This morning I observed a female cardinal methodically shredding the leaves off one of my tomato plants. I've always liked cardinals, with thier fierce parenting and beautiful colors, and distinctive territorial yelling, but an encounter couple weeks ago has left me sour. I came across a male cardinal lying in the sand on the road in front of the Sanctuary. He seemed to have an injured wing, but when I reached for him he glared so balefully I almost chickened out. It's just a little bird, I coached myself, and picked him up, trying to hold him securely without squeezing his injury. I figured I would try to take him to the wildlife care folks in the morning. Then he bit me. That beak, that pretty, stubby orange beak? It's a wicked, sharp, steely pincer, and it was clamped deep in the web between my thumb and forefinger. I wasn't able to pull free--I had to literally pry him off me.
I took another two steps before he struck again, this time unerringly grabbing hold of a scar on my thumb. When I was 15, I reached for a paintbrush and instead impaled my thumb through and through on an Exact-o blade; somehow, when the resulting wound was stitched up, some bit of nerve or tendon was sewn right into the scar. It's a bit sensitive. Mr. Bitey McRedbird smacked down on that scar like an Inquistion priest with pliers. When I got him off--and it was not easy to do that calmly--I dropped him. He scarpered into the brush, where I tried, but couldn't nab him again.
So I have a new respect for cardinals, and their pretty, wicked orange beaks, and this one was going to town with savage precision on my tomato vines. So on my morning scrounge for something edible in the yard (9 marble sized potatoes, a handful of sweet potato greens, some basil, 6 hot peppers, and two eggs--breakfast!) I checked it out. there was nothing but bare stem where the bird had been, but on the leaves below, I found the tell-tale bug apples, the amazingly large scat of the tomato hornworm. One might even say fewmets: when those caterpillars get going they get gigantic. Some of those poops were bigger than my sadly stunted potato harvest. I picked off a few more, all I could find, and fed them to the chickens. Audrey, second generation Sanctuary survivor chicken, is the only one who gets the concept of me throwing her bugs, and she was busy laying my breakfast egg at the time, so I had to coach Ghostface and Port; Binky just watched me with his steely orange gaze, but I'm not fooled: I remember when he was a poop-bound little runt, built like a bundle of twigs, that I had to secretly handfeed so he'd get anything to eat at all. I think this is why he still loves me.)
Over the weekend, we got the news that one of the eggs we traded for the two Black Stars is hatching. It was Audrey's egg, so it will be the third generation Survivor chicken. I just really, really hope it's a hen....
Yesterday the smaller of the new hens refused to stand up and leave the coop. When I went in to get her, her buddy aggressively defended her: it's no good, getting seriously attacked by a big chicken. She took a couple divots out of my calf. Jordan says it's my own fault for chicken wrangling with no clothes on, but it was early in the morning. Too early to get dressed. Anyway, now I know how I got that oddly square black bruise behind my knee last week, since Yang freshened it up for me. I'm so grateful for Jordan's animal training now. He was able to determine that though the leg seemed injured, it wasn't fractured. Her foot was properly warm, and had good strong grip. We theorize that she fell off the perch in a scuffle--these two haven't integrated yet, and no small wonder if this is how Yang treats friendly overtures, like rescues--and maybe banged herself on the rebar the feeder hangs from. We set her up in one of the cages for a little R&R, and when I put some food down she got pretty excited about it, always a good sign--a chicken that won't eat is at death's door. Last night we put Yang in with her for company, and when I checked on them this morning, they were chumbling comfortably to each other and moving about. Ying stood up on both feet and hobbled a few steps.
I know people who would have rushed the bird to a vet and sunk whatever funds were necessary into x-rays, drugs, even surgery. I know a woman whose chicken was savaged by a dog; she spent $600, and the bird died anyway. And this was not a rich woman, by any means. I know someone who is unemployed and near eviction, with no savings, who spent more than her month's rent (borrowed money) on an 8-year old rat with cancer. Frankly, Jordan and I won't do that. We will of course take common sense, good husbandry steps to diagnose and treat anything we can, with whatever means are at our disposal. Not unlike we do for ourselves! We love our chickens, and take good care of them, but our resources are limited, and honestly, I've had a lot of chickens come and go in my life. They don't live forever. Accidents happen, illness happens--though very rarely, if the animal is well cared for. There are possums, foxes, hawks, stray dogs, hurricanes. Once a board fell on a hen (Jade, a black sex-link) breaking her neck and pinning her to the ground. It took me most of a day to find her, and she was still alive until I lifted the board and she moved her head--very sad.
On the other hand, chickens are tough. I've seen them recover from dog attacks, being savaged by a rooster, and bronchitis. Given a chance to rest, eat, and drink, protected from infection, they can pull through pretty sever injuries. At any rate, Ying is looking much improved today and I think she will make a full recovery...and we still have enough money in the bank to pay the mortgage, so the rest of our residents will not become homeless. Win/win.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Monday, June 21, 2010
Summer Solstice
There hasn't been much news from the hive. It's hot, and rainy; the jungle gets deeper and greener every day, and the bees zoom out of the hive every morning on a mission to accomplish the day's foraging before the afternoon thunderstorm. In the mornings you can watch them take off, zigzagging like sparks from a bonfire, up and over the trees, then...where? Once the rain starts, they congregate at the hive entrance; they seem dozy and cranky, like kids stuck inside too long.
