Category Archives: Critters

Stories and photos of encounters with various animals, wild and domestic

Bees, Homesteading

Beekeeping

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Keeping Bees at Edgewise Woods-

May 16, 2014

My history with bees is not the greatest. I originally got started

Two New Bee Hives
Two New Bee Hives

through helping my neighbor, Harry, with his bees back when I lived near Harrisville, WV in the 1970’s. I mostly helped him with taking the honey at the end of the season and jarring it up. I made the best beeswax candles from the cappings. They smelled so good when you burned them and lasted a long time. We were able to just run into town, about 8 miles away, to the old Stout family hardware store and get everything we needed for bee keeping. Veils, long gloves, hive bodies, wax foundation and frames, feeders, everything. Some of their stock might be 30 years old but you knew it was in there some place if you had the time to look. Also, if it was a rainy, nasty day the younger brother would let you have stuff for next to nothing, or the price that was marked on it from the 1940’s. Rainy days depressed him. They tended to depress me too and I tried not to take advantage.

I got my own bees after awhile but then I lost one hive to bears- thanks to the DNR for reintroducing them to our area, and then one to foul brood, and I backed off from beekeeping until I moved to Freshwater Cove in Nelson County Va. My partner at the time brought me a present one day of a bee hive that was so mean, that when a bear got into them and turned the whole thing over, the bees actually won the fight. I think he was hoping they would get me too. They stung me every chance they got- even while wearing a protective veil. The last time I went near them I was pregnant with my youngest daughter and they somehow managed to get under the veil and sting me on my neck about 20 times. I think this might be why she was sensitive to insect stings for the first few years of her life. I am not sure what later killed those bees but I was glad to see their demise as they were the meanest bees I had ever encountered.

When I moved to Shepherdstown, I no longer had any bee equipment except a couple of old smokers and a hive tool- no veil or gloves or hive bodies hanging around. I discovered about ten years ago just how hard it is here, to get a hold of an empty beehive when you need one in a hurry.  We had a hardware store and a Southern States then but neither one kept bee supplies in stock. So, why did I need a hive all of a sudden when I had no bees? Well, a friend had some construction going on at his house, so he brought his hive over to visit with us for a while as the bees were placed too close for comfort. You cannot move bees a short distance without confusing them as to where home is. The old adage is ‘Three feet or three miles’. They needed to go more than three feet so they came about ten miles to our place until they were done building. When they arrived, my apple trees were in full bloom, along with lots of nut trees and such, so they were quite happy. Anyway, maybe they made so much honey they ran out of room. No one brought them a super to expand with and so they swarmed. A whole bunch of the bees took off with the queen and landed about 20 feet away, on a young apple tree, right about eye level. They were only going to hang out there for so long, until the scout bees found them a new home in a hollow tree or something, and they had to be gathered up quick or lost. I knew that much but not much else.

I called the bees owner at home, hoping he would be around, but of course he was not and neither was his son. They had not shown much interest in the bees since they dropped them off weeks before. So I ran down to the hardware store to see if anyone there knew any beekeepers but the only one who knew anything was off somewhere. A woman shopping for paint gave me the number of a beekeeper nearby in Maryland who offered to come take away the swarm for himself. Fat chance, they are expensive to buy and I did not want to waste them. He would have sold me an empty hive, except his were an unusual size, and I would never be able to get parts for them. So I went over to the feed store to see if they knew of anyone who kept bees and might have an extra hive laying about and they put me on the phone to a local orchardist. The woman who answered said her husband was out in his bee yard trying to catch a swarm right then (obviously a good day for swarms) but she would have him call me back as soon as he came in.

