Starting installing greenhouse irrigation

On Saturday I started adding the irrigation emitters to the greenhouse. I only did one shelf, but subsequent ones should be a bit faster. I’ll wait for a cool and/or rainy day before doing more, since it’s unpleasant to spend much time in the greenhouse when it’s sunny.

Here are a couple of boxes of irrigation parts on the potting bench, and end pieces on the sink:

Irrigation parts

An assembled irrigation pipe, with a tap connector, a couple of right-angle elbows, pipe, and flexible misters:

Irrigation pipe with misters

The mister tubes can be twisted and angled as needed, holding their position, and the mister heads can be adjusted to change the width of the spray.

Here’s the pipe installed. The irrigation tap, water timer, and 4-way splitter that you’ve seen before, with the above irrigation pipe and misters attached to the underside of the top shelf:

Tap, timer, splitter, Irrigation pipe, misters

Here’s the other end of the irrigation pipe:

Irrigation pipe with misters

The whole shelf; the plan is that the top shelf won’t have irrigation, but the lower three shelves on the back and side will:

Whole shelf

The misters in action as a test run (the positions and spray width needs to be tweaked):

Irrigation misters

As mentioned, I’ll add irrigation for more shelves later.

Second beehive inspection of 2020

One week after the first beehive inspection of the year, we inspected again, to make some tweaks, and continue the mite treatments.

Yesterday I modified our new Flow box and cover; the access door on the Flow box was sticking, and the roof was hitting the handles of the top panel, so I used my router to trim them to work better (not particularly tidy, but works):

Modified Flow box and cover

Today we removed the feeder from the yellow hive; we had left that in place in case the queen was in there. There were still lots of bees on the bottom of the feeder, but we shook most of them into the hive; the remainder will fly back this afternoon, then I’ll be able to take the feeder away tomorrow:

Yellow hive: bees on bottom of feeder

A broken queen cup stuck to the top of a frame (it would have been built hanging off the frame above):

Broken queen cup

A decent frame of brood:

Brood frame

We didn’t see the queen, so hopefully she’s in there somewhere. We’ll look again next week.

We also put the new Flow super on, with a queen excluder, to give them more room for honey:

Flow super

On to the purple hive, we transferred the frames to a new box, since the blue box had a bit of a gap:

Transferring frames to a new box

Looking at the upper box, there’s some good brood frames:

Brood frame

But also a lot of drone frames, which we’ll remove next week:

Drone frame

We also took a peek in the orange hive. It’s still alive, so we just did the treatment without disturbing it too much:

Orange hive

So here are the current state of our hives — two gone, one weak, one with too many drones, and one looking good, though no queen sighting:

The hives

We’ll inspect again next week, weather permitting.

Cat update for week ending April 18

This Caturday, various cute cats, various wildlife.

Three cats at breakfast time:

Three cats

Two cats inside their house:

Two cats inside

A GIF of Poppy drinking water and being startled by a cat climbing halfway up the pole behind the cat house then jumping down:

GIF of cat climbing pole

(Fun fact: the way Poppy raises one paw isn’t because it’s sore or something, it’s to be ready to lash out to defend herself if needed. Standard feral cat behavior for threats.)

A still of the cat pausing halfway up the pole:

Cat on pole

And jumping down:

Cat on pole

Porcini quickly exits a cabin as a coyote approaches:

Cat by cabins

It’s concerning that I’ve seen coyotes approaching the cat places recently:

Coyote by cabins

Three cats inside their house:

Three cats inside

An amusing side eye:

Side eye

Watching a bird overhead:

Cat watching bird

Since it’s no longer freezing overnight, I removed the heated water dish, and moved the water dispenser so I can see the level in the camera. It looks green mostly due to moss on the ground behind it; that is fresh water.

