Beekeeping in early Spring (adding supers).

Mr. J in action!

Last week J helped his dad to prep his beehives for the upcoming warmer weather. During winter, bees need a snug space to live so that they can keep warm and cozy, but once the weather warms up it is necessary to add space to the hive to prevent the bees from swarming away looking for more space to grow the hive, make more bees and gather pollen and nectar to produce honey with all the new blooming goodness out there (yay!).

Hives can be constructed according to the size needed by piling up "supers" on top of each other. Supers are bottomless and topless boxes that can contain wax "frames" where the bees build honey comb from.  They come in three different depths, so you can actually experiment with different increases for different conditions and according to the specific hive.  Inside, the hive is like a building all connected throughout where the bees can move freely.

J's dad has taken care of bee hives for more that 35 years now, and his honey always wins prizes at the County Fair. Right now he has 7 hives, and I tagged along with J to see him expand them.

Equipment: smoker, brush, gloves.

The smoker helps to make the bees believe there is a forest fire. That makes them go into survival mode, go inside the hive and gather all the honey then can to then fly away. But they never actually need to evacuate when you use a smoker, as you don't take long enough to allow them to. The smoke makes the bees occupied and that way they are not as protective and aggressive as they would without it. It also disguises the smell of the beekeeper. 

You can see different depth supers in this hive.

You have to move gingerly while handling a bee hive, even while wearing a suit.

And this is why!

Empty wax frames for the bees to build unto.

Honey filled frame! We did not extract honey today.

 Velvet sneakers and Me.

Happy Sunday (after a near catastrophe).

In spite of the horse and donkey getting into their feed yesterday and us being up all night making sure they were fine (horses can severely harm themselves by overeating, and sometimes die from it -Yikes!), and maybe because of that, we have had a nice slow morning today.

By the way, they survived.

Party!

Last weekend J and I held our annual birthday party. We think this might have been the 5th version of it, but are not quite sure.

We celebrate both of our birthdays at our little home with some of our favorite people. We buy a keg of local beer and drive up the coast to buy fresh oysters.


This is how things looked like last year:

Sunny bar.

Most of the party happened outside, in the sun.

This year J made mole from scratch, something my mom cannot believe since in Mexico people still make it by grinding everything by hand over a metate and it takes days to make. His version is a modern one that uses a blender instead (à la gringa, as I like to say), and is super tasty! His mole was a big success. We will see what my skeptical mom thinks about it, since she has asked for the recipe.

Another highlight was the weather, that just did not want to clear in spite of us delaying the date in hopes for sunshine. It was drizzly and cold, so we lit a fire and stayed mostly indoors. We even had a Horizontal rain moment! Our friends seemed to enjoy the weather, as it was a radically different ambience than usual.

Hosting the party is a good excuse to see our friends and clean our home.

It looked so nice I just had to show you!

Overcast bar. The weather got way worse, with heavy horizontal rain later on.

You can get a glimpse of the results of the campaign in this photo.

Creatures.

These two monsters keep me warm and make me happy on a crummy rainy day like today.

Something tells me they have no intentions of going elsewhere anytime soon.

New faces.

The dark winter nights at the farm when the only sounds around are the ocean and the hooting owls are over. I am not sure if I am ready for this, but there is no point on resisting it.

This week the ranch is filling up once again. Winter is behind us and a new season begins, seven new people have moved in and the place feels boisterous and full of excitement.

But not only are there new human faces. 

Baby lambs were born!

R R

R R