GIF of chattering at a bird:

GIF of chattering at a bird

A frame of that:

Chattering at a bird

Classic Poppy face:

Poppy face

GIF of Poppy and Porcini inside their house:

GIF of two cats inside

Snuggles with a tongue sticking out:

Snuggles

A screenshot of my cams (with the outside one offline), showing four cats:

Screenshot of four cats

Another alien cat spraying the cat house. How rude:

Alien cat

Spud and Poppy, with another eating:

Spud and Poppy

Three cats:

Three cats

Four cats:

Four cats

Poppy and her mushroom girls, Portabella and Porcini:

Poppy and mushrooms

Spud watching me from the front steps:

Spud

Flock Friday for May 1

For Flock Friday this week, chickens and ducks, of course, plus a bathing bird, and a fake bird.

Chickens on the potato planters in the veggie garden. Enjoy it while you can, girls; you’ll be evicted soon, when we’re ready to start planting:

Chickens in veggie garden

Chickens in veggie garden

Ducks on the back lawn:

Ducks

An animated GIF of a scrub jay having a bath in the stream:

GIF of bird in stream

I shared a picture of the chickens with drone frames in my recent bee post, with a followup in the subsequent post; here are a couple more photos of them not sure about the frames, before getting stuck in:

Chickens with drone frames

Chickens with drone frames

Chickens with drone frames

A crow by the cat house:

Crow

To help discourage visits by the heron, I added a fake one on the edge of the pond:

Fake heron

The ducks under the pond deck:

Ducks

A GIF of the chickens eating mealworms in the new coop:

GIF of chickens

Beehive split before they split

As mentioned in my previous post, we weren’t planning on inspecting the beehives again for a couple of weeks, but were concerned that the yellow hive were thinking about swarming. We hoped that adding the Flow super would give them enough room so they wouldn’t.

Well, on Monday they showed definite signs of preparing to do just that, with a massive cloud of bees flying around outside:

Cloud of bees

A little hard to see in that photo. Look closely; all of those little dots are bees. Here’s a GIF edition, that makes them more visible:

GIF of bees

As you might imagine, that was rather dismaying to see. If the bees swarm, that means we lose half the hive, setting it back quite a bit. Bees swarm when they feel population pressure. The queen takes half of the bees and goes find somewhere else to live, leaving behind unhatched queen(s) to take over.

About 15 minutes later, the bees started landing on the outside of the hive:

Bees on outside of hive

A GIF of the bees on the outside of hive, with lots still flying around:

GIF of bees on outside of hive

That could mean that they had selected a place to swarm to, and were gathering around the queen, preparing to depart. More bees on the outside:

Bees on outside of hive

Yet more, with fewer flying:

Bees on outside of hive

A side view:

Bees on outside of hive

But then we noticed the number diminishing, without taking off, so they seemed to be going back inside, rather than swarming:

Bees on outside of hive

Bees on outside of hive

Bees on outside of hive

Phew! As I joked, maybe someone made a really smelly fart, and they all had to get outside for a bit.

Bees evacuating the hive and accumulating outside is called “bearding”, and is common in hot weather, to cool it down, but in spring is usually a sign of impending swarming, hence our concern.

A brief intermission: remember the three frames of drone brood we removed from the purple hive, and gave to the chickens? Here’s what they looked like a few hours later:

Drone frames

The yellow hive has a scale on it to measure the weight of the hive. When we checked it the following day, it hadn’t gone down, which indicated that the bees had not swarmed. But we were concerned that they still might, so yesterday decided to do a “walk-away split” of the hive, where we basically divide the hive in two, moving half of the frames to a new hive. It’s called a “walk-away split” as there’s no need to even find the queen, we just ensure there are queen cells in each hive, and they make their own queen. Doing this split relieves the population pressure, without losing half of the bees. It does set them back, but they’ll recover in time, and we get another hive in the deal.

As mentioned last time, we didn’t find the queen… and we saw signs that maybe they don’t have a queen, or at least one they’re happy with.

To do the split, we brought out deep and medium boxes, and the other hive components, each box with eight frames.  We then removed the central four frames from each box, and moved four frames from each box of the yellow hive into the new boxes:

Moving frames to a new box

So the two boxes of each of the two hives each have four active frames, plus four new frames. (Not actually new; many of the frames have existing comb and even honey, previously stored in the freezer).

