The Honey Factory

[WannaBeHillBilly]

@WannaBeHillBilly
I planted my Jerusalem Artichokes last fall. This is the first one to come up.
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It is definitely warmer here! - I have planted some of them into a container for my patio and they are already tall:

And i have finally decided where in the "wild" to plant the remaining tubers.

 

[Apis mellifera]

I have an overwintered nucleus colony that went queenless. The queen may have been poorly mated or maybe the result of a virus, I dont know but it happens. It's still too cold and early for queen rearing here and typically I would just write it off as a loss. The nuc is still fairly strong (not great) but probably on the edge of falling apart and becoming laying worker. I decided to give it a shot and try and save it anyway. I had TempQueen in the freezer, so I added one with a frame of brood, eggs, bees and should have a queen early next week. TempQueen is a plastic tube impregnated with a synthetic queen mandibular pheromone. The bees think they have a queen and behave normally until you can introduce a new queen. The workers immediately ran to the fake queen, hopefully I caught them early enough and it will hold them over. No guarantee it will work, Ill post how it goes. You can see the little tube of pheromone covered with bees in the photo.

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

I have an overwintered nucleus colony that went queenless. The queen may have been poorly mated or maybe the result of a virus, I dont know but it happens. It's still too cold and early for queen rearing here and typically I would just write it off as a loss. The nuc is still fairly strong (not great) but probably on the edge of falling apart and becoming laying worker. I decided to give it a shot and try and save it anyway. I had TempQueen in the freezer, so I added one with a frame of brood, eggs, bees and should have a queen early next week. TempQueen is a plastic tube impregnated with a synthetic queen mandibular pheromone. The bees think they have a queen and behave normally until you can introduce a new queen. The workers immediately ran to the fake queen, hopefully I caught them early enough and it will hold them over. No guarantee it will work, Ill post how it goes. You can see the little tube of pheromone covered with bees in the photo.
View attachment 3809915

Very interesting! - I didn't knew that something like this even exists. Thank you very much for the info!

 

[Sally PB]

Ditto! I've never heard of TempQueen, but the idea makes sense.

 

[R2elk]

Russian Almond

 

[Sally PB]

I got my Seven Sons plants yesterday! They look great; lots of green leaves and good looking stems. I spent the $$ and got the gallon size, so I hope they grow well here.

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

I got my Seven Sons plants yesterday! They look great; lots of green leaves and good looking stems. I spent the $$ and got the gallon size, so I hope they grow well here.

Picture?

First time i hear of this plant! - Sounds very interesting.
By tomorrow evening i shall receive my Haskap shrub, it promises lots of flowers (in a couple of years) and plenty of yummy blue berries (in a couple of years).

 

[Sally PB]

https://www.greatgardenplants.com/p...MIzMCzzdnfhQMVEzfUAR2m3Qj-EAQYAiABEgJNNfD_BwE

The picture they show on their website is the red bract view. This is what the bees are interested in.

The local bee club had a tree sale, and they had some of these. They were sold out the first day. I'm glad I was able to get some from the place in Grand Haven, MI; they didn't have to ship far.

 

[5Australorpasaures]

Midnight marauders. Maybe Chicken Dinner, and Honey for dessert.

 

[5Australorpasaures]

Midnight marauders. Maybe Chicken Dinner, and Honey for dessert.
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Actually it was an all night parade of Fox, cats Coons and opossum. I will also mention that across the "crick" 75 yrds away my in-laws have 2 photos on their trail cam of a Cougar. This is true as another neighbor a half mile down the road has a pick full face on of it. I am not concerned as the "experts" say there are NO Cougars in New Jersey. These animals better start reading the books and listening to the (EXPERTS?)