Dragonflies and hummingbirds are all over the back yard these days, and some of the gladiolas I transplanted a couple months ago are blooming. There are tomatoes, surprisingly late in the year, on the Homestead vines--an indeterminate variety developed to survive Florida's summer--and at long last, the chili peppers are starting to look enthusiastic. While I was away last week the red potatoes gave up the ghost, finally, so I'll dig them up tomorrow and see what we accomplished. The sweet potatoes and calabasas are starting to look happy, too; I planted two varieties of calabasa this year, so we might get some interesting crosses.
Outside, it's a rainforest. For a change we're getting regular afternoon rains, this summer--that's how it used to be every summer, until maybe six or seven years ago. The forest is responding, every branch sprouting with resurrection fern, moss on all the stones--moss everywhere--everything, lushly green. Even when it's not raining, there's a steady patter of water droplets from the canopy.
The chickens spend their afternoons on the front porch, venturing out into the fields once the rain lets up. Their crops are perpetually stuffed full of grass seed,toadlings, grasshoppers, beetles, worms, leafhoppers, and mole crickets--they almost can't be bothered to come to the back door for kitchen scraps. We have two new additions, named (rather unfortunately) Ying and Yang; they're a breed called Black Star,which is a RIR/Barred Rock cross. They're huge, peaceable, handsome black hens, and they are still getting used to things around here. They were accustomed to living with a family full of active children, and here, obviously, they are much more left to themselves. The younger RIRs, which we refer to as "the mediums" (because we have three sub-flocks at the moment: bitty, medium, and grown), have aligned themselves with the big new ladies, while Binky seems taken aback by their sheer size, and can't decide whether they are beautiful additions to his flock or some kind of threat.
The "bitty" flock consists of the three Old English Bantams we adopted a few months ago; sadly there are two roos and one hen. The hen is prone to choosing a bit of high ground from which to watch her two husbands facing off, which they do a couple times a day in a display of incredibly cute, miniature ferocity. The three of them are amazingly perfectly camouflaged in our forest--brassy brown as a fallen leaf and greenish black as a shadow--they can disappear in a blink. They're so teeny, Binky doesn't seem to even register their presence.
There isn't much else to talk about for now. We're in the summer holding pattern of long, long, hot, really hot, rainy days; it's the time of year when--not unlike the bees--the people, dogs, and cats all crowd inside and watch the jungle grow; when I most leave the Sanctuary to itself, to the mosquitoes, the humidity, and the occasional snake, and only open the windows at night sometimes to hear the frogs going crazy down in the swamp.
Dragonflies and hummingbirds are all over the back yard these days, and some of the gladiolas I transplanted a couple months ago are blooming. There are tomatoes, surprisingly late in the year, on the Homestead vines--an indeterminate variety developed to survive Florida's summer--and at long last, the chili peppers are starting to look enthusiastic. While I was away last week the red potatoes gave up the ghost, finally, so I'll dig them up tomorrow and see what we accomplished. The sweet potatoes and calabasas are starting to look happy, too; I planted two varieties of calabasa this year, so we might get some interesting crosses.
Outside, it's a rainforest. For a change we're getting regular afternoon rains, this summer--that's how it used to be every summer, until maybe six or seven years ago. The forest is responding, every branch sprouting with resurrection fern, moss on all the stones--moss everywhere--everything, lushly green. Even when it's not raining, there's a steady patter of water droplets from the canopy.
The chickens spend their afternoons on the front porch, venturing out into the fields once the rain lets up. Their crops are perpetually stuffed full of grass seed,toadlings, grasshoppers, beetles, worms, leafhoppers, and mole crickets--they almost can't be bothered to come to the back door for kitchen scraps. We have two new additions, named (rather unfortunately) Ying and Yang; they're a breed called Black Star,which is a RIR/Barred Rock cross. They're huge, peaceable, handsome black hens, and they are still getting used to things around here. They were accustomed to living with a family full of active children, and here, obviously, they are much more left to themselves. The younger RIRs, which we refer to as "the mediums" (because we have three sub-flocks at the moment: bitty, medium, and grown), have aligned themselves with the big new ladies, while Binky seems taken aback by their sheer size, and can't decide whether they are beautiful additions to his flock or some kind of threat.
The "bitty" flock consists of the three Old English Bantams we adopted a few months ago; sadly there are two roos and one hen. The hen is prone to choosing a bit of high ground from which to watch her two husbands facing off, which they do a couple times a day in a display of incredibly cute, miniature ferocity. The three of them are amazingly perfectly camouflaged in our forest--brassy brown as a fallen leaf and greenish black as a shadow--they can disappear in a blink. They're so teeny, Binky doesn't seem to even register their presence.
There isn't much else to talk about for now. We're in the summer holding pattern of long, long, hot, really hot, rainy days; it's the time of year when--not unlike the bees--the people, dogs, and cats all crowd inside and watch the jungle grow; when I most leave the Sanctuary to itself, to the mosquitoes, the humidity, and the occasional snake, and only open the windows at night sometimes to hear the frogs going crazy down in the swamp.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Honeycomb-o-rama
Just showered off from being outside working the hive. Summer is well and truly here, sweltering, steamy and sunshiny, complete with the high crescendo of cicadas and distant afternoon thunder, promising but never quite delivering cool rain.
I opened the hive today with the intention of removing the mound of melted comb slumped onto the bottom of the box, so I went in as fully equipped as I could with long rubber gloves, long sleeves, hair up, even a real pair of shoes. Once I started moving bars around and seeing what was going on inside, though, I changed my plan. The bees are working that lump of comb, and have even built more on it from the ground up. Now, I know that's not optimal for honey harvest...in fact, it will be pretty tricky. But the bees get to keep most of their first year honey, in theory, so what do I care if they want it down there? Besides, the only way to get it out is to remove a lot of bars, including a great deal of brood comb. The one concern I have about leaving it there is varroa. I've read that one of the advantages of a top bar hive in combating varroa mites is that the comb doesn't touch the bottom or sides, thus leaving the mites no way to climb back up into the brood nest. We found a varroa mite last week. Just one. They are the size of seed ticks, so if you imagine finding a tick the size of a football on your back, you can get a picture of their size relative to the bees. No wonder they are so destructive.
