Farm Blog, Winter 2012/13
(This blog was begun in February 2012)
December 21 - March 20
March 4 - 10
This week was the first time in awhile that the wind was not blowing 30 mph+ and the temperature was in the mid 50s so I went outside in the afternoon and worked on the farm. Spread Yum-yum fertilizer mix on the vegetable garden and turned it under, cleaned out the water wells around the fruit trees and changed the water in the pond.
February 19- 25
The first sign of spring appeared with the Hardy Winter Jasmine flowering in the flower garden in mid-February. There are signs of some of the bulbs beginning to break ground (crocus, daffodils & tulips), but nothing else. The neighborhood Siberian Elms and One-seeded Juniper's buds are swelling, but still no pollen release. The bees in one of the hives are coming out for awhile on sunnier days to take a relief flight, but no sign of any others checking out the weather. Hopefully they have all made it through the winter. I am planning to check in each hive in a couple of weeks on a sunny day to see if there are bees inside and if they are alive. I'll give them some honey that I collected last year for them, but I did leave each hive with 14 topbars of brood and food which should have been enough.
I went into all 3 of my hives and found living bees only the wild one (#1). The queen in that hive was introduced from Zia Queen Bee two years ago. The other two were full of dead bees that didn't make it through the winter. This being the case I will order 3 boxes of Russian-Carniolan bees from Honeybee Genetics to be delivered on April 25. At the end of this season I will not have enough bees to collect honey for myself, but I will re-distribute any that I have to each hive for next winter. I cleaned out one of the hives and will process the honey and the wax. I will do the other one at a later date.
Vegetable garden began by adding several wheelbarrows of horse manure and turning it under with the soil. A large truckload of horse manure was delivered in December.