November Hill farm journal, 178

 Busy days on the farm right now, with some photos to share today. 

In Poplar Folly this pale purple deadnettle found itself a nice spot to root into, the base of one of the tulip poplars that was cut years back. It’s so pretty with the pattern of the wood. 

In other news, we are in the early stages of building a guest house where our daughter will live, and the design will be based on this, with some changes. 

A shot this past week of Keil Bay and Cody, the very best of friends, sharing hay as they often do. 

The first of this spring’s chipping sparrow nests, this one sporting many pony tail hairs for the lighter look. 

Hegemone hive bearding on the 84-degree day this week, making me very nervous that they might also be thinking of swarming (which honey bees do as their way of reproducing - casting a swarm means the queen leaves with half the population, the other half remain behind and raise a new queen). I want them to halve but I’d like to keep the half.

Here, a day later, with temps up to 84 again, after we added a deep hive box with half drawn comb frames and half empty frames, Hegemone bees are very busy working in their new space. They didn’t need to beard to cool the hive thanks to the additional space inside. A runaway split is done by adding a deep hive box on top of a booming springtime colony, who will then move up and expand their nest. Once that is done, you move that deep hive box to another hive stand and whichever box does NOT have a queen will then raise a new one. The hive has now reproduced but the beekeeper gets to keep all the bees. Since we lost two colonies over the winter, we’d love to replace them with the genetics of this extremely healthy and prolific colony. 

I’m enjoying this busy season and as usual juggling a lot of projects. Happy spring equinox a few days late!