Still, they are here, and bees and beeks alike need to learn to live with them. I'm studying up on how to prepare a sugar syrup with essential oils that people are using with good results. The bees feed this readily available syrup to the brood, then the mites attacking that brood die from the essential oils. Oils used include lemongrass, peppermint, and wintergreen.
We're learning that honeycomb is significantly thicker than brood comb--the cells seem too be roughly 3/4 inch deep, as opposed to about 1/2 inch. (Figures arrived at by eyeballing, not actually measuring.) So when we build more hives next month, I think we should make some wider bars, or at least cut some 1/4 inch spacers to insert between honey bearing combs. I think that will eliminate some of the cross comb issues we're seeing with Beedicca. Today, as a barefoot style tactic, I cut and pried the combs apart so each comb was attached to only one bar, and slipped in a stick of bamboo as a spacer. One comb was so fat I needed two sticks to give it enough room! (can't wait to harvest that puppy...) All of this meant I ended up removing two bars, so the hive now has a total of 24 bars, with the last 8 or so partly to mostly open for more comb.
I also re-engineered the roof, which is simply a bit of roofing tin. I originally folded ours down the center, so its peak ran lengthwise along the hive. In the early afternoon, the sun would beat down mercilessly on the south east side, driving the drones to cluster outside the hive in beards while the workers assumed the air conditioning position. According to what I've read, many workers abandon nectar duty, and instead arrange themselves in various patterns to control air flow through the hive, while other workers bring in water for evaporative cooling. I theorized that the peaked roof was conducting heat right down into the hive instead of helping to create airflow: probably the cause of that huge comb falling off its bar into the bottom of the hive where we now have to worry about it. I flattened out the tin and set it back up like a shed roof, with the southeast edge raised a few inches, so the hot sun won't have a flat surface to rain fire upon. I think the resulting overhang is enough to keep direct sun from hitting the top of the hive at all. In winter, we can reverse the slant so the sun will hit the flat of the roof and warm the hive.
I saw some new birds today: a flock of adorable woods pee-wees ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Wood_Pewee), and at long last, the elusive cat bird (http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Gray_Catbird/id ), which my guidebook describes as a "skulker." I've caught glimpses of this bird, skulking indeed, in the underbrush, nothing but a bird shaped shadow that vanishes when you look at it. This morning she landed on the dead cassia bush outside my bedroom window and I got a good look before she realized I was there.
The five surviving hens are doing well. They're getting used to their coop, and have started laying again. We let them out on days when we're home and can pay attention in the evenings. The babies are coming along well too, and I'll probably let the two new RIRs out of their chicken tractor sometime next month. The Old English bantams are still so tiny, I'm not sure I'll ever let them out! The three of them will have abundant room inside one of the moveable tractor coops, which are supposedly big enough for 5-8 normal sized hens to live comfortably.
Still no harvest on the tomatoes or peppers that I planted around the hive, but the potatoes are nearly ready to dig, the sweet potatoes are looking good, and there is one chili pepper, the Thai hot, which seems to be enjoying life in partial shade: it's not leggy at all, and has a lot of new fruits coming along. With June approaching, our inside season is almost upon us. I'm starting to look forward to getting a lot more writing done, now that the distractions of spring are waning.
I opened the hive today with the intention of removing the mound of melted comb slumped onto the bottom of the box, so I went in as fully equipped as I could with long rubber gloves, long sleeves, hair up, even a real pair of shoes. Once I started moving bars around and seeing what was going on inside, though, I changed my plan. The bees are working that lump of comb, and have even built more on it from the ground up. Now, I know that's not optimal for honey harvest...in fact, it will be pretty tricky. But the bees get to keep most of their first year honey, in theory, so what do I care if they want it down there? Besides, the only way to get it out is to remove a lot of bars, including a great deal of brood comb. The one concern I have about leaving it there is varroa. I've read that one of the advantages of a top bar hive in combating varroa mites is that the comb doesn't touch the bottom or sides, thus leaving the mites no way to climb back up into the brood nest. We found a varroa mite last week. Just one. They are the size of seed ticks, so if you imagine finding a tick the size of a football on your back, you can get a picture of their size relative to the bees. No wonder they are so destructive.
Still, they are here, and bees and beeks alike need to learn to live with them. I'm studying up on how to prepare a sugar syrup with essential oils that people are using with good results. The bees feed this readily available syrup to the brood, then the mites attacking that brood die from the essential oils. Oils used include lemongrass, peppermint, and wintergreen.
We're learning that honeycomb is significantly thicker than brood comb--the cells seem too be roughly 3/4 inch deep, as opposed to about 1/2 inch. (Figures arrived at by eyeballing, not actually measuring.) So when we build more hives next month, I think we should make some wider bars, or at least cut some 1/4 inch spacers to insert between honey bearing combs. I think that will eliminate some of the cross comb issues we're seeing with Beedicca. Today, as a barefoot style tactic, I cut and pried the combs apart so each comb was attached to only one bar, and slipped in a stick of bamboo as a spacer. One comb was so fat I needed two sticks to give it enough room! (can't wait to harvest that puppy...) All of this meant I ended up removing two bars, so the hive now has a total of 24 bars, with the last 8 or so partly to mostly open for more comb.