Meanwhile, I was frantically reading my old beekeeping book, trying to come up with alternative bee boxes. They have to be something fairly strong as this group of bees probably weighed 9-12 pounds and they would be hanging from the top of the box. Cardboard would collapse. I was rigging a 20 gallon plastic tree bucket with bamboo stakes stuck through it and trying to figure out how to get them to go into it, when the beekeeping orchardist called back. He was full of useful information and gave me confidence that I could get these bees caught without a problem. I was out talking to him on my cell phone, with the bees clustered around, when the original owner and his cousin finally drove up with a hive body, just in time. Thank goodness they also brought some veils and long gloves. Those are nice. Actually they are more like a necessity most of the time.  The pair had very little experience, it turns out, and they were not looking at all enthusiastic, but I convinced them it would not be a problem and it wasn’t. Really it was a lot of fun. The bees behaved as if they were connected in a long rope, moving as one unit, about two and a half feet long and 8 inches wide, wrapped around a branch of the young tree. I placed their new hive, with frames of wax foundation hanging in it, on the ground below the swarm and we shook the branch. The bees all just dropped right in. They started to get a little stirred up and buzzed around us some, but they settled down pretty quick. It was neat to watch and hear them drop – kind of like hearing a few pounds of mini marshmallows fall on the kitchen floor. Not that I have ever heard that. We took a soft brush and made sure there weren’t any missed bees still up on the branch and then the guys went on their way. I stayed out there awhile until almost dark, put the top on after they all clustered back together, and moved them back over next to the other hive Then I took the lid back off, added another empty super box, and set up a feeding station with a jar of sugar water, so they would feel at home and have enough energy to draw out the new comb they needed. Unfortunately, the first hive swarmed again a couple of weeks later, and since we had no more hives for them, I gave them away to the orchardist neighbor, who had been so helpful. That winter, the snow drifted so deep I think my visiting bees suffocated and died. I felt terrible and asked the guys to take their boxes away.

IMG_0003
Setting up the frames and feeders

I am not sure why I have decided to get bees again except that I feel a need to produce at least a portion of the food we eat. I have always kept chickens, grown a big garden and put a lot of food up each year. Luckily, on my third go round with bees, there is internet shopping with UPS delivery right to the porch. My new bee Guru, who has fifty hives and tends bees with his elderly father, told me where he gets his supplies online, so I did some research and ordered mine from the same place http://www.mannlakeltd.com/ . The two complete hives, each with two bodies and two supers, arrived in four large awkward size boxes right on time. I felt kind of sorry for the UPS man. Since I made the decision to get bees late in the season, it was hard to find a source of the actual bees for delivery this spring. When I did finally find some package bees that originated here on the East Coast (for better acclimatization, less shipping time) they were Russian and Italians from http://spillehoney.com/bees.html.

Three pounds of mailorder Bees in their cage
Three pounds of mailorder Bees in their cage

The night before I expected them to arrive, I made up a few gallons of sugar syrup to feed them with so it could have time to cool. The bees  arrived in good shape in two shoe box sized screened in boxes at the post office at 6:30 am the next morning. The Post Mistress called my cell to come get them, and since I was already at work, I had to turn around and come back and install them in their new hives, which only took about an hour, plus another hour and a half of travel. I had heard that the Italians were the most gentle but it was one of that lot that stung me and they seemed more riled up than the Russians.

Checking for the Queens Release
Checking for the Queens Release
IMG_0001_2
The Queens cage-empty

I wore my gnat veil, a pair of leather gloves and a nylon raincoat with a hood, Velcro sleeves and a draw cord hem. That one bee got me on my ankle. Four days later, when I removed the separate little Queen boxes I had hung in the center of the hive, and made sure she was released, I added duct tape to my outfit around my ankles. The worker bees have to work to get her out of her cage, which comes plugged with candy at one end. That gives the bees about four days to get acquainted with each other before she is free. If you release a new queen right away they might kill her. I have had the bees a week now and have refilled their feeders with another gallon each. So far, each hive has been busy building out comb but they have not made it out to the furthest frames yet. When they do, I will add another hive body and move the feeder up a level. When that gets full, I will add a super (a shallower box with frames and foundation) one at a time as they need it. I have an entrance reducer in place so they can defend against robber bees but as soon as this cold rain ends I think I will give them a larger front door so they can forage easier.

