Bee inspection: second treatments and mowing

The varroa mite treatments that we started last week are a three-week process, so we inspected and treated the beehives again this weekend.

Here’s Jenn using the smoker:

We had used a “liquid smoke” spray the last couple of times, due to wildfire danger, but it really didn’t work as well as real smoke… and we’ve had lots of rain recently, so aren’t so worried about wildfires at present. (Of course, we’re always very careful not to put the hot smoker on dry grass, etc.)

In the following picture, you can see the mite treatments at the top: the small black rectangles on the corners. In the foreground you can see bees enjoying pollen patties, one of the two feeding options, as mentioned before:

A shot of us working on the hives, from the camera I recently set up by the hives:

It was fascinating to see bright orange pollen on the bees:

Here’s a closer look at a bee with full pollen sacs:

The grass in front of the hives was getting quite long, so we decided to mow it. I don’t have any problem mowing behind the hives without a bee suit, but mowing right in their flight path seems a bit more risky, so I decided to take advantage of wearing the bee suit for the inspection to do that mowing:

I didn’t notice too much interest in me, but Jenn said she saw some bees following me, so the suit was probably a wise precaution, especially having been stung last week (which was uncomfortable for a few days, but almost back to normal now).

Here’s a shot from further away:

Much tidier:

Cat house: the possum menace

Last night was rather eventful at the cat house. The possum turned up, as often happens, but the raccoons arrived while it was eating, and they had a bit of a disagreement:

It was a busy time (around 22:22, aka 10:22 PM), which I saw on my iPad cam app. A cat amazingly slept through it (or pretended to do so), while the possum growled and lunged at the raccoons:

Here’s a couple more shots of the encounter:

The raccoons retreated, and the possum continued eating.

A few hours later, the possum visited again, and this time invaded the shelter, where two cats were sleeping. They quickly evacuated:

Fortunately that encounter didn’t scare the cats off; they were back later, and cleaned each other then slept for a number of hours:

Breakfast time queue:

I really hope the new food dispenser will let me eliminate the excess food, so the possum and raccoons stop coming. Makes me regret not building an elevated feeder and shelter.

Cat update: RIP, new feeder, cuteness

It’s been over a week since the previous cat update. Many apologies to the zero people eagerly awaiting another update. (Actually, there may be a non-zero number; I have had some nice feedback on the cat posts, which I greatly appreciate.)

Firstly, some sad news. You may recall the alien black cat that has been visiting our cat house (pictured in the above-linked post). Unfortunately, someone hit this cat as it was crossing the street, and we found it dead by our front fence. We figured it was a feral or stray (since it didn’t have any collar), so we gave it a respectful burial in the little graveyard we have for our pet cats. A few days later, Jenn saw a sign asking if anyone had seen a black cat, so she called the owner to give them the bad news. They were appreciative, and I’m sure it’s best to have closure, but we know how sad it is to lose a pet cat.

Here’s our cat graveyard, overlooking the pond, with memorial stones for our previous cats, some grass that Pixel used to like, and cat mint:

On to other topics. We’ve still been visited by raccoons and a possum regularly, as they’ve learned they can often find food left in the feeder:

Though sometimes not:

Possum:

So to try to eliminate that temptation, I have replaced the automatic feeder with an internet-connected model. This new one will dispense on a schedule like the old one, but also has an app. So I can have it dispense an amount of food that the cats are pretty much guaranteed to eat, then use the app to manually (and remotely) dispense addtional portions as needed, ensuring that they don’t leave any food to attract the unwanted visitors.

Here’s the new feeder in the cupboard above the feeding area, along with spare food, the light remote, an Eero internet router (to extend the Wi-Fi range), plus camera and heating pad plugs:

The app lets me adjust the schedule, dispense custom amounts manually, see the feeding history, and other info:

I just installed that today, so I’ll fine-tune the meal amounts till I figure out the right amount. Hopefully I’ll be able to eliminate leftovers, and thus phase out the non-cat visitations. We’ll see!