I also re-engineered the roof, which is simply a bit of roofing tin. I originally folded ours down the center, so its peak ran lengthwise along the hive. In the early afternoon, the sun would beat down mercilessly on the south east side, driving the drones to cluster outside the hive in beards while the workers assumed the air conditioning position. According to what I've read, many workers abandon nectar duty, and instead arrange themselves in various patterns to control air flow through the hive, while other workers bring in water for evaporative cooling. I theorized that the peaked roof was conducting heat right down into the hive instead of helping to create airflow: probably the cause of that huge comb falling off its bar into the bottom of the hive where we now have to worry about it. I flattened out the tin and set it back up like a shed roof, with the southeast edge raised a few inches, so the hot sun won't have a flat surface to rain fire upon. I think the resulting overhang is enough to keep direct sun from hitting the top of the hive at all. In winter, we can reverse the slant so the sun will hit the flat of the roof and warm the hive.
I saw some new birds today: a flock of adorable woods pee-wees ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Wood_Pewee), and at long last, the elusive cat bird (http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Gray_Catbird/id ), which my guidebook describes as a "skulker." I've caught glimpses of this bird, skulking indeed, in the underbrush, nothing but a bird shaped shadow that vanishes when you look at it. This morning she landed on the dead cassia bush outside my bedroom window and I got a good look before she realized I was there.
The five surviving hens are doing well. They're getting used to their coop, and have started laying again. We let them out on days when we're home and can pay attention in the evenings. The babies are coming along well too, and I'll probably let the two new RIRs out of their chicken tractor sometime next month. The Old English bantams are still so tiny, I'm not sure I'll ever let them out! The three of them will have abundant room inside one of the moveable tractor coops, which are supposedly big enough for 5-8 normal sized hens to live comfortably.
Still no harvest on the tomatoes or peppers that I planted around the hive, but the potatoes are nearly ready to dig, the sweet potatoes are looking good, and there is one chili pepper, the Thai hot, which seems to be enjoying life in partial shade: it's not leggy at all, and has a lot of new fruits coming along. With June approaching, our inside season is almost upon us. I'm starting to look forward to getting a lot more writing done, now that the distractions of spring are waning.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
It has been way more than a week since my last entry, and there's a lot to write about. In my last post I discussed the loss by fox of several of my chickens. The death toll climbed to five before we finally wised up enough to take the drastic step of keeping the chickens confined to their coop. We thought at first that if we waited until full daylight to let the girls out, we'd avoid that dangerous twilight dawn time...and that seemed to work. Everyone was still there when Jordan got home from work at four pm. But when I went to close the coop at dusk, Darkle was gone.
So Jordan sent a good deal of time Saturday reinforcing the coop with wire so predators can't dig in, raking out the litter, and setting up a feeder. Up until this point the chickens only slept in the coop, and except for one or two really cold, wet days this winter we let them out to forage everyday. They are none too excited about being jailed, and confinement has sadly curtailed egg production. But it's a decent sized coop and they have adequate room--they're just accustomed to freely hunting and gathering over our entire property (and as far away as the cow pasture, 3 or 4 acres away).
I'm debating even now whether to let them out for the day, but I think our evening plans may take us away from the house before dusk, leaving them vulnerable. Poor biddies. I miss having them hanging around with me on my days off. It is interesting to see how many little sprouting weeds are coming up after only about a week of not having them loose--they do a good job of keeping our little glade from getting overgrown.
Now on to the bees: Sunday afternoon Beedicca gave me a good scare. I was preparing for our trip, and for my all too brief visit with my excellent friends, S & D, when I noticed bees gathering in a beard on the outside of the hive. "Bearding" is something bees do when they swarm; they cling to each other 'like a human chain of bees', as Jordan described it. For f****s sakes, today? You're swarming today?? we're going out of town today! So I messed with them a bit. I poked around in the beard with a stick to see if I could identify a queen (I couldn't--I still haven't seen Beedicca herself herself), and when that didn't help, I decided to add more bars. Maybe they would decide to move back in if they had more space. I added ALL the bars. The hive is set up something like a trough, with 26 bars and a divider board. The management theory is to add bars slowly as the bees need the space; adding them a few at a time encourages them to build nice straight comb along each bar rather than running it longways across several bars. Of course the only real purpose for that is to make our honey harvest easier--it matters not to the bees that their comb runs in nice straight lines.
When Jordan arrived home, he and the guys we were traveling with found a ton of bees outside the hive in two huge beards, and they swept them into a planter with a stick, then shook them back into the hive. M. observed that the beards were largely composed of drones, and speculated that they were preparing to ship out, seeking a queen on her maiden flight. All the way down on the trip to Miami we puzzled over why Beedicca would be ready to swarm so early. They've only lived here 6 weeks!
It was a great trip to Miami, by the way. While Jordan was feeding peanuts to the prehensile tailed porcupine in his role as guest keeper, J&M and I drove all over the Redlands visiting Robert is Here, a huge bonsai farm, and the beautiful Buddhist Temple. In the evenings, our hosts A & J drove us through Everglades National Park hunting for invasive pythons (A. has a collection permit). I brought home a couple of pretty little trees, and we had a totally unexpected audience with the Temple's master, who graciously spent nearly an hour with us discussing the nature of the Buddha and the practice of mediation. He also nearly busted a gut laughing when he flipped us a bird as an example of what comes of being the bad, "third child."
When I have more time, and have thought it through a little more, I'll try to recreate that talk for you--it was really something, and felt incredibly timely: I've been feeling moved toward Buddhism, recently. Drawn to meditation,at any rate. There is a saying, that when you're ready a teacher will come, and it's been true for me a couple times in my life already. This felt like a little karmic nudge.