Dirty cat:

Dirty cat

Two cats:

Two cats

Not a cat: a possum:

Possum

Also not a cat: a raccoon a few minutes later:

Raccoon

Porcini:

Porcini

Alien cat in the breezeway, with Pommie in the cabin; they exchanged words, but he left without incident:

Alien cat in breezeway

The sun is currently at a perfect angle to shine down the breezeway in the morning, as a cat walks past:

Cat and sun in breezeway

A nice picture of Porcini:

Porcini

Poppy downstairs in their house, Bella feeling playful upstairs:

Two cats inside

Flock Friday for April 17

For this week’s Flock Friday, ducks being cute, chickens being broody, and a heron eating a couple of our fish (grrr).

The ducks greeting me by the chicken coop again:

Ducks

Ducks and chickens

Chickens enjoying rice treats:

Chickens with rice

You may have seen this picture on my personal blog: the ducks on the temporary bridge over the pond waterfall stream:

Ducks on bridge

A GIF of the ducks leading me down the path:

Paladout walking in front of the camera by the pond:

Cat by pond

Five eggs in a nesting box in the new coop:

Five eggs in nesting box

And another five in a nesting box in the old coop; they’ve been averaging about a dozen a day recently:

Five eggs in nesting box

Martha is still being broody (and rather fluffy here):

Broody chicken

Buffy on the bin edge when I opened it to give them mealworms:

Chicken on bin edge

A GIF of a heron landing in the pond:

GIF of heron landing

A still image of the heron; such elegant birds (not!):

Heron landing

Another angle:

Heron landing

While the heron is interesting, it isn’t welcome, as it feeds on frogs and fish. This week, the heron caught two of our smallish fish.

Here’s a GIF of the heron catching a koi, I’d guess at least a couple of years old:

GIF of heron with fish

A still of that:

Heron with fish

And a second smaller koi:

Heron with fish

The ducks are always curious, but the heron chased them when they got too close (another GIF):

GIF of heron chasing ducks

When I saw the heron, I went out there to chase it off, but all of that was in less than five minutes.

Finally, there are now three broody chickens, all trying to fit in the same box:

Three broody chickens

Fountain garden stream

Now that the overnight temperatures are (mostly) above freezing, I’ve turned on the garden water, which means I could also turn on the pump in the small pond for the stream next to the fountain garden. It needs the water to be on to top it up via an automatic filler valve.

Here is the small pond; you can see the pump underwater, and filler valve on the edge (I might be modifying that soon):

Small pond

Going upstream a bit, the lower stone bridge:

Lower part of stream

Looking downstream, with the upper stone bridge in the foreground, the lower bridge barely visible through the tree, and the cat house in the background:

Stream and cat house

A couple more shots of the upper bridge:

Bridge

Just beyond the bridge:

Stream

A GIF of the upper stream cascade (captured from a video):

GIF of stream cascade

And a closer GIF of the cascade (captured from a Live Photo):

GIF of stream cascade

A GIF of the upper falls pond, where the pump pipe ends with bubbling water:

GIF of upper falls pond

A static photo of the upper falls pond:

Upper falls pond

I hope you enjoyed this look at the stream. I’ll do the big pond waterfall in the future.

First beehive inspection of 2020

Since the weather is warming up, yesterday we did the first beehive inspection of the year. We had concerns about three of the hives, where we hadn’t seen much activity, and our concerns were justified. But two were looking strong. Read on for details… the bad news first, then the good news.

Firstly, the Flow hive. It was completely dead and empty:

Cedar hive

The pink hive was a split we did last year, so was quite small, and we weren’t confident that it would have enough resources to survive the winter. And we were right; it looks like they starved to death, then froze when the colony was too small to maintain warmth:

Dead bees

A mass of dead bees on the base:

Dead bees

It’s very sad to lose two hives. But things were looking up in the next hive — we were expecting more of the same in the engineering-challenged orange hive, but it was still alive:

Engineering-challenged orange hive

We saw the orange hive queen, too — the non-stripy bee in the lower-center of this picture:

Orange hive queen

We also saw the purple hive queen (see if you can spot her); they are also looking good:

Purple hive queen

A closer look at the queen — near the center of this picture:

Closer queen

A comb with bee bread (protein source for worker bees, made from pollen):

Bee bread

The feeders we had on the hives had some space above the frames, which encouraged them to build there. So we needed to scrape that off:

Scraping

The scraped comb went into a bucket:

Bucket

Still on the purple hive, a frame with drone cells; usually not something we want to see, but one frame is fine:

Drones

A frame with worker cells:

Workers

On to the yellow hive, they are in the best shape, with lots of honey stores still, though more incorrect building above the frames due to the feeder:

Yellow hive incorrect building

Unfortunate to destroy cells with bee larvae. Though we noticed some varroa mites on the larvae, which isn’t great:

Bee larvae with mites

A frame with some new honey:

New honey

We added ApiLife VAR mite treatments and a pollen patty to help feed them:

Mite treatment and pollen patty

A nice frame of honey and brood:

Honey and brood

Since they’re looking mostly full, we decided to add the Flow super:

Flow super

Sad: two empty hives:

Two empty hives

When scraping the bottom of the feeder, Jenn thought she saw the queen there:

Scraping feeder

So we removed the Flow super and put the feeder back on temporarily, so the queen could go back down where she should be:

Feeder back on temporarily

We’ll inspect again next weekend, and remove the feeder and possibly put on the Flow super again. Though we might have to finish the mite treatment first.

Again, it’s sad to lose two hives. But at least we have three remaining, to various levels of strength. Now that flowers are in bloom, they should become stronger. We’ll have to think about getting packages or nucs to replace the two hives, or possibly do splits from our other hives later in the year.

Aerial mowing

Yesterday I mowed the lawns and field. Just for fun, I flew my drone while doing so, and got some photos and video.

Here’s drone picture of me on my zero-turn riding mower, having just completed the back lawn (just a boring circular pattern). My beard is doing a fun three-way split from the wind:

Drone picture of David on mower

An animated GIF from the drone video of me on the mower:

GIF of David on mower

A top-down aerial shot of the flowerbeds partway through mowing:

Aerial shot of flowerbeds and mower

Another GIF, showing a much sped-up mowing of part of the flowerbeds:

GIF of mowing flowerbeds

Cat update for week ending April 11

For Caturday this week, another coyote visit, plus the usual assorted cuteness.

Porcini sees something interesting (probably a bird) at the cabins:

Two cats at the cabins

Full moon setting behind the cat house:

Full moon

Three cats at the cabins:

Three cats

Two cats inside the cat house (cute Porcini):

Two cats inside

Porcini watching a bird:

Porcini watching a bird

One of the twins between the cabins:

Cat between cabins

Four cats; we were watching all five cavorting from our house window, though I wasn’t able to capture all in one cam shot:

Four cats

Two cats sensing a disturbance in the Force: an approaching coyote:

Two cats sensing approaching coyote

This is a different coyote than the one we saw back in February, and only the second one we’ve seen in the years we’ve been here:

Coyote

The cats sniffing the coyote smells:

Cats

Three cats inside the cat house, waiting for breakfast:

Three cats inside

Poppy and Porcini inside during the day:

Two cats inside

Poppy licking Porcini:

Cat snuggles

Sleepy cats:

Cat snuggles

Four cats again:

Four cats

Friday bonus: koi and ducks

Some bonus pictures of the fish and ducks in our pond. The koi are starting to come out of hibernation, becoming more active as the weather warms up:

Fish

Of course, when I toss out fish food, the ducks scoop it up too:

Ducks and fish

Also, spotted a few of the smaller koi:

Fish and ducks

But wait, there’s more. Those pictures were from yesterday; today, I saw a bunch of the small koi (probably a couple of years old) and some of the older ones (about seven years old) amongst the grasses below the pond deck. I tossed in some fish food, which of course attracted the ducks:

Koi and duck