Anyway, that’s the news of the week, so let’s close out with an assortment of cute cat pics:

New shrubs behind the cat house, to eventually make it a bit less exposed:

Cat by the beehives:

Bee inspection: removing supers & adding treatments

Today we did an inspection of the beehives. This was a big inspection of all four of the hives, plus we removed the honey supers on the two that had them (no more honey harvested), tested for mites, added mite treatments, added pollen patties, and added sugar syrup feeders.

Here’s Jenn inspecting the purple hive, with the test equipment and liquid smoke:

A nice frame of brood, with honey in the top corners:

The purple hive always gets really cranky when opened up. Here you can see lots of bees swarming around Jenn:

I recently put the mobile cam over by the beehives, as an experiment, so it captured us doing our inspection (you may be able to see the cloud of bees behind Jenn here too):

A selfie with several bees around me:

I got stung today, too; the first time I’ve been stung during an inspection. I stepped away from the hives to activate my phone camera, and one got me on the back of the hand as soon as I took off my glove. I can barely see the sting point at present, or feel it much, but it’ll probably swell up over the next day.

Here are bees on top of a box. You can see some white ones in the middle; they are coated in powdered sugar from the sugar shake mite test. The other bees will clean them off:

The bees have pollen patties to help feed them for the winter:

Here’s another cam shot of our inspection:

Scraping off the top of frames, to keep them tidy and easy to access:

A very nice comb of honey (for the bees winter supplies):

Lots of bees and honey:

The hives are now in winter mode; we’ll do more inspections and mite treatments over the next few weeks, to help them get ready for winter. We’ll also continue to feed them sugar syrup and pollen patties, to help them survive the coming cooler weather when they can’t go out and forage.

A bit of gardening: flowers & shrubs

Today we did some gardening. Firstly we cleared out one of the flowerbeds, moving things we wanted to keep to other beds, then spraying and hoeing the remainder (mostly weeds and dead flowers), then marked positions for planting with stakes, string, and spray paint:

We then planted some daylilies in triangle patterns, with each triangle the same color. We only have three colors for now, but will be adding another three later, for a nice rainbow sequence:

We also planted some shrubs around the back of the cat house, to give them a bit more privacy (and the back isn’t super attractive; it was originally going to be somewhere where the back wouldn’t be visible).

They are Oregon Grape & Red Flowering Currant shrubs:

Finally, we planted some Ivory Halo Dogwood shrubs out the front by the dogyard, to help fill in a previously useless corner of the field, and give more privacy for the swimming pool. I’ll closely mow and bark this area later:

A productive day!

One year of feral cats

Yep, it’s another week, so another cat update.

But more importantly, it’s been a year since we first found the feral cats, or rather the kittens, and their mother, Poppy.

Here’s a picture from my first blog post about the kittens, published one year ago today; click the link to see more:

My how they’ve grown!

You may recall from last week that I turned on the heating pads and held open the door to the shelter part of the cat house, hoping that they’d start sleeping in there. This has worked out well. Most nights, at least one cat has spent most of the night, and often several.

Here’s the first guest, Porcini:

The following night, three cats:

Two of whom stayed all night:

However, Spud got a bit curious about the camera, disloging it from its magnetic mount (hanging on by the power cable):

Two mornings running:

Cute angled shot:

Here’s what the camera looks like:

To prevent further issues, I built a wooden enclosure, that both holds the camera in place, and protects it a bit, much like I did for the feeder cam:

Here it is installed:

We also had an encounter between the alien black cat and one of the mushroom girls:

Some words were exchanged:

And a bit of posturing, before the black cat made a hasty retreat; they didn’t actually come to blows:

Makes you want to bury your head:

Another exciting development was when we saw all five cats at once; we hadn’t seen more than four at a time for months, so had wondered if something had happened to one of them.

Here’s a screenshot of my iPad, showing one cat outside, two in the shelter, and two in the feeder:

Let’s finish off with some random interesting pics.

Mirrored sleeping cats:

Poppy:

Stretch:

A snuggly pair:

Hunting:

That’s it for now.

Cat house update

Been a week, so must be time for another cat house update!

