While I was sitting in my camp chair taking it easy watching Lee hard at work slaying blackberry vines, I noticed a plum tree. It’s growing under a row of fir trees not to mention it has a Purple Robe Locust pretending it’s an umbrella above it. I think it must have gotten a little confused on where plum trees are supposed to grow.

I had a feeling revisit me that I haven’t had since last year. It was the feeling of, “I’m going to beat up some bozo deer” anger. It’s a valid feeling, really! The herd of deer that seems to hang out here in the summer time decided to get brave, come up to our house, and do a midnight munching on my aronia berry start. I was so happy with how much it had grown as I had bought it as a seedling last year.

I planted some cosmo’s in my garden this year. They are so bright and cheery that I always smile when I look at them.

Lee has found a new use for his 8″ grape hoe. It works amazingly well for cutting through the thick stems of the blackberries and even small branches. He makes sure to sharpen the blade every time before use and it seems to slice through like butter.

There is this section near our house that is solid 12 foot high wild blackberry vines. A fence runs through it, along with some random trees, so driving a tractor with a brush hog through it isn’t possible at the moment. We do want to put a fence there eventually, so we have to get it cleared out. The nice thing about when this section in cleaned out is we will be able to see out into our back fields. In between whacking the berry vines Lee has to stop to collect barb wire, some of it thrown on the ground, some of it on newly found fence posts.

We didn’t even know that there was an old corner post back in that mess.

When Lee finishes clearing out spaces he then drives his tractor with the brush hog through it. He has been working at this job here and there for small amounts of time in the evening. I must say that I think he has made an amazing amount of progress compared to me working on it with hand trimmers.

You’re never going to believe this. I hardly believe it, and it happened to us!

In a recent post about bee boxes, I mentioned that we planned to capture wild swarms to start our hives. We’ve since finished the boxes. Unfortunately, the weather this year has put a pretty serious damper on our chances of finding a swarm. It’s been cold and rainy, and bees eat more when it’s cold and can’t fly when it’s rainy. That’s a recipe for killing a lot of wild hives. (On a side note, the ones that survive should have really strong genetics.) We were also counting on catching at least one swarm from Robin’s uncle. He has two hives that live in the exterior walls of his house (he’s something of an eccentric fellow), and they throw several swarms each year. Sadly, one of those hives has now died as well (starved).

So, given this backdrop of bee-gloom, I stepped out onto the back porch of our house during my lunch break yesterday and heard a loud buzzing sound. About 50 feet away, a huge column of bees was swirling near an oak tree in our backyard.

My first thought was “Yellow Jackets!” because they were so loud and there weren’t that many in the air. I got the camera anyway, and while I was taking pictures (and noticing that none of them were trying to kill me) I realized there was a huge phone-book sized mass of bees clustered on a branch of the oak tree:

A honey bee swarm! In our backyard!!

Bees swarm to reproduce. If you think of a complete hive as a living organism, then swarming is a lot like cell division. The existing hive has got too crowded, so the current queen and about half the workers gorge themselves on honey (which puts them in a really good mood) and fly a short distance away (a few hundred yards at most). The queen lands on something and the rest of the bees cluster around her. I happened to walk out the door just as the cluster was landing. They quickly calmed down until only a few bees were flying around. Once clustered, a small number of scout bees begin flying out from the cluster site looking for suitable hive locations. The swarm will remain at its initial landing site until a collective decision is made regarding the most suitable site reported by scouts. This can take from a few hours to several days. The swarm will then fly as a group to their new home (up to a kilometer away). When swarming, bees are quite gentle as they have no hive to defend and their stomachs are full of honey. The procedure for capturing a swarm is to knock them off the branch they have clustered on into a box, and then dump the box into a waiting hive box. If you get the queen in the process, and she likes the hive, the rest of the colony will follow. (The stragglers will find their way into the hive by scent.)

So anyway, back to the problem at hand. Honey bee swarm! No place to put the hive. Ahhhhh. We hadn’t selected an apiary (beehive yard) site yet, so I dragged Robin outside and we talked out a location. We picked a spot in the field by the garden. I then started running around like a crazy person, trying to quickly build a hive stand using some concrete pier blocks and scrap treated 4×4 we had on hand, and leveling the stand with cedar shims and tacking it together with a few sinker nails.

We carried the hive base, box, frames, and feeder outside and set them up with an impromptu lid.

We were all ready to capture the swarm, but at this point a little thing called “my day job” got in the way. My lunch hour was over, and I had already taken too many days off because of the flu to take off another afternoon for bees. So, I checked on the bees one more time (still quietly massing on the tree limb) and went inside. A few hours to a few days right? We have lots of time.

Wrong. An hour later Robin went outside to check on the swarm, and they were again buzzing and flying about wildly. Suddenly, the whole swarm lifted up off the limb and began moving as a cloud about 8 feet off the ground. She chased it across our field into the hazelnut thicket, whereupon she lost track of it.

