NEWS

BLACKBERRY SEASON OPENS!

Ripening Blackberry SeasonTuesday June 2nd 2015 marks the very first opening of our Pick & Pay Blackberry season.  Look in the right hand sidebar to see the latest information about availability, hours and picking days.  (Phones or small screens may need to scroll down to view.)  We are totally new, so this is our very first picking season.  It’s exciting and a bit daunting.  We are anticipating having to make changes while we figure out customer response, how long the plants need to recover, and how to best deal with fickle weather patterns.  It will be an adventure, so we hope you plan to share it with us.

I took these photos of the ripening berries about 5 minutes ago, so everything is still soaked with rain.  The plants are loving it though, and the berries are clean.  We do not use any pesticides anyway.  We only farm with organic practices.  Blackberries are so good for you.  They are low in calories and high in antioxidants and contain numerous vitamins and minerals.  Health benefits shown through scientific studies report that they can help you fight against cancer, aging, inflammation, and neurological diseases.  Eating unprocessed, organic, farm fresh berries is especially healthy.  Click HERE for more information on the health benefits of eating Blackberries.

tadalafil online canada The end result for me was $127,000.00in one month, paying off $80,000.00 of debt and now I’m averaging $50,000 a month!” ~Sunny W., Georgia “I contacted Jafree 12 months ago to help me change my financial situation. In such cases certain medication like cialis generika, viagra have done an amazing job for people suffering from erectile dysfunction. Generally the generic viagra for sale price ranges from either the cheapest of approximately $50 to the high end selection of $200. This means there is increased blood flow throughout the system, particularly in the erectile tissues of a cipla cialis generika joint. Blackberry Season looks great!You can see in this second photo that the Blackberry rows are covered with berries just waiting to ripen!  Come enjoy the easy pickings!  Check the sidebar for the latest info.

We have a special event series planned for a few Fridays in June and July, which you will probably be VERY INTERESTED in!  More on this shortly.

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That’s a 2-Cat Swarm!

Swarm season can be an exciting time of year if you are adept at catching bees.  We’ve seen and captured a lot of swarms over the years… some with quite a bit of effort… and some with unsatisfactory results.  So far this year, we have had the easiest time yet.  Here are three different 2015 swarm stories and we are only one week into the season!

Last year, after simultaneously getting konked on the head with a pair of limb clippers while jumping off of a 6 foot stepladder and getting rained on by angry bees, I was determined to find a better way of catching swarms.  With some research I found that bees swarm first and make a game plan second.  Seems a little risky to me, but that’s what they do.  Once they cluster on a branch they send scouts to find a suitable home.  These scouts measure the volume of a potential place and report back to the cluster.  They like the volume to be close to that of a brood chamber, which is the large wooden box at the bottom of a Langstroth hive.  See this post for hive components.  Besides measuring for volume, they tend to like places that are about 6 feet off the ground and at the edge of a wooded area.  Facing a meadow or open area is a nice touch as is an aroma of lemongrass oil.  (I’m not kidding)  They also like the potential nesting place to be dark, so a solid bottom board is a must.  They also prefer to make their honeycomb on a 45 degree angle, so placing an older frame with comb on it in the box on an angle is attractive to them.  I put a reducer at the entrance too, so the bees can be sure they can defend themselves once they move in.

Swarm-05 So, with this new knowledge, I put up a bait hive with the aforementioned parameters this Spring.  Our very first swarm was spotted about 30 feet in the air on a pine branch, so there was no way we could have reached it without a bucket truck.  I watched it all day to see what would happen… The bait hive was within sight of the swarm cluster.  I noticed a few scout bees at the bait hive at first and then I noticed that there were bees going in and out of the bait hive, but the swarm was still in the tree.  At one point I was convinced that another swarm had already moved in and the swarm I had been watching was going to be out of luck.  As it turns out those bees must have been busy sweeping before the queen arrived, as all of a sudden the swarm cluster broke apart from the tree branch and disappeared, then it reappeared on the bait hive and all the bees funneled in!  That was rather exciting, and I must say was a lot easier than the ladder fiasco.

Swarm-48I mentioned that honeybees swarm first and think second.  On this next swarm, I’m sure the decision to swarm on the morning of a thunderstorm, was not popular.  You can see in this next photo that the bees are clustered on this tiny pine tree and practically touch the ground.  The bees are soaked with rain, and we probably would not have even noticed them had we not walked right by there.  It’s debatable whether this swarm or the bait hive swarm were easier.  On the bait hive, we carried the whole hive to where we wanted it and just set it on it’s cinder block foundation.  On this wet swarm, we placed a few pieces of plastic foamcore on the ground and then clipped off the tree at the base.