Firstly, the gray alien cat has continued to visit every few days; I’m unsure if it’s a neighbor’s roaming pet, or feral:

We’ve also had a black cat visitor, which has been near our ferals without conflict. I wonder if one or both of those will join our colony in time; if so, we’ll have to try to trap them to get FCCO to check them out:

We’ve also still had the occasional possum visit, which doesn’t seem discouraged by the feeder light (but was disappointed to find no food on this occasion):

And raccoons, though they are a bit more discouraged by the light; only the parent is brave / desperate enough to go inside now (but did luck out in finding freshly dispensed food; I’ve since moved the schedule back half an hour):

One of our ferals sitting on a rock. That’s a favorite place to wait for food, and keep an eye on things:

A screenshot of my iPad, showing the four cat cameras in the LiveCams Pro app that I use to watch the cameras throughout the day:

It rained a bit last night, so here’s a damp cat, diappointed to find no food (breakfast is now dispensed at 05:00), but did have fun chasing a moth:

Since it is getting cooler overnight, and it rained for the first time in months (and might again tonight), I decided to switch the shelter to winter mode, a little earlier than originally planned. So I opened up the maintenance door, closed the vents at the back, and plugged in the two heating pads on the lower level:

Here’s a shot of the open shelter from further back:

Closed again:

I also held open the front door again, to encourage them to go inside. I was hoping they’d figure out the door when it was closed, but none did. If they start living in there, I might try closing it again after a while, when they’d have a stronger motivation to get back inside. If that doesn’t work, I may have to leave it open permanently, which wouldn’t be preferred:

Lastly, I also cut the feeder tube a couple of inches shorter, since I noticed them finding it a little difficult to get their heads under it to eat food directly under the pipe. This should give them plenty of room:

I hope you’ve enjoyed this update!

Cat feeder modifications

I guess my “Building a cat shelter: a summary” post was a little premature, as I’ve just made some modifications to the feeder side.

But first, some backstory on the motivation (and cute cat pics).

I’ve had a periodic problem with some unwelcome nocturnal visitors to the feeder on occasion. Sometimes a possum:

And sometimes a family of raccoons (typically an adult and three young ones):

Once we had a deer too, but that wasn’t a bother (but if you look closely, you might see a pair of cat eyes to the left of the deer leg, on the deck of the cat house; the deer quickly retreated when it saw the cat, though I doubt it was a threat):

We even had an alien cat visit a few times (one that looks very much like our pet Paladin, but isn’t; he’s inside-only):

Here are four of the ferals:

Peeking:

Anyway, I’ve been keeping a close eye on the food level, trying to balance it so the cats get all the food they want, but don’t leave anything overnight, to entice the wildlife. The camera in the feeder has really helped with that, and I’ve adjusted the time and amount of food released by the automatic dispenser to achieve that goal, with mixed success. Sometimes the food runs out too early, sometimes the raccoons come at different times, etc.

So my next attempt to discourage the wildlife is to add a light to the feeder area. Hopefully that won’t bother the cats, but will put off the raccoons and possum. I expect they’ll adapt to it, but hopefully not.

I also wanted to make some other changes. The metal food dish is a bit too deep, both in the height and front-to-back sense, and the metal might get uncomfortable in freezing temperatures. So I wanted to replace that. A shallower dish would need to be more forward to line up with the pipe, so I also wanted to add a baffle to do that, and protect the camera (having been dislodged once by the raccoons).

Finally, I also wanted to caulk the edges of the wall, to prevent winter moisture seeping under it into the shelter area.

So I did that first, after removing the old dish:

(The caulk is actually clear; goes on white, but dries clear.)

I then built a wall structure, with cutouts for the camera and such. The boards sticking out from either side were intended to screw it to the feeder walls, but I didn’t end up bothering with that, since it seems plenty secure without:

The back side:

Here’s everything installed; the wall protecting the camera and acting as a baffle or backstop of the new food dish (which, like the first one, is screwed to the floor), plus the light strip on the ceiling:

The light strip color can be changed. I have it set to the dimmest red color initially, but could make it brighter, or another color, if desired.

Here’s a view of the storage shelf above the feeder area:

A closer view of the feeder area, with food in the dish, and the water dispenser in place:

The first visitor:

Let’s see how this goes!