And...back to the bees. One of my fellow New Bees remarked in a post that her bees engaged in the same behavior the day after ours, and she did much the same thing, added bars and shoo'ed them back inside. Once we got home and I had some time for homework, I looked it up. When the temperature in the hive climbs above 90, the bees undertake cooling protocols. This involves them lining up in certain patterns inside, to channel the air through, while others stop collecting nectar and bring in water, for evaporative cooling. And some bees--especially the lay-about drones--just have to get out of the way in order to stop contributing to the heat inside. They go out and cling to the sides of the hive, in beards.
Mystery solved. Beedicca is not leaving us, huzzah! In the process of fiddling with the hive during all this, we found that they've been building massive, heavy combs just plump and juicy with honey, at an amazing pace. Of the eight bars we added before we left on the trip, three had complete, full honeycombs when we returned four days later. Astounding. We got a little taste of the honey as we worked the hive and inevitably broke open some comb: it was light, clear, and faintly perfumed, like jasmine or magnolia. Astounding!
So Jordan sent a good deal of time Saturday reinforcing the coop with wire so predators can't dig in, raking out the litter, and setting up a feeder. Up until this point the chickens only slept in the coop, and except for one or two really cold, wet days this winter we let them out to forage everyday. They are none too excited about being jailed, and confinement has sadly curtailed egg production. But it's a decent sized coop and they have adequate room--they're just accustomed to freely hunting and gathering over our entire property (and as far away as the cow pasture, 3 or 4 acres away).
I'm debating even now whether to let them out for the day, but I think our evening plans may take us away from the house before dusk, leaving them vulnerable. Poor biddies. I miss having them hanging around with me on my days off. It is interesting to see how many little sprouting weeds are coming up after only about a week of not having them loose--they do a good job of keeping our little glade from getting overgrown.
Now on to the bees: Sunday afternoon Beedicca gave me a good scare. I was preparing for our trip, and for my all too brief visit with my excellent friends, S & D, when I noticed bees gathering in a beard on the outside of the hive. "Bearding" is something bees do when they swarm; they cling to each other 'like a human chain of bees', as Jordan described it. For f****s sakes, today? You're swarming today?? we're going out of town today! So I messed with them a bit. I poked around in the beard with a stick to see if I could identify a queen (I couldn't--I still haven't seen Beedicca herself herself), and when that didn't help, I decided to add more bars. Maybe they would decide to move back in if they had more space. I added ALL the bars. The hive is set up something like a trough, with 26 bars and a divider board. The management theory is to add bars slowly as the bees need the space; adding them a few at a time encourages them to build nice straight comb along each bar rather than running it longways across several bars. Of course the only real purpose for that is to make our honey harvest easier--it matters not to the bees that their comb runs in nice straight lines.
When Jordan arrived home, he and the guys we were traveling with found a ton of bees outside the hive in two huge beards, and they swept them into a planter with a stick, then shook them back into the hive. M. observed that the beards were largely composed of drones, and speculated that they were preparing to ship out, seeking a queen on her maiden flight. All the way down on the trip to Miami we puzzled over why Beedicca would be ready to swarm so early. They've only lived here 6 weeks!
It was a great trip to Miami, by the way. While Jordan was feeding peanuts to the prehensile tailed porcupine in his role as guest keeper, J&M and I drove all over the Redlands visiting Robert is Here, a huge bonsai farm, and the beautiful Buddhist Temple. In the evenings, our hosts A & J drove us through Everglades National Park hunting for invasive pythons (A. has a collection permit). I brought home a couple of pretty little trees, and we had a totally unexpected audience with the Temple's master, who graciously spent nearly an hour with us discussing the nature of the Buddha and the practice of mediation. He also nearly busted a gut laughing when he flipped us a bird as an example of what comes of being the bad, "third child."
When I have more time, and have thought it through a little more, I'll try to recreate that talk for you--it was really something, and felt incredibly timely: I've been feeling moved toward Buddhism, recently. Drawn to meditation,at any rate. There is a saying, that when you're ready a teacher will come, and it's been true for me a couple times in my life already. This felt like a little karmic nudge.
And...back to the bees. One of my fellow New Bees remarked in a post that her bees engaged in the same behavior the day after ours, and she did much the same thing, added bars and shoo'ed them back inside. Once we got home and I had some time for homework, I looked it up. When the temperature in the hive climbs above 90, the bees undertake cooling protocols. This involves them lining up in certain patterns inside, to channel the air through, while others stop collecting nectar and bring in water, for evaporative cooling. And some bees--especially the lay-about drones--just have to get out of the way in order to stop contributing to the heat inside. They go out and cling to the sides of the hive, in beards.
Mystery solved. Beedicca is not leaving us, huzzah! In the process of fiddling with the hive during all this, we found that they've been building massive, heavy combs just plump and juicy with honey, at an amazing pace. Of the eight bars we added before we left on the trip, three had complete, full honeycombs when we returned four days later. Astounding. We got a little taste of the honey as we worked the hive and inevitably broke open some comb: it was light, clear, and faintly perfumed, like jasmine or magnolia. Astounding!
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Coexistence
This morning, while we were counting chickens (and coming up short), Jordan surprised a fox heading across our driveway into our woods.
So, now we know: it's a fox who has taken our birds. The death toll is four: Sparkle,
Buffy, Squeak, and Copper. Copper was killed in the twenty or so minutes between when Jordan opened the coop this morning and when I woke up at seven am. She was a good layer of green eggs and a personable hen.
