Hurricane Farm

We just uploaded a slew of photos, so here are some from a while back.

Recall that our first shipment of bees did not fare too well in transit.  In fact, the majority of them were dead on arrival.  We installed them into the hive anyways at the advice of the supplier who agreed to send out a replacement shipment.

Below you can see how few bees there were when I opened up the hive two weeks after the first shipment came.  You can see that there are some bees on each side of the first frame and then none anywhere else to be found.  There should be 5-6 frames covered with busy little bees working hard at the process of making more bees, who will then work hard at the process of making more bees, who will then...

Yes, I do look a little over-zealous with the smoker, and yes, I am wearing the bee helmet with the face protection, but it was my first time poking around in there and I am proud to pronounce that I did not find myself on the receiving end of any defensive stingers.

Here is the other side of the first frame. 

The next series of frames were empty.  There should have been bees all over the place in there.

Here are some shots of the new shipment of bees.  Last time there were 3-4 inched of dead bees on the bottom.  This time, only a few did not make it through shipping.  That is a healthy looking crate of bees.

Look closely at the last photo.  That is not an escapee.  In fact, that is a bee who grabbed on when the shipment was mailed and remained there the whole time!  What a go-getter!  Even the bees work hard here at Hurricane Farm.

Since the shipment arrived and I installed it, I have been back to remove the shipping cage and the queen mailing cage.  Let me tell you that it was pretty nerve-wracking messing around in there with the thousands of bees at work.  I still did not get stung, but I don't plan on bothering them again for some time.  When I opened it the last time bees were busy building comb on more than half of the frames.  Great work guys!

As CSA pick-up approaches, we decided to see where our meat chickens are at size-wise.  We prepared two of them, one of the larger sized ones and one of the smaller sized one this weekend. 

We are looking at meat birds in the 5-6 pound range on average dressed, and there are still two weeks to go before we prepare them all.  We used the plucking machine that I built last fall and it worked WONDERFULLY. 

At first, it seemed to have no power, just like it did with the over-sized turkeys.  I was pretty frustrated.  However, I noticed that the belt was slipping--perhaps it was a bit stretched out while it over-wintered in the barn.  (How many hyphenized-words can I use in this post?)

I loosened the motor (the hefty 3/4 horse-power motor that I had upgraded to last Fall) and added a shim to tighten up the belt, Mickey-Mouse-style.  Oh boy, did it work!  This will save us probably about 10 minutes per bird at least!  It took less than a minute, and I think less than 30 seconds for the machine to do its work...WOW!

We have some photos and they will be up soon.  I especially like the one of us hauling it around the farm in the back of the small wagon attached to the Farmall.