My Next Chapter of Beekeeping

I knew I didn't want to give up beekeeping. After only one season and a pretty substantial monetary investment, for my pocketbook anyway, I couldn't just toss in the towel. Besides, I have learned so much and have really enjoyed watching the bees work. It's really amazing how they accomplish so many things and work so well together. So I decided to order another colony. Last year, I ordered my first colony from Dadant beekeeping supplies. There is a handful of locations all across the country and I am very lucky to have one just about an hour away in Paris, Texas. Usually, you have two choices when obtaining colonies: package bees and a nuc or nucleus colony. Package bees literally come in the U.S. Mail and you basically dump the bees into your hive with the queen in a cage. After a while the bees release the queen from the cage by eating a little candy plug and she goes right to work laying eggs. A nucleus on the other hand, is a small established colony in a small wooden box about half the size of a regular hive. That is what I ordered last year. I went and picked them up in Paris. The process of transferring the bees from a nuc is simply placing frames full of bees and brood from the nuc into your hive and you have an instant bee colony. Dadant does not sell package bees, so if I order from them, I have to get a nuc which is okay. The only problem is that you have to order them early. They have a limited number of nucs available and you have to put your name on a list. By the time I realized my bees had died, it was too late to order from Dadant, so I was out of luck. My only other choice, I thought, was to purchase a package from a reputable apiary and have them sent to me. Most apiary's don't send out package bees until sometime in May.

Then, as I was looking around on the internet, I came upon some information about building swarm traps. A swarm trap is a receptacle that you hang somewhere outside with a bait of some sort inside that lures a swarm to it. In theory, it's a relatively easy and dirt cheap way to get your own bees. At some point during the spring, a bee colony will naturally outgrow their home. When that happens, the bees will raise another queen. Then about half of the hive and queen will take flight to find a new home. That's not really something you want to happen if you already have a hive of bees because if they swarm, that means a lot less work is going to get done for a while. So you really have to expand their home for them so they don't get the urge. But in the natural world, the bees do it all the time. So a swarm leaves the hive in a big cloud and they will first find a temporary place to congregate. At this time, a bunch of bees will take off to find a more suitable permanent home. This is where the swarm trap comes in. If you have a trap and a bee happens to find it, then you just might get a whole new colony to set up shop right there in your trap. If that happens, you just transfer them into one of your empty hives and you have your own, free, bees. Yay! Well, seeing as how I like to do things on the cheap, I just had to give this a shot. After all, on warm days recently, I have seen lots of bees out among the dandelions, so I feel pretty

certain there is a colony somewhere close by. So after some research, I built my own swarm trap. It has been hanging in it's location now for about three days. It's still a little early for a swarm, but I am patient. I really hope I catch one. I am going to build a total of four traps and put them in various locations to better my chances. I will let you know how it goes. 

Tomatoes From Seed

Well I thought I would try something new this year. I have always purchased little tomato plants and then set them out in the garden. This year, I thought I would purchase the seeds and start them myself. I have heard that it can be a little tricky growing tomatoes from seeds. I used a rotisserie chicken container as my temporary bed, put in some seed starter and planted the seeds. I then put the container in our laundry room until I just saw them poking through the starter mix. I didn't worry about the light. In fact, it was dark most of the time in there. It took about 1 week for the seeds to break the surface. Once they sprouted, I moved them to a southern facing window in our bedroom. I had read that new sprouts needed extra light time in order to become stronger. I decided to place a little clip on desk lamp next to the plants and keep it on every day for about 14 hours. I don't know if this actually helped, but the seedlings really grew well. It's been about 12 days now and it won't be long until I transplant the little plants into their own containers.

At this point, each one is about 1.5 inches high and has two little green leaves. Hopefully, they will survive the stress. After that, I have to harden them off by placing them outside for a short time everyday. We will see how it goes.