Farm & Beekeeping Life

Get ready with me while I prep seed pods for the garden. This year I switched to a new seed starting tray that I can't recommend enough. It's set up for bottom watering, and the shape of the cells and overall design helps prevent root circling! I had a much greater percentage of seed success this year (except where I used really old seeds 😭) BTW, I really have had a lot more success last year when all I did was start using a seed depth tool rather than just doing it by feel. I highly suggest it. 0:00 Getting the seed starter to the right moisture content 01:40 Back from checking on what's going on with the tractor outside the greenhouse 01:54 Flattening the soil level out 02:39 Using a tool to set the seed depth Seed starting trays: https://amzn.to/3Wl8x4a

Join us as we clean up some old #hive boxes that have some pest problems and prep another old hive box as a "shaker box" - used to separate worker bees from queen bees. These boxes sat in the field since last summer due to time constraints on our part 😭. So we are hitting them with heat to ensure there are no pests still living in them (such as wax moths, etc).

Watch us prep for cleaning some hive boxes that were neglected and we needed to sanitize. I want to ensure that there is nothing living in them that would make it harder for a new hive to establish itself! In this first video you get to see my blonde self try to light a weed burner for the first time 😂. I managed not to light myself on fire!!!! 0:00 Realizing we need bug spray, mosquitos are intense today! 00:53 Proper application of mosquito repellant is critical! 02:06 Inspecting the first hive box for cleanup 02:40 Blonde girl attempts to light a weed burner 😂 05:45 Lets get to business with the flame thrower!

Get ready with me and follow along as we do a long overdo hive inspection and queen finding expedition. It's time for us to requeen these hives with new queens that will produce calmer broods and make it easier to do our inspections. 0:00 Get ready with me 01:33 I start on the first hive 02:06 Separating the first hive 04:29 Not finding much brood in this box 07:04 Queen cells 08:35 Monsoon season 😂 10:40 Recognizing a queen bee 11:45 Cracking open the second hive 12:58 Starving the Queen 15:04 Why we wait after euthanizing the Queens 18:03 Bearding Bees 20:09 Backbreaking work 20:53 We pissed these bees off, time to bug out 21:05 The day's recap Queens from @thebeesupply Attributions: "River Flute" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

On Friday, we made a trip to The Bee Supply (ya'll are great, we'll be back!) near #Dallas to pick up two nuc hives and 7 queen cages. The two new nucs are of the Golden Cordova variety from The Bee Supply. Overall we are getting these to be a bit calmer variety than our previous Russian #honeybees. In general we found the Russian bees to be good for our area, but tend to sting my husband in his beard! See me suit up and transplant two nuc hives into new 10 frame #hives a little bit away from the rest of our apiary. It was a bit of a rush due to all the rain beforehand as well as the rain predicted for the next few days. We really needed to get these girls into their permanent homes! (If you think you saw this video before, you might have, I have reuploaded with better audio!) 0:00 Getting ready for time in the apiary 02:30 Installing hive #1 04:30 Installing hive #2 06:25 Such wet weather! 06:42 Getting out of the suit!

It's that time! Seeds are growing in the greenhouse, and nearly ready to plant the rest! Come join me on my journey as and see what I do to prep my garden plot! Chapters: 0:00 Shredding the garden plot 04:07 First pass with the tiller 14:33 Its getting dark, need to finish the other direction! 18:20 Shutting the tractor down 18:56 Today's work recap

We were getting to the end of the work of the day. These boxes were going into the field, and needed to have all the wax and propolis scraped off. If we didn't clean them up, the bees would have to, and we'd rather them spend their energy on building out comb for brood and resources.

Cutting rafters for a new 🐔 coop!