Who killed our Bees

this first week of the new year I have been working on the high tunnel I've been taking my time with it I'm not in a hurry I just want to finish it before spring something I forgot to do was put in these self-tapping screws to hold the Ground Post in place and then I need a self-tapping screw to hold the arches in place years ago I used to convert school buses into tiny homes and one thing I've learned is knee pads I you know I never use them I never use them but when I worked on school buses I definitely did and working on this High tunnel May me realize that you need knee [Music] pads also we've had some pretty good rains around here lately and it's supposed to rain in a couple days so hopefully I can get out here and work on this High tunnel before that happens and get to a good stopping point all right the first order of the new year is we need to do a hive inspection that's what we're doing right now because we think something happened with our bees we we see some dead bees all year the bees have been doing pretty good uh I think we're pretty successful so sad you know I think they're paralyzed cuz earlier that earlier Jason found a a wasp in here there was a giant red paper wasp we were out for a walk and we noticed that this was a quiet Hive so he looked in here and we killed the wasp and these do look like they're kind of just paralyzed in place so I I believe that's what happened we thought they were all dead on this one too but there's some starting to come out this is C honey I think we could just save this for ourselves the bees are dead in their tracks like look at that I mean that's the only thing I can think of is that wasp paral ized all of them see all that honey right there all this beeswax we can we can eat the beeswax too we were kind of wondering what to do cuz we see I mean there's no Bees in here are there some there's not live bees live bees yeah they're they're all dead not one there's not one bee in here that's alive like they're all Frozen not Frozen as in temperature like Frozen as in motion like wherever they were see this like it's really sad I think that wasp cuz what I read from wasp uh especially paper wasp they will sting them and paralyze them and so I think that's what he did it's kind of sad cuz it's like equivalent to like say if you know all 30 of our meat chickens died yeah like this whole colony of bees are done yeah you can just set it so we did not find the queen into this one these are the ones that bees are dead we're going to look into this one but we do see some bees coming out of it oh yeah this looks a little more alive than um this morning oh yay they're alive I wonder if I should have brought my smoker now it's like they're dead I know they're dead and they're pouring out okay I they seem a little angry so should I go get the smoker the smoker yeah I know box is loaded with honey the top box yeah every single frame I could barely lift it that's why I was waiting for you to come back um I couldn't even really lift it it was like cuz you know how like you know some of the bee experts are like oh well it's 50 lbs you can't lift it if it's full of honey well I lifted that one right now to see what the comparison and weight was that's light really sad these bees died those ones look really strong still they're aggressive they got honey down there uh so yeah so this one we going to have to start brand new this year with a new set of bees coming this spring yeah the bad news we lost some bees but the good news is that we have honey our first honey that's amazing um this isn't very much honey to harvest but we could either save it for next Springs bees or just kind of carve into it and eat a little bit for ourselves which I thought we would do so we can enjoy it a lot of it is uncapped so we probably won't be harvesting that we're going to save this comb for next year's or actually it is this year this Spring's new bees but if we can just pick out just a little bit here it's not much but hey if it can get us like half a mason jar full that would be great we will definitely use the honey and I'm not going through all the frames most of the frames actually just kind of look like that or they kind of look like that so I I probably would just leave it and it's a lot of work because we don't have a honey extractor machine really this is just us just trying to figure it out and learning how to even do bee stuff I'm just going for these aiming for these capped cells of honey here so when I did the first frame yesterday and got this much honey I felt felt like I was just making a giant mess and I felt like I was destroying the frame but um so I texted my B Manor he said that's fine as long as you leave a lot of the comb or some of the comb behind um the cells so that way this next batch of um spring bees they can have something to kind of build off of and continue making more cells and then just encourage them to continue building out the frame because they can rebuild fairly quickly and it won't be a problem for them the rest I'm just going to scoop out with my spoon it looks like candy I know and since we're going to be eating this right away we're not going to be storing any of this cuz it's so little um I'm not worried about some of the cells being uncapped we'll we'll eat this pretty quickly and then there's at the bottom here I'm not sure if you can see it see these Dark Cells these are this is a be pollen mixed with a little bit of honey so it's turned into be bread we could eat that but I'm going to leave it for for the next be so I'm just going to aim for this little patch here I can see where this is going to make a lot of mess a lot of sticky mess yeah that's how I felt with the first frame I was like yeah and then I had texted my be Mentor because I was like now what do I do with this you know the frame it's dripping with honey it's not like I can go stick it outside what do I do so then uh he said that we could um wrap it in plastic wrap and then stick it in the freezer until we're ready for the next bees and that gives the new bees a head start yes because it's not going to be completely clean yes and that stuff you just never hear people talking about that stuff like all the research we've done no one's ever mentioned what to do after you get honey like what do you do with with that yeah yeah we're ready to clean the whole thing out and wash and scrub the whole box but I know I guess that's not what you're supposed to do I know I was like how do I even clean this cuz this is so delicate here so last time when I yesterday when I did this it kind of just sat here for a while and I was like oh no it's not going to strain but I ended up having to crush it a little bit and then we got like a slow flow of honey the only thing different