Here are the two medium boxes; one for the yellow hive, one for the new hive:

Moving frames to a new box

As you may have noticed above, I moved the mobile camera from the pond to watch the bees; here’s a shot of us working on the hives from that camera (with the old camera name overlay still):

Moving frames to a new box

We noticed several swarm cells on the frames, supporting the signs that they were planning to swarm. We also saw this capped supersedure cell, a sign that the hive either doesn’t have a queen, or the bees want to replace an unproductive queen:

Queen cell

Another cam shot, of me adding the second box to the hive:

Adding the box

The new hive is the cedar (aka Flow) hive on the left. To give them more room, we added Flow honey supers to both hives, though they probably won’t use them for a while, since they need to rebuild from the split. But having plenty of room will further reduce the chances of swarming:

Hives

Hives

So now we have the cedar and yellow hives from that split, each with Flow supers, plus the purple hive that’ll probably be ready for a honey super soon, a weak orange hive, and defunct hot pink hive:

Hives

We’ll be getting a couple of nucs in just over a week to replace the hot pink hive, and have ordered new hive components for a sixth hive, which will go between the purple and yellow ones.

Later in the day, the yellow hive has normal activity, about the same level as the purple hive:

Hives

The cedar hive was relatively quiet, which is expected, since they need to get used to their new home; hopefully they’ll settle in and resume normal activities soon:

Hives

Finally, a cam shot of sunrise behind the hives this morning:

Sunrise behind hives

All going well, we’ll inspect again in about 10 days, probably as part of adding the two new nucs.

Third beehive inspection of 2020

Another inspection of the beehives, following up to last week.

Firstly, a peek at the bottom of the feeder removed last week, now with fewer bees on it:

Feeder

A closer look; you can see a queen cup, and some bees further down, which have since departed:

Feeder closer

We’ll scrape that comb off before using the feeder again. (If we do; we weren’t entirely satisfied with them, as the sugar syrup tended to get moldy, and bees would find their way around the screen and drown.)

On to the inspection. Here’s the yellow hive, with the new Flow super:

Yellow hive

The inspection cloth on top to keep the bees calmer, and the rack ready to receive a removed frame. The grid on the right is the queen excluder, which prevents the queen from laying in the Flow honey super:

Yellow hive

A nice frame of honey and worker brood; a typical pattern for frames near the edge:

Honey and brood frame

A frame with a bunch of honey:

Honey frame

A brood frame covered in bees:

Brood frame

Another honey and brood frame:

Honey and brood frame

Honey frame:

Honey frame

We didn’t see the queen in the yellow hive, though saw proof that she had been laying, which was good enough.

Moving on to the purple hive, here’s a frame of drone brood that we noticed last week:

Purple hive drones

We spotted the queen (the large non-stripy bee near the edge on the left, which is the bottom of the frame):

Purple hive queen

We removed the three drone frames:

Three drone frames

And brushed the bees off them:

Brushing bees

We set those drone frames aside, to let the remaining bees evacuate:

Drone frames

We replaced those frames with ones we had stored in our shop freezer over winter (and had since defrosted), that included some honey.

Some bees hanging out on Jenn’s suit:

Bees on suit

This morning, I gave those drone frames to our chickens to enjoy; they’ll eat the unhatched drones and clean off the comb. We need to destroy the drone cells before using these frames again, otherwise they’d encourage laying more drones:

Chickens with drone frames

We also did mite treatments on the purple and orange hives. The orange hive is still looking weak, but surviving so far, so we didn’t disturb it too much.

We’ve completed the mite treatments now, so probably don’t need to inspect again for a couple of weeks, though need to keep an eye on the hives to give the purple hive more space if they need it, to prevent swarming. The yellow hive looks like they’re considering swarming, but they have plenty of space with the Flow super, so hopefully they won’t.

Finishing installing greenhouse irrigation

Yesterday I finished installing the greenhouse irrigation tubing and mister emitters (continuing from the previous post).