As I fell asleep last night, I felt a little sad about the two old ladies, but they were very old, after all. It wasn't until I saw Darkle, Sparkle's sister and lifelong companion, standing off by herself and calling (they make a sound that is very much like, "yoo, hoo!") that the sadness hit me. Poor old Darkle! and then a head count came up short of Squeak and Copper. After that it was a weepy morning.
As it turns out, foxes will often kill more than they need immediately, and store the rest by burying. We probably only found the bodies of two hens because something startled the fox away before s/he could carry them off. This fox has apparently been lying in wait for the coop to open in the morning and the old ladies to start their commute--which, I hasten to point out, they have safely done for at least 4 years.
In the past, we would take the dogs out early in the morning, at the same time we open the coop and feed the chickens; but lately, our doggies are feeling their years and enjoy a little extra snooze in the early morning (and afternoon, and evening). Another reason this fox feels safe marauding our flock.
We've experienced a rash of predation before, usually in the spring, and usually only for a few weeks. It's worse if the weather is very dry. It's baby time: cubs and kits and chicks, and all hungry. Our plan to preserve the rest of the Sweetgum flock is to delay opening the coop until it's good and light out, and the fox has retreated to her den. And of course there are the five new babies I couldn't resist bringing home this year.
We won't, unless things get much worse, try to trap and relocate the fox. It might have pups who wouldn't survive minus a parent. And while I might consider shooting into the air to scare it, we won't be shooting it. The wildlife was here first.
So, now we know: it's a fox who has taken our birds. The death toll is four: Sparkle,
Buffy, Squeak, and Copper. Copper was killed in the twenty or so minutes between when Jordan opened the coop this morning and when I woke up at seven am. She was a good layer of green eggs and a personable hen.
As I fell asleep last night, I felt a little sad about the two old ladies, but they were very old, after all. It wasn't until I saw Darkle, Sparkle's sister and lifelong companion, standing off by herself and calling (they make a sound that is very much like, "yoo, hoo!") that the sadness hit me. Poor old Darkle! and then a head count came up short of Squeak and Copper. After that it was a weepy morning.
As it turns out, foxes will often kill more than they need immediately, and store the rest by burying. We probably only found the bodies of two hens because something startled the fox away before s/he could carry them off. This fox has apparently been lying in wait for the coop to open in the morning and the old ladies to start their commute--which, I hasten to point out, they have safely done for at least 4 years.
In the past, we would take the dogs out early in the morning, at the same time we open the coop and feed the chickens; but lately, our doggies are feeling their years and enjoy a little extra snooze in the early morning (and afternoon, and evening). Another reason this fox feels safe marauding our flock.
We've experienced a rash of predation before, usually in the spring, and usually only for a few weeks. It's worse if the weather is very dry. It's baby time: cubs and kits and chicks, and all hungry. Our plan to preserve the rest of the Sweetgum flock is to delay opening the coop until it's good and light out, and the fox has retreated to her den. And of course there are the five new babies I couldn't resist bringing home this year.
We won't, unless things get much worse, try to trap and relocate the fox. It might have pups who wouldn't survive minus a parent. And while I might consider shooting into the air to scare it, we won't be shooting it. The wildlife was here first.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Long Live the Chickens
It's really loud under our tin roof when it rains. Loud enough that it's preventing me from wasting another evening watching tv, which I suppose I appreciate!
Something has started preying on our chickens. The last couple of days, we've lost two of the old ladies, Sparkle, and Buffy. Squeak is also unaccounted for at this point, but she's a wild'un anyway and could be in a tree. The disturbing part is that we're finding their bodies pretty much intact, so whatever is killling them is not eating them.
Sparkle and Buffy were at least 9 years old. I've kind of lost track, to be honest, but I think they were in their third summer in 2004, when a tree took out my doublewide. They hadn't laid eggs in years, and they weren't especially friendly. They were pretty cute, though, all fat and fluffy and set in their ways like old ladies should be (I certainly intend to learn from their example). For the last 4 or 5 year, they spent their days at my neighbor's, waiting for her to fill her bird feeders and taking dust baths under her storage trailer. I'd hoped they would die in their sleep and I feel sad their last moments were frightening.
99.999999% (that is a scientifically proven percentage that I just now made up) of all chickens live less than a year, and the chickens people eat mostly live less than 4 months. So I take some comfort in those old ladies living a free and comfortable life for most of a decade.
We're debating what the predator might be. I'm inclined to think dog, since there was some apparent chasing, and then no eating. Buffy was missing only her head, which though it may be unkind so speak so, was abnormally tiny. Jordan thinks it was a bird, an owl or hawk, who found out too late she couldn't carry a nine pound hen back to her nestlings. Spring is always the worst time for predation. The wild critters all have hungry babies and, well, there's not a predator or even an omnivore under the sun who can pass up a chicken. Wondering whether I should keep the birds in their coop for a couple days. They hate that, but I'd hate to lose Darkle (Sparkle's sister and our last remaining old lady) the same way.
We opened the hive this evening for our weekly inspection. There are a s-ton of bees in there, and they are building a lot of comb. The bar I pulled out (added two weeks ago) was fully drawn with comb and surprisingly heavy with honey. We added just one bar this week, since they hadn't done much work yet on the two we put in last week.
Adios, Sparkle and Buffy. It was good having you around all these years.
Something has started preying on our chickens. The last couple of days, we've lost two of the old ladies, Sparkle, and Buffy. Squeak is also unaccounted for at this point, but she's a wild'un anyway and could be in a tree. The disturbing part is that we're finding their bodies pretty much intact, so whatever is killling them is not eating them.