The Wild Cherries are in full bloom and I have planted buckwheat for later in the season. I may plant more of that. We don’t need all this lawn. The buttercups I don’t want out in the back pasture are also in full bloom. I might till them up as soon as they are done and plant some clover and orchard grass, which Mara, my horse will also like. The neighbor across the way has removed the cows from fifty acres and is about to plant it in corn. Round Up ready corn of course, which is what everybody plants these days. I was glad they killed the grass more than a week before I got my bees. If they had sprayed it when the clover was blooming and the bees were working it, it would have killed them. Luckily, they now have a beekeeper maintaining two hives on their farm on shares, who will be as worried as I am, and hopefully will help them prevent such things.

I am starting to remember how much work it takes to take proper care of bees and hope I can keep up properly. On Monday morning, before work, I will need to see if I can find the queens and make sure she is starting to lay eggs. If not I may have to order a new queen. I have never been good at locating the queen and probably should have had her marked. I will have to meet with the farmers on both sides of us and ask them to keep me informed and meet the couple doing the bees over there. There is a lot to learn. Rosie, my bee guru at work, is full of information and loves to talk bees so he will be a big help. There is also a local beekeeping group that meets once a month so I plan to hook up with them.  All I need now is more hours in the day.

– Wendy lee Maddox, writing athttp://www.edgewisewoods.com

 

Critters, Homesteading, ShepherdstownWV-1993-2017

Ice Cow 2000

Ice Cow 2000

In the middle of the night, I woke to the sound of something huge right outside my bedroom window, crashing and splintering the ice on the water garden. I struggled out of the covers, and peered out the window, attempting to adjust my sleep filled eyes to the stark moonlight, trying to focus. A humongous, white cow was just emerging from the icy water and clambering up the far bank.  This was a full grown Charolais cow! She had her heavy self and four very sharp hooves, digging around in my hand dug, rubber lined, fish pond. This was not good. I do not keep any cows these days, only a few sheep, horses and chickens. I let them wander around loose on the lawn sometimes to graze, and they will take an occasional drink from the pond, but they don’t ever step down into it. Well, I have seen a chicken or two get wetter than they planned, but they don’t weigh much. They don’t swim well and there is a lot of squawking involved. It is not normal for someone’s cow to be loose in my yard. I sure hope the stupid lummox hasn’t punctured the pond liner. It was designed to handle the weight of a deer hoof but a deer is about nine hundred pounds lighter than a cow. It won’t be possible to repair it until spring and the fish, plants and frogs, down under the mud, will die if the water leaks out now.

This winter has been unusually cold and the water buckets out in the barn keep freezing up solid- every single day lately. We don’t usually get temperatures below zero before January, but it has been down to minus four degrees Fahrenheit already, and has not gone above freezing during the day for three weeks now. I had to buy a plug in stock tank heater, and run an extension cord from the feed room, to try and keep the water open for drinking. There must have been something wrong with the electrical grounding, though, and now I can’t use it. The youngest horse, Cambriana, kept snagging the heater out of the tank with her teeth and throwing it out of the way before she would drink. It was bizarre. I couldn’t figure out why she was doing that. Finally, I put my fingers in the barely warmed water and felt the slightest electrical charge through my hand. Since I was wearing rubber barn boots, and horses are grounded directly through their hoofs, she probably felt more of a zap than I did. So, I’m back to flipping the buckets upside down, kicking the ice out, and hauling two five gallon buckets of water at a time from the house.

Barn path
Barn path

This is a real pain when the snow is deep and drifts across the path I shoveled the day before. I do appreciate having a clean, snowy barnyard instead of a sloppy, muddy one though, so the cold is good for something. When it finally thaws out this spring, I am bound and determined to finally dig a trench out to the barn and bury a water line and electric line out to the barn. Somehow it never seems like such a priority in the warmer weather, when I can easily run a hose out there, and I have been putting it off too long.