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Swarm-47On this third swarm, we were a little skeptical when we got the call.  There had been bees in this particular house before and it was an extensive removal some years ago.  Not wanting to tackle anything that entailed ripping out walls, we asked a bunch of questions over the phone like, are the bees flying in and out of a hole or are they just sitting there?… How long have they been there?  How many bees do you see?

Well, really, have you ever tried to count bees?  It’s difficult to picture just how many are in a cluster.  What looks like five thousand to you may look like 10,000 to someone else, so beekeepers usually measure swarms in “cats”.  Yes, cats.  Now, I know that cats vary in size, but that’s what we do.  We compare the size of the swarm to how many cats it looks like.  It’s not rocket science, so a good ballpark reference is way better than a guess.  A 1-cat reference is clearer than saying, “Oh, I dunno, maybe 35,000.”  Most swarms are 1-cat.  A 3-cat swarm is a whopper, and the lady on the phone said without a doubt that this was a really large 1-cat swarm. Yep, definitely one cat.  She was rather fascinated by the way we measured and it wasn’t until we arrived that I understood why she found the cat reference profound.  When we got there, we were happily surprised to see that it was a solid 2-cat swarm, maybe even 2-cats and a kitten!  After looking at it for a minute, it was astonishing to see the definite outline of a cat.  No wonder she was so sure it was a one cat swarm!  Can’t argue with that.

RabbitEye Farm is a guest contributor for the Chattahoochee Valley Beekeepers Association bee-blog.

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LilBit turns One!

Lilbit-B-1 year oldYou may recall from a previous post, that we have a dog with Megaesophagus.  We are thrilled to celebrate her first birthday January 9th, 2015.  She is a smallish, but very healthy Great Dane. We’ve had her since she was born, and the vet told us that most dogs with a severe case like hers don’t live very long.  If you aren’t familiar with Megaesophagus, it is a manageable, but not fixable condition where her esophagus muscles don’t push her food to her stomach.  Other than that, she is perfect and wonderfully talented.  In this birthday picture to the left, you can see our solution to the esophagus problem.  It is her special table that Doug built. She is standing on her hind legs in this photo.  An older version was this bar stool, in the photo to the right, but she outgrew that rather quickly.

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Some dogs can get Megaesophagus later in life usually due to other health issues or as a side effect from medication.  If your dog is losing weight, regurgitates regularly or is aspirating food or water have your vet check for this condition with a simple x-ray.  It is manageable, and for LilBit, she got a bonus… Awesome leg muscles that any dog would be proud to show off!

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Doug to Present Talk at Hills & Dales Estate

Hills & Dales EstateOn Saturday, September 20, 2014, from 10AM – noon, join Doug as he presents an illustrated talk about honey bees at Hills & Dales Estate in LaGrange, Georgia2014-06-10 10.23.46He is thrilled to be able to promote the importance of the honey bee and to educate others on their life cycle, habitat, pollination practices and threats to survival.  Bees are important in urban settings as well as rural settings.  Hills & Dales falls into both of those categories. The beautiful gardens there depend on bees for pollination and they understand the need for continuing healthy environmental practices and offer educational programs such as this one to the public.  Keeping a healthy population of bees is a key factor in gardening on any scale.  Doug wears many hats related to This make a man feel shame about himself when he is not having the ability to develop hard http://icks.org/n/data/ijks/2017FW-2.pdf free prescription for levitra erection which lasts quite long. It also reduces vigor and vitality. buy levitra online http://www.icks.org/html/04_publication.php?cate=SPRING%2FSUMMER+2007 Intra-cavernous injection, pumping devices and contradiction rings are some manually used devices to fill the male organ to make it rock hard during canada viagra sexual intercourse. Ensure your hormone program is under the supervision of trained and http://icks.org/n/data/ijks/1482458820_add_file_3.pdf cheap cialis in canada highly qualified healthcare professionals. gardening a few of which are being a beekeeper, a gardener and an advocate for the preservation and organic cultivation of plants that are part of a healthy diet for honey bees.  We all need to do our part, and education is the first step.  See live bees in action through an observation hive!  Taste local organic honey.  Listen to the hum of a busy colony of bees.  This workshop is provided through Hills & Dales and will take place at their gardens.  Space is limited and pre-registration is required.  Workshop fees include garden admission, educational session workshop, refreshments and your own jar of honey to take home!  If you are interested you can call 706-882-3242 or email info@hillsanddales.org to register.  Check out the bee workshop teaser on their homepage below.  This graphic is a convenient link to the Hills & Dales Estate website.Hill&DalesBeeTalk

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