Sparkle and Buffy were at least 9 years old. I've kind of lost track, to be honest, but I think they were in their third summer in 2004, when a tree took out my doublewide. They hadn't laid eggs in years, and they weren't especially friendly. They were pretty cute, though, all fat and fluffy and set in their ways like old ladies should be (I certainly intend to learn from their example). For the last 4 or 5 year, they spent their days at my neighbor's, waiting for her to fill her bird feeders and taking dust baths under her storage trailer. I'd hoped they would die in their sleep and I feel sad their last moments were frightening.
99.999999% (that is a scientifically proven percentage that I just now made up) of all chickens live less than a year, and the chickens people eat mostly live less than 4 months. So I take some comfort in those old ladies living a free and comfortable life for most of a decade.
We're debating what the predator might be. I'm inclined to think dog, since there was some apparent chasing, and then no eating. Buffy was missing only her head, which though it may be unkind so speak so, was abnormally tiny. Jordan thinks it was a bird, an owl or hawk, who found out too late she couldn't carry a nine pound hen back to her nestlings. Spring is always the worst time for predation. The wild critters all have hungry babies and, well, there's not a predator or even an omnivore under the sun who can pass up a chicken. Wondering whether I should keep the birds in their coop for a couple days. They hate that, but I'd hate to lose Darkle (Sparkle's sister and our last remaining old lady) the same way.
We opened the hive this evening for our weekly inspection. There are a s-ton of bees in there, and they are building a lot of comb. The bar I pulled out (added two weeks ago) was fully drawn with comb and surprisingly heavy with honey. We added just one bar this week, since they hadn't done much work yet on the two we put in last week.
Adios, Sparkle and Buffy. It was good having you around all these years.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
This morning's observations:
I was awake but reading in bed when a thunderous double boom rattled the house. Last time I heard such a noise, some doomed fool took a lit cigarette into an empty tank up at the natural gas refinery, 4 or 5 miles away, thus ushering himself and three others into the next world. No sirens followed this boom, so I'm hopeful that's not what happened this time.
I poked my head outside just to see if I could hear or see anything further, but heard nothing but crickets--literally. The natural noises soon resumed, though, and I carried my coffee out to the chair for my morning commune with nature (it's getting addictive).
Two ruby throated hummingbirds, a pair!
Cardinals galore
Red-bellied woodpecker
Off in the field, a turkey gobbler.
Beedicca is bustling today, very curious about me in the chair, and the new waterer I set up, and the relocated hummingbird feeder. I moved the feeder a bit away from the hive to see what would happen. The bees found it quickly, but seem a little less possessive, so the hummers were able to get some nice deep drinks.
Watching the light change as it comes through the leaves, hearing the myriad bird calls, the crickets, the hens singing their egg song; watching Binky turn his vigilant orange eyes to the treetops, calling out a cautionary"Scree!" when he spots a hawk (prompting all nearby hens to bolt into the underbrush and lie flat--they're survivors, these girls)...it's enough to make your soul dissolve into bliss.
Which brings me to a thought I've been having: chickens and bees have a lot in common. Both have partnered with humans for thousands of years, and we've all reaped both great rewards and terrible affliction from the association. Think, a snug coop and daily food in exchange for fresh eggs--benefit! and then think of a factory farm prison: the poor short-lived, tortured, genetically crippled birds ending up in fast food fryers--an arrangement that does enormous harm and no one good. Likewise with bees, who have long thrived in partnership with humans, exchanging a snug home, protection, and care for their surplus honey, wax, and medicinal royal jelly, but who are now, because of human activity, on the edge of catastrophic collapse--and they just might take us with them.
In my mind it all comes down to scale. Once the scale goes beyond the personal, that is to say, what one household can well and truly care for, things get screwed up. I'm sure I don't need to rant about factory farms to either of the two people who read my blog (*wink*), so instead I'm going to wax poetic about why I love living with chickens, and now, bees.
First of all, both bees and chickens pretty much know what to do with themselves. We build them an house, fend off possums and raccoons--enlisting the help of yet another species, the dog--and make sure they have food when they need it; and then we turn them loose. They know what to do and where they live, and they reside with us of their own volition (or not, as in the case of Darkle, who moved in with my neighbor when we had some young roosters around. She couldn't be having with that, at her age). The flock--or pride, as I like to call them--ranges as far as 2 or 3 acres away, although when there's a person around, they are more likely to stay close to home (people frequently toss food).
Second, they feed us. They forage forest, pasture, and swamp, eating things we never would: bugs, frogs, lizard tails, dead moles, cow flops, rotting fruit...) and every day (almost), deliver us a perfect, delicious package of nutrition, the egg. It's magic.
Bees are much the same. We set them up in a nice house, support them when they need it, and they comb the forest, gathering tiny pollen grains and infinitesimal mouthfuls of nectar, and bring it all back home to make honey, quarts and gallons of sweet, lovely honey. Both bees and chickens are kind enough to make more than they need, and we humans get the honor of collecting the surplus. And it is an honor, is it not? A symbiotic exchange of trust and sustenance?
If you forget it's an honor and start thinking of it as your due...down that road lies all the bad decisions that lead to factory farms, with all their brutish cruelty and devastating pollution, and large scale apiculture: carting your bees all over hell and gone to pollinate crops, exhausting your hives by taking too much honey, then destroying them at the end of the season because it's too expensive to feed them all winter.
Instead of breeding chickens and bees to be smart, tough survivors, we've bred them into idiotic food machines: to paraphrase the Gunslinger, we've forgotten the face of our Mother. Even if you live in a city, even if you only have an apartment, even if you work too much, even if you don't have any money: you can live sweetly with the natural world and the creatures, like chickens and bees, who have come so far with us.