I started with the right-hand shelves. Here’s some assembled tubing for the middle one; a tap connector, elbows, and tubing:

Assembled tubing

The four-way splitter (the bottom one is spare) and connected irrigation tubing, enabling the irrigation for each shelf to be controlled separately:

Splitter and tubing

The mister emitters on the lower shelves; the emitters can be positioned as needed, but are just all over the place for now:

Mister emitters

Watering:

Watering

Another shot of the completed irrigation of the right-hand shelves:

Right shelves

On to the shelves at the back. The assembled tubing:

Assembled tubing

Timer, splitter, tubing:

Timer, splitter, tubing

Emitters:

Emitters

We have four soil moisture sensors, that connect to our weather station (which supports up to eight):

Moisture sensor

The completed irrigation, like a bunch of tentacles:

Irrigation done

A wide-angle view of inside the greenhouse:

Wide angle

A view of the outside, showing the shelving:

Outside back view

The front view:

Outside front view

This concludes the greenhouse plumbing and irrigation project! 

Cat update for week ending April 25

This Caturday: cats at their cabins, cats at their house, cats in the breezeway; only one alien visitor. And a fun GIF of inside the cat house.

Spud by the cabins:

Cat by cabins

The twins:

Cats at cabins

Yawn and stretch:

Yawn

Three cats inside their house:

Three cats inside

Porcini by the water dish, another eating:

Porcini

Pommie in front of the house, Paladout approaching behind:

Cat

The twins in the breezeway:

Twins

A couple of cats turned up several hours too early for breakfast:

Too early for breakfast

Poppy and Porcini:

Poppy and Porcini

Poppy asleep inside:

Poppy

An alien cat visited the breezeway; not sure if it’s one we’ve seen before; looks smaller than Pumpkin and such (haven’t seen him in weeks). Just looked then left without incident:

Alien cat

Pansy enjoying her heating pad in the back of the shop:

Pansy

An animated GIF of several hours inside the cat house, at 15 minute intervals; it’s fun seeing how they turn around while sleeping:

GIF of inside cat house

Three cats inside, with a yawn:

Three cats

Porcini on the awning, another peeking out the door:

Cat on the awning

Finally, two cats enjoying a heating pad inside:

Two cats inside

Flock Friday for April 24

For this week’s flock update: funny ducks, broody chickens, mucking out the coop, chasing the heron.

Gert peeking at me from under the pond deck:

Duck

The ducks greeting me on the back lawn:

Ducks

A view from the pond deck of the ducks and fish; I’m now feeding them from there on evening rounds, since it’s easier to see the fish from there. By the duck house is closer to the water, but the more acute viewing angle plus the angle of the sun reflecting off the water makes it harder to see into the pond:

Ducks and fish

I put a second camera into the old coop, to watch the broody chickens:

Camera

Here’s the view from that camera, showing a broody chicken emerging from the nesting box:

Broody chicken emerging

All three of the broody chickens out to eat:

Broody chickens out

And going back into the box:

Broody chickens back in

Three broody chickens:

Three broody chickens

Me mucking out the coop, scooping the dirty bedding to dump in the compost:

Mucking out coop

Adding fresh pine shavings bedding:

Adding fresh bedding

An animated GIF of a full day in the old coop, at half hour intervals:

GIF of a day in the old coop

Me hand-weeding by the pond. I spray weeds around the property, but don’t want to spray where the ducks frequent, so every day on my morning rounds I pull a few weeds, to keep it somewhat under control:

Weeding

Paladout by the pond:

Cat by pond

Broody chickens again:

Broody chickens

10 eggs in a nesting box; we’re currently averaging about a dozen a day, usually split between one box in each coop. Chickens like to lay in the same box as other chickens lay, so whichever box the first chicken lays in, the others also use. Usually the same one every day, but sometimes they change:

Eggs

The chickens in their run, watching me and the ducks outside:

Chickens

The ducks next to the pond:

Ducks

Greeting me on the lawn again:

Ducks

Following me from the chicken coops to the pond:

Ducks

You may have seen this GIF of the ducks running after me on my personal blog:

GIF of ducks

Once we reached the duck house, I gave them their treats:

Ducks

The heron landing:

Heron landing

I went out there to chase it off, before it could eat more of our fish; here’s a GIF of the heron taking off:

GIF of heron taking off

Just now, we saw the ducks on the driveway next to the veggie garden; the furthest we’ve seen them from the pond:

Ducks