I did this time is I put this on top so that way wax wouldn't ruin my seeve here yeah it's like we need a special tools well bees need their own separate or honey yeah they need their own separate tools because it's going to kind of get ruined yeah our own harvesting tools just like you would like butchering tools this side is done so as you can see I was in a panic yesterday like oh no I ruined it but it's not ruined because the bees can easily fix this especially if there's already comb drawn out they can just continue to rebuild this and they would love to eat this honey the leftover honey and freezing it will actually help because it will kill any of any beetles larvae or anythingg if you look on YouTube it's like all the beekeepers they're like oh we'll just stick your frame into the honey extractor like I don't have one to help this flow a little bit faster cuz our house isn't exactly hot in here um I put it over by our oven when I was making dinner and it helped the the flow kind of go a little bit faster I didn't heat it or anything like that I just kind of warmed it a little yeah maybe the cloth wasn't a good idea I did the cloth on the between these two things yesterday and it seemed to work a lot better but I got wax on this and I'm probably just have to buy a new one but we're not in a hurry it's just going to drip slowly drip out it's just pretty exciting it's just kind of like a little little taste of what's possible with our bees yeah it tastes good so we have a lot of blackberries at our place oh yeah I was I was trying to see what flavor this was I don't know Clover I I think it just tastes like Clover to me we have a lot of clover we have a lot of red clover we're just trying to figure it out here guys new be bee Farmers new be [Music] beepers right now as far as animals we have pigs and egg layers it's a nice winter break when you just have these animals right now because in a couple months we're going to start getting meat chickens and we're going to start doing it all over again the next step is putting in some wind bracing I have a playlist of this High tunnel build down in the show notes so if you want to see all the videos you can check them out also I'm going to be doing one big full video of this build after I'm done [Music] the front two are done now we need to do two more for the back there now the ridge pole I connected that all together as per the directions and then we're supposed to get the brackets put it up in the middle and then put the ridge pole like slip the ridge Pole from one end all the way to another you know while this is all screwed in together one long piece I've done this before and I found that doing it one by one piece by piece instead of one long piece is just a little bit more easier maybe if I had three people and then three people probably could slip it all the way through with ladders all the way down and keep it one piece but uh my pigs are being pigs today and they're being lazy and they don't want to help me so we have these brackets these ones are made out of aluminum this is what's going to hold the ridge pole and it's going to kind of go like that you know after Christmas we finally reached winter here um this is called Ferrar area but it allows us to do stuff like this still the the ground's not completely Frozen no we're close to being frozen it would not make sense for me to put these on first because they just slide off the pole goes right through there the middle there and then you tighten these on the ends the end top piece we're screwing in one of these with self-tapping screws [Music] I marked every 4 feet from the end so that way I can know like that's 4 feet right there because this needs to be in the middle so that's going to be off off a little bit so you just move it back and then you make this tight [Music] [Music] the 4ot line is here so that means I need to move this over let's hold that there and screw it [Music] in the trick is when building a high tunnel is to not have any sharp edges on the outside all the way around screws the end of the screws you don't want them sticking out here this needs to be smooth that was not as bad as I imagined and honestly that was pretty easy I would think that even if I had two or three people here that that would be pretty difficult to do if that was one long piece leave a comment if you did that with your Ridge pole on your High tunnel if it's a long high tunnel uh leave a comment let me know how you did that because doing it piece by piece like that is very doable all the connections that we did I need to throw a screw right into it on each one all right we made it we made it to channel lock season uh this is what's going to hold the plastic after you put the wiggle wire inside this we're going to have to bend this all the way on this Arch so the easiest way to do that is get a clamp if you're working by yourself you got to clamp it down cuz it's got to bend we're putting another channel lock on the bottom we need to do that to each corner so three corners left yeah guys it's a kit but it's still work it's not going to be done for you you got to do it [Music] [Music] all right I think we're at a good stopping point next we got to do the channel lock that goes all the way down uh it seems like I didn't do anything because it's just all those little little details little pieces of metal you got to put on before you put on the plastic uh so not until we start putting on the plastic that it's going to be a little bit more satisfying the first satisfying thing was putting up these poles here and then putting up the plastic so you know we're still chipping away at it slowly but surely we'll get it all done so usually what I've been trying to do uh with everything else you know editing these videos filming building this High tunnel fencing also kind of clearing out some spots maybe taking the last you know 30 minutes to an hour of the day and start clearing out some trees you know I'm not taking out all the trees of course cuz when we start getting larger animals in here that's one thing I did learn uh of having our two steers is that uh um you know we got to run an electrical line to keep them in and a lot of these trees are in my way um they don't need to be a huge cluster like this you know you want to keep some for shade uh even if I just cleaned them up a little bit so that way I'm not bushwhacking every time I have to move some animals also we have a fence line there that I'm going to eventually get to and cleaning out some of these trees is going to help uh as we continue moving forward [Music]

Channel: Sow the Land

Views: 65,988

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Id: 5YfLpDYQkvo

Length: 20min 37sec (1237 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 05 2024