10/28/2023
Apiary
In the apiary, the remaining colony has been very active in hopefully gathering enough resources to make it through the winter. We haven’t opened the hive for an inspection in quite a while. We are monitoring activity by movement in and out of the hive. There is lots of action, so we feel pretty good about this colony.
I did do a quick peek yesterday by lifting the lid. I heard lots of buzzing and closed it up.
We will do the final inspection of the year after the first hard frost, which could be this weekend. At that time, we will remove the feeder, check on honey supplies, adjust the opening, and put a wool pillow over the top of the frames. After that, there will be no reason to open the hive after that until next spring.
The barn
This entire week has been spent on replacing some of the wood that has rotted. It was my neglect that caused this to happen and it didn’t happen overnight, so I can’t expect to fix everything in a day.
These pictures show the worse of the decay.
My son came over and helped a lot. The two of us installed a metal support post to get the weight of this part of the structure off the framing. After that task, we spent the rest of the day cutting away rotten wood. There was a severe lack of fun in doing this. Wood that looked great on the outside broke apart when hit by a hammer. This made for a long afternoon.
These pictures highlight some of the repair.
While this was going on, Linda was prepping the office area for painting. The wood was used as deck boards for about 25 years. They had quite a bit of Kate’s hair stuck on them.
While there isn’t much going on in the apiary, we are still very busy in prepping the property and ourselves for next year.
Last modified:
Leave a Reply