Cows can do an amazing amount of damage in a short period of time to shrubs, perennials and lawns, even with the ground frozen. I do not want her hanging around and wrecking more than she has already. My shrubs and fruit trees might look pretty tasty to an herbivore with a boring diet of dried up hay. Since it is way too early to call anybody, I go out to the mudroom, pull on my winter coveralls and snow boots over my flannel pajamas, and head outside to shoo the beast out of the yard. It is really cold outside, the kind of cold that instantly freezes your nose hairs, and I waste no time. I step out the basement door with my arms waving and give her a shout,

“ GIT! Get out of here you stupid cow! Git! You are going to freeze your butt off getting all wet like that. Get on out of here! Git! Git on home! Get out of here! Shoo! Go On!”

Finally, she goes lumbering off through the front woods and I quickly get back inside to warm up by the woodstove. Before heading upstairs to bed I stoke up the stove with some more locust logs and wait for it to take off. At least the house will be nice and warm in the morning.

After I climb back in bed I lay there hoping the pond is not starting to leak. I think up different ways to save my fish and plants if the water level drops drastically over night, mentally locating plastic tubs I can use as temporary aquariums. I listen for the sound of the water pump running dry, even as I drift back to sleep. The pump, which sits down in the water, under the ice, keeps a three- tiered, gurgling, waterfall running twenty four seven. It makes for a soothing sound, good to sleep to, and also quite effective at screening out my neighbors’ barking dogs. The water flows fast enough to keep it from freezing up, and will run through the coldest winter, creating wonderful ice sculptures down each fall. The sound changes according to how much ice forms, but it almost always keeps a small area at the base of the falls open and the wildlife takes full advantage of it. It is a great place to set up the deer camera and watch raccoons, skunks, deer, foxes, oppossums and birds drink.

When I woke up and had breakfast I followed the cows tracks out through the front woods. There were boot prints right behind them and a pick-up truck parked out on the opposite lane, so I figured her owner knew about her escape and was on top of it.  I did not think too much more about it until almost dark when I went out to do the evening chores, and there she was again, on the front lawn, just passing through. So I called all my neighbors with cattle and asked if they were missing one from their herd. No one would claim her. My nearest neighbor said,

“It couldn’t be mine. I’ve got American wire and it won’t get holes in it.”

Ha, Ha. So I called the guy further down the road whose fence actually has two huge holes in it, from when two different vehicles went through it the other day during the snow, and whose cows are known to be impossible to catch. He actually came over and took a look at her and announced,

“Nope, mine are all Hereford crosses. Don’t have any fancy Charolais ones. Pretty though, ain’t she? I could take her if you don’t find her people.”

The cow wandered off again, and I went to bed thinking that if she showed up again I would pen her up in my front paddock and start calling her my own personal freezer beef.

The next morning I heard the sound of men and tractors across the road and went to investigate and say howdy over the fence. The man with the “American wire” fence was loading a freshly killed Red Angus cow unto the back of a pickup. She had broken her leg on the slippery ground and had to be put down. When I asked him about the loose Charolais cow,  he said,

“She couldn’t be mine. We tried to get her in with the others yesterday and she would not cooperate. One of my cows would have been easy to get in.”

This reasoning did not make a lot of sense. Cows are notoriously stubborn and the grass is probably greener on this side, if you can just manage to find it under the snow. Later, however, his wife told me that they did manage to get her in with a bucket of grain, so she must be theirs after all. I guess they have no idea what their own cows look like. You’d think they would all have ear tags or tattoos or something. I mean, they are worth a lot of money when you go to sell them.

Meanwhile, there is no longer a cow cruising through the yard, and things have settled down. So far the pond is still holding water, so it looks like I will not need to repair it after all. However, my freezer still has some room left in it for the next unclaimed beef that wanders in.