Darn bees! Where’s the indecisive bees when you need them? Two hours? Really? Did you have to make a decision so quickly? Going for some kind of record are we? Never read the book? Could you guys not have at least waited until evening, so I could put you in a box? It would have been a great home, I promise!!

So, that’s the story. A honey bee swarm literally landed in our backyard, but flew off before we could capture them. Robin and I retraced their path later in the evening, and assuming they flew in a straight line we think it’s unlikely they stayed on our property or the next. More likely they crossed the road, as the neighbors across the way have old orchards and some dead fir trees that probably have lots of large cavities for nesting sites. Here’s hoping they picked a good home. The only thing worse than them flying off is if they were promptly killed by some idiot with a can of bug spray.

Darn bees!

We started putting our bee boxes together tonight. We purchased the equipment unassembled at a local beekeeping shop. In the future, we might build some of our equipment, but there’s probably not that much money to be saved either way.

The equipment is all standard Langstroth hive equipment, although our beekeeping plans are anything but standard. Specifically, we want to keep bees with minimal interference and no chemicals. We also plan to use only wild swarms, which are often more resistant to common problems (specifically because they haven’t had humans coddling them for years). There’s a ton of information to be found online about beekeeping, so there’s no sense in me repeating it here. I would recommend starting with a basic book on bees or a guide from your local beekeeping association. Then check out Bush Bees, Backwards Beekeeper, and Bio Bees. That will clear your head of all the pharmaceutical-driven madness of “modern” beekeeping. If you want to stick with standard equipment (which is fine) Bush Bees has lots of good advice. I’m following most of the things he recommends. If you’re looking for a book on chemical-free beekeeping in standard equipment, there is only one: The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Beekeeping. I hate series books, but I bought this one because the authors are well respected.

We are using all medium size super boxes. This keeps your equipment consistent, and saves your back. The boxes were assembled using food-safe waterproof glue and galvanized nails. Most people paint their equipment white, but we are leaving it bare for several reasons: 1.) lazy, 2.) lasts about as long either way, 3.) chemicals in the paint might affect the bees, 4.) painted wood doesn’t “breath” and might lead to moisture problems in the hive.

We also built 10 frames, enough to fill one box. The bees draw their comb in the frames, and they are movable so you can inspect them and harvest honey. The standard procedure is to fill each frame with wax foundation (pre-molded sheets onto which the bees are supposed to draw their comb). There are a number of problems with the standard way, so instead we are going to make some wedge-shaped guides that glue into the frames. When we get those done, assemble the bottom, and build a stand and lid we will be ready to capture our first swarm. Ouch!!

Who’s turn is it to walk the dogs?

It won’t stop raining. We can’t mow, we can’t weedwack, we can’t weed in the garden, and we can’t plant anything. I’m singing the “I can’t believe it’s June and I can’t plant anything in my garden” blues.

I talked to one of my neighbors and he told me he already had his whole garden in. I felt serious stirrings of jealousy. Then he told me that some of his corn had rotted and I felt a little better. My mom hasn’t gotten her garden all the way in either. Stupid weather. I’d spit at it to show how I truly feel but it would probably rain on me for even longer.

Lee hasn’t got his bee box together yet. He doesn’t feel too bad though because it’s been a truly awful year for bees. Spring flowers came too soon and then it’s been raining ever since. I guess he can thank the weather for making him feel less guilty about not having it done yet.

At least we think it is. So far it stands at four elephant garlic lost and one R.O.U.S. caught. This pocket gopher was just a tad out of Jack’s league when it comes to her mousing. It was enormous! Like scare you and turn around screaming enormous.

Lee went to the farm store last night to get a cinch trap. It was his last ditch effort before we sat outside with a shotgun. My dad humorously suggested building a guard tower in the garden. I was thinking that we were going to have to give up gardening for the year. Lee was getting horribly frustrated watching a garlic disappear down a hole every day. The whole situation was getting somewhat morosely comical. I’m glad that it is over with. At least I hope it is.

Lee is up in arms and so far he is losing. It’s getting quite ridiculous over here. Lee has one more thing up his sleeve before we try sitting outside at night with a shotgun.

So what exactly has been going on over here you might ask? Remember back when I was talking about Lee having some garden anxiety? We had found this huge hole by our garlic and Lee set a trap. Then he set another, and another, and another… Life went on and I wasn’t too perturbed that the varmint was outsmarting us.

Well I was okay with it until I found this! You may now gasp in horror as you look at these graphic pictures.

