Saturday, August 21, 2010

Breathing a sigh of relief

    We looked into the hive again today before pulling the honey.  Found some very young brood and some eggs.  HUGE relief. This means the queen is still around.  Of course, the little white larvae with their cappings off their cells made me worry.  So, being the person I am, I took photos and had the local bee guy, John McCoy, look at them when I went to pick up the extractor I am renting for the weekend.


See the little white bee bodies?

you can see the larvae here with the nurse bees



John thought we were okay, "Just a little chalkbrood. The bees will take care of it."  It is a fungus, and usually not serious which causes some of the brood to die before they develop fully.  That was good news.

This is what the bottom deep  looked like - a very strong hive

     Took 5 frames of honey off the super.  I know to some it is not too much, but this will be the first we have taken, so I am pretty excited.  We are going to hold out on taking any other honey until after the goldenrod flow - perhaps we can get some honey from the blue hive before season's end.
  
     Is anyone else having trouble with zucchini this year?  I tried a different version this year.  Usually I grow "Greyzini" with seeds from Pinetree Garden Seeds in ME. I never have problems- the plants are strong and the fruit prolific.  This year I thought I would try "Goldbar" instead of "Greyzini", because the bright yellow of the "Goldbar" might help me find the zucchini before it grew to the size of my thigh.  Well, we have had a sunny hot summer, I have watered the garden, it is not lacking for anything, bt I have, as of today, had nothing to harvest.  I have four squash in the garden - bright yellow but only 1 1/2 inches long and maybe as thick as two bobby pins held together.  I am not happy and will go back to my old standby next year.
    

2 comments:

  1. We had an awful year for squashes of all sorts. I tried 'Black Beauty' zuchinni (and no matter how I spell check it, it never seems right - may as well call it zookini) and we had the squash bug invasion of doom this year. Quite the bummer and I'm not sure how we're organically going to combat it next year if the bugs winter over as we expect. I had very few yellow squash before the plants got eaten, and no zookini... tomatoes galore though!

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  2. HA! It's 2 'c's and 1 'n' but I know what you mean. Beans were great this year, HAVE A TON of green tomatoes - only a few are getting red - I may have to change their placement in the garden next year - I think the bean towers may be shading them out. Winter squash are doing well - just summer squash that is a wash - strong plants miniscule fruit. Pouring rain her today, so I have to go shop vac my leaking basement!

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