Third, even if they didn't feed us, they are fascinating to watch. A pride of chickens is an intricate social structure, with factions, generations, alliances, and territories; they're chatty, and have a pretty big vocabulary. I understand a few words of chicken: 'here's something good to eat'; 'get out of my face'; 'that's not your egg'; 'I just laid the biggest egg'; 'she just laid the biggest egg'; 'are you going to feed me?' 'where are you?' 'snake!' 'hawk!' 'owl!' and 'unidentified disturbing thing!' I haven't lived with the bees so long, so I'm just getting to know them, but already I can tell there's a lot to learn. Like, are some bees in charge of pollen, and some assigned to nectar, or do they glean one particular plant at a time?
Enough for now. Time for an omelet.
I was awake but reading in bed when a thunderous double boom rattled the house. Last time I heard such a noise, some doomed fool took a lit cigarette into an empty tank up at the natural gas refinery, 4 or 5 miles away, thus ushering himself and three others into the next world. No sirens followed this boom, so I'm hopeful that's not what happened this time.
I poked my head outside just to see if I could hear or see anything further, but heard nothing but crickets--literally. The natural noises soon resumed, though, and I carried my coffee out to the chair for my morning commune with nature (it's getting addictive).
Two ruby throated hummingbirds, a pair!
Cardinals galore
Red-bellied woodpecker
Off in the field, a turkey gobbler.
Beedicca is bustling today, very curious about me in the chair, and the new waterer I set up, and the relocated hummingbird feeder. I moved the feeder a bit away from the hive to see what would happen. The bees found it quickly, but seem a little less possessive, so the hummers were able to get some nice deep drinks.
Watching the light change as it comes through the leaves, hearing the myriad bird calls, the crickets, the hens singing their egg song; watching Binky turn his vigilant orange eyes to the treetops, calling out a cautionary"Scree!" when he spots a hawk (prompting all nearby hens to bolt into the underbrush and lie flat--they're survivors, these girls)...it's enough to make your soul dissolve into bliss.
Which brings me to a thought I've been having: chickens and bees have a lot in common. Both have partnered with humans for thousands of years, and we've all reaped both great rewards and terrible affliction from the association. Think, a snug coop and daily food in exchange for fresh eggs--benefit! and then think of a factory farm prison: the poor short-lived, tortured, genetically crippled birds ending up in fast food fryers--an arrangement that does enormous harm and no one good. Likewise with bees, who have long thrived in partnership with humans, exchanging a snug home, protection, and care for their surplus honey, wax, and medicinal royal jelly, but who are now, because of human activity, on the edge of catastrophic collapse--and they just might take us with them.
In my mind it all comes down to scale. Once the scale goes beyond the personal, that is to say, what one household can well and truly care for, things get screwed up. I'm sure I don't need to rant about factory farms to either of the two people who read my blog (*wink*), so instead I'm going to wax poetic about why I love living with chickens, and now, bees.
First of all, both bees and chickens pretty much know what to do with themselves. We build them an house, fend off possums and raccoons--enlisting the help of yet another species, the dog--and make sure they have food when they need it; and then we turn them loose. They know what to do and where they live, and they reside with us of their own volition (or not, as in the case of Darkle, who moved in with my neighbor when we had some young roosters around. She couldn't be having with that, at her age). The flock--or pride, as I like to call them--ranges as far as 2 or 3 acres away, although when there's a person around, they are more likely to stay close to home (people frequently toss food).
Second, they feed us. They forage forest, pasture, and swamp, eating things we never would: bugs, frogs, lizard tails, dead moles, cow flops, rotting fruit...) and every day (almost), deliver us a perfect, delicious package of nutrition, the egg. It's magic.
Bees are much the same. We set them up in a nice house, support them when they need it, and they comb the forest, gathering tiny pollen grains and infinitesimal mouthfuls of nectar, and bring it all back home to make honey, quarts and gallons of sweet, lovely honey. Both bees and chickens are kind enough to make more than they need, and we humans get the honor of collecting the surplus. And it is an honor, is it not? A symbiotic exchange of trust and sustenance?
If you forget it's an honor and start thinking of it as your due...down that road lies all the bad decisions that lead to factory farms, with all their brutish cruelty and devastating pollution, and large scale apiculture: carting your bees all over hell and gone to pollinate crops, exhausting your hives by taking too much honey, then destroying them at the end of the season because it's too expensive to feed them all winter.
Instead of breeding chickens and bees to be smart, tough survivors, we've bred them into idiotic food machines: to paraphrase the Gunslinger, we've forgotten the face of our Mother. Even if you live in a city, even if you only have an apartment, even if you work too much, even if you don't have any money: you can live sweetly with the natural world and the creatures, like chickens and bees, who have come so far with us.
Third, even if they didn't feed us, they are fascinating to watch. A pride of chickens is an intricate social structure, with factions, generations, alliances, and territories; they're chatty, and have a pretty big vocabulary. I understand a few words of chicken: 'here's something good to eat'; 'get out of my face'; 'that's not your egg'; 'I just laid the biggest egg'; 'she just laid the biggest egg'; 'are you going to feed me?' 'where are you?' 'snake!' 'hawk!' 'owl!' and 'unidentified disturbing thing!' I haven't lived with the bees so long, so I'm just getting to know them, but already I can tell there's a lot to learn. Like, are some bees in charge of pollen, and some assigned to nectar, or do they glean one particular plant at a time?
Enough for now. Time for an omelet.
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