Yup, that was my beautiful row of elephant garlic. It was so lush and exciting for me as it is the first time I have ever grown it. Well this stinky little cuss decided to tunnel under the whole row and eat one of them. When Lee put a trap where the wily butt-headed monster came up, he back filled and then popped up a day later under the next garlic plant. Then when Lee went out today he said yet another garlic had been hit. This one looked like it had shrunk–the animal was eating it off from below and it was sinking. The entire area smelled of garlic. It’s becoming something out of the movie Caddyshack or the Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

Lee has tried big traps, a mouse trap with peanut butter, cutting in the tunnel, and a fall in trap with a glass jar. He is going to try the cave in method and see if that works before we try the shot gun approach. I’m sure that will raise a few eyebrows from our old neighbors as they drive by.

The holes this thing makes are really big. Like you could almost stick your arm down it. It’s also very active. This hole I took a picture of and then came back an hour later to show Lee and the stinker had already backfilled it.

It’s war!

There is this tree that I took a picture of not that long ago. I don’t know what it is but it is still flowering. About a week ago Lee and I both noticed that all the flowers were disappearing.

Not only were the flowers disappearing but we kept seeing squirrels doing gymnastics in that tree. So we both at separate times stopped and watched them.

What they were doing was eating the flowers off the tree. I’ve heard of people planting butterfly bushes to attract butterflies, but I wonder if anyone plants squirrel bushes?

The weather finally let off raining for a little bit. So we did a big ol’ “YES” over here while jumping up and down with excitement. Finally we can do some garden planting.

Lee dug a bed for the asparagus Friday night after work. This area was in the low section of the garden so Lee had to use a shovel due to the many rocks in the soil. I watched him. It looked exhausting. I told him so.

Then on Saturday he hoed a new 30 foot bed for some more potatoes. It still looked exhausting. I told him that again.

On Sunday he decided to hoe some more beds. He did a little one that finished out a previously hoed bed.

Then he did a new longer row. I told him he was making me tired.

“Are you tired yet Lee?” I kept asking him that over and over.

I think he was getting tired of my questions, so I decided that he wasn’t that tired.

We planted the potato bed and the asparagus, but I haven’t planted anything in the other one and a half beds. Lee added several pounds of lime to each bed to start adjusting the pH. Rain was in the forecast so I didn’t want the seeds to rot. When I wasn’t watching Lee hoeing the garden beds I did some weeding in my flower beds. A few of my plants didn’t make it over the winter but most of them did so I was happy overall.

I also noticed that the lilac bushes are all out in bloom. My dad and sister hate lilacs because they get headaches. I don’t mind them though. If I had room inside I would cut big bouquets and put them around the house — it’s like bringing the outdoors inside.

One of my favorite trees is now blooming: the Dogwood. I love how long they bloom.

I’m thinking about cutting out this flowering bush. It’s in front of the Dogwood tree and it reminds me of Queens Anne’s Lace, which I hate. (Mainly because we have so much of it that grows out in our fields at the moment.)

Kudzu, Japanese Beetles, Asian Longhorned Beetles, Zebra Mussels, Asian Carp, Varroa Mites.

This is of course but a short list of invasive species. All of these were brought to the U.S., either by accident or intent, where they found ecosystems that were poorly adapted to control their proliferation. Eventually, we can expect the populations of such exotics to balance out. Some local plants will develop a resistance to their attacks, and some local predators will develop a taste for them. Unfortunately, natural balancing is a slow process by human standards, so other solutions are attractive. One such solution is to intentionally import another species which will keep the exotic species in check. This is called a biological control.

Wait a minute … isn’t that how we got into this trouble in the first place?

Most scientists are understandably wary of biological controls. Ecosystems are big complex things, and it’s hard to be certain that there will be no unwanted side effects. In a recent post, I’ve mentioned the blackberry rust which is spreading across Oregon. Our forages class covered another case of biological control in Oregon, and a few days later we found an example on our property.

This is Tansy Ragwort:

It is a biennial plant native to Europe. Tansy contains high levels of alkaloids which cause irreparable liver damage and death in horses and cattle, but have no effect on sheep. It was first found in Oregon in 1922, and by the 1970s it was causing heavy losses in the beef and dairy industries. Sheep were used as a limited control, as they will readily eat the foliage, but a more effective solution was sought. From among the 60 insect species that feed on Tansy in it’s native ecosystems, 3 were approved for import into Oregon as biological controls. Of these, two have been extremely effective. The Cinnabar Moth and the Tansy Flea Beetle. The larvae stage of the Cinnabar Moth is the most high profile of the two, feeding exclusively on Tansy during the summer. You can at times barely see the plant for all the orange and black striped caterpillars. But if the moth larvae weakens the plant while it is trying to set seed, the Flea Beetle larvae truly kills it. The larvae stage of these beetles feed on the root systems of Tansy, killing many plants outright. Those that survive then become a food source for the adult form of the Flea Beetle. Both of these insect controls work well, because Tansy is their exclusive food source.

When we found this specimen of Tansy Ragwort growing in the disturbed soil of the chicken coop tracks, we looked at it very closely and …

Have at it little guys. This plant is for you.