Tanglewood Hollow

If you are a beekeeper who treats your bees, you need to read Michael Bush’s Web site:

I suppose you’d have to be living under a rock these days to have not heard that the honey bees and beekeepers are in trouble. The problems are complex, far reaching and mostly recent. They are certainly a threat to the survival of the beekeeping industry but, even more so, to the survival of many plants which we need or want for food and many other plants that are a necessary part of the environment.

via Beekeeping Naturally, Bush Bees.

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Now this baby would make some serious syrup.

The Leader WSE Evaporator is designed for the hobby maple syrup producer that is serious about turning sap into syrup quickly and efficiently. The WSE Maple Sap Evaporator is a combination of two stainless steel, tig welded pans sold as a set, and a Fire Box called the Arch. Each Leader WSE Evaporator is customized to fit the needs of your maple operation.

via Leader 2×4 and 2×6 WSE Wood Fired Maple Syrup Evaporator.

I’m amazed at the complexity that the professional maple syrup evaporators exhibit. Makes me want to build a sugar shack, buy a pick-up, 4-wheeler and a serious set-up and do this for profit. But eeh gads, the expense!

Anyone want to invest in a syrup business? haha.

If you just want to build yourself a relatively cheap set-up, check out Homemade Maple Equipment topic on Mapletrader.com. Amazing ingenuity there.

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Amy has decided to take a more active role in the garden! I’m psyched, because I have too many other dang projects to do right now to do the whole garden too. I’m more than happy to leave it in her hands this year. I promise I’ll help.

She’s decided to do square beds and has gotten a Square Foot Gardener book. I think it’s gimmicky, but it still has good info. We’ll see what happens.

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What a great idea…

Looking for an inexpensive, high protein food source for your chickens that is quickly and naturally renewable? Why not start your very own Soldier Grub farm!

via Raise BioGrubs as a Cheap Food Source for Chickens..

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I wanted to share a few random snippets that I’ve gathered and come up with:

Some bees will steal honeydew from aphids to make their honey, which shows how they are opportunists. Rather than start from nectar, they skip the beehours of labor and get a substance that is higher in original sugar content.

But they are also shortsighted in their pursuits. If they eat honeydew honey during a cold winter it can kill them (or at least make them very uncomfortable from dysentery).

From wikipedia.org: honeybees.

You can trick them with smell. They are VERY scent reliant. Many of the complex behaviors, including when the queen swarms, how the brood is reared, how they find the best flowers or a new hive and more are led by scent.

For example, you can attract a swarm to a hive with lemon grass oil. If you add a half portion of rose oil it may be even more effective.

If you wear rubber dish gloves (the thicker variety) and reach your hand into a hive of bees when it is cooler out, it feels like you are reaching into a warm oven. It’s way above the ambient temperature. You can do it barehanded if you are careful and the bees are in a good mood.

There are few sounds as impressive (or intimidating) as an angry and buzzing hive of bees.

More bees are interested in licking honey off of you than stinging you, even when you are cutting their hive apart during a cutout.

Angry bees are very often hungry bees.

Honeybees get to know their keeper. They recognize you and after a time don’t get as alarmed because they know they can trust you to not be destroying their hive (hopefully my cutouts will forget that part!).

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Bee pollen is one of the oldest healing substances known to man and considered by many to be a perfect food. Pollen is the fine dust-like grains or powder formed within the anther of a flowering plant and is the male reproductive substance in plants that fertilizes the ovules. Bee pollen is collected from bees using a screen that the bees must go through to enter the hive.

via Apitherapy News: Bee Pollen is One of Nature’s Most Perfect Foods.

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A TBH in the Michigan winter.

OK. Uncle. I give. Enough already!

I am hereby extra-ready for spring. I know it’s just around the corner (or at least the weather guys at work keep assuring me so), but I’m becoming a little impatient.

Don’t get me wrong. I mean hey, I did move back to Michigan from Florida, so I can only blame myself for having to put up with winter. But I’ve had enough this year. I need some sunshine and some green. The monochrome thing is stale.

At least winter is a time to plan. Big stuff will be happening in the garden. The chicken moat will be finished. Some raised beds will be made. And we have sugarin just around the corner in the next couple of weeks. Gotta get the seeds started soon too and get the lights set up.

I can’t help feeling sorry for the chickens though. They sure to look cold, even if they have “down coats” on. They rarely venture out of the coop. Every so often I see one poke its head out and peck at the snow, as if it hopes to scare it away.

Apparently the snow is not scared by chickens. Go figure.

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A superorganism is an organism consisting of many organisms. This is usually meant to be a social unit of eusocial animals, where division of labour is highly specialised and where individuals are not able to survive by themselves for extended periods of time. Ants are the best-known example of such a superorganism, while the naked mole rat is a famous example of the eusocial mammal. The technical definition of a superorganism is “a collection of agents which can act in concert to produce phenomena governed by the collective,”[1] phenomena being any activity “the hive wants” such as ants collecting food or bees choosing a new nest site.

via Superorganism – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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