 

Wendy lee Maddox, at Edgewisewoods.com

Critters

The Blue Heron

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The Heron

On my way out to the barn to do chores the other night I caught sight of something strange out the corner of my eye. It was about dark:thirty, that time of evening when I have the most trouble seeing and I had to squint to make it out. A darker shape under the evergreen tree at the end of the water garden that seemed out of place. As I keened my eyes it moved ever so slightly so I crept up silently to see what it was. At first I thought it was one of the chickens trying to roost out in the wild rather than in with the rest in the barn, but it was too tall and lean for a chicken. The head turned in profile and I saw it had a very long slender beak and seemed more graceful than any chicken. Deep humming sounds and ruffling feathers piqued meant it was some kind of bird. I slowly reached my hands towards it but it did not flee which was odd. I realized it must be injured so I started talking low and quiet to sooth its fears. Getting my arms around its body and holding its wings tight, I finally realized it was a Great Blue Heron that was obviously in distress. These birds are known to keep a safe distance from humans and this one would have if it could. Being careful of its 8 inch long beak which could easily poke me in the eye, I picked it up while crooning low chicken sounds, which is the only bird talk I ever practice much. The poor thing weighed almost nothing, way less than any of my laying hens, even though they usually look so imposing when you see them along the river banks. I stood up and carried him to the barn where I keep a wire pen for raising bitties each year. He did not fight me at all, only laid his head against me and relaxed. After gently placing the obviously exhausted bird in the coop and getting some scratch grain and water for him, which he did not seem interested in, I started investigating what the problem might be. I felt all down his body and his legs without finding any tender spots or obvious injuries and then started to unfold one of his wings. This greatly agitated him and he scrambled to get away. After calming him down again, by stroking his neck and talking to him in chicken, I felt the elbow joint midway down his left wing and found the problem. It was all torn up and bleeding and not moving properly. I figured it was broken, a major calamity for a flying bird, and almost impossible to splint. I left him alone in the box where he was safe from predators and he would have the horses and chickens to keep him company and went to Google “caring for an injured heron”. On Google I was, of course, able to find all kinds of information relating to our heron and his problem. Fortunately, there was a Vet experienced with wild birds in Frederick, about 35 miles away and right down the road from where I work. This being a Sunday night I had low expectations of actually getting them on the phone but they answered on the 3rd ring. I set up an appointment to bring him in first thing in the morning on my way to work.

When I got to the Vet’s office at 7 am they took him and said they would take z-rays to ascertain the extent of his injuries and let me know the outcome by phone later that morning. I gave them a one hundred dollar donation to help cover the costs, as they did wild animals pro bono. When they finally called around 10 o’clock they told me they had put him down! I was really upset at this and asked why they had not consulted with me first and they told me that “there is a MD state law that will not let them prolong the life of a wild bird if it will never be able to fly again” and that I would not have been allowed to keep it anyway. Apparently, someone had shot the heron while it was flying and totally shattered the bones in his wing and there was no possibility it would ever heal well enough to allow him to fly. I was devastated. He came to me for help and all I did was get him killed. He could have lived at my place. I would have protected him and he could have stayed at the water garden and fished. I could have built a protective fence around the pond to keep out the raccoons and foxes that might come after him. I felt so bad for letting him down. It is not legal for just anyone to keep a  wild animal, and I sort of get that, since you would probably have people penning up animals that would be way better off on their own. What I don’t get is not allowing a rescue place the opportunity to keep him? Next time I find an injured wild animal that I think I could help I will deal with it myself, at least they will have a chance. Now every time I walk by the pond I think of him and how I let him down.

Check out this site for Bird Rescues and such:

http://juliezickefoose.blogspot.com/2011/09/helping-great-blue-heron.html

-Wendy Maddox

edgewisewoods.com