Turns out, having twin baby boys, let alone premmie ones, is not conducive to running a well groomed hobby farm. The grass is overgrown, the shed is a mess (I'm sure that's the reason), the cows have escaped into an unknown neighbours place and only the strongest survive in the veg patch.
When The Boy went down for his Nap and Twin B* slept off the trip to the local creek with a super sleep, I took leave of Super Wife/Mum and went to see if the bees were still going OK. I had been keen to set up a trellis to encourage the passion fruit to climb out and give them some relief from the harsh midday summer sun we get at Lantanaland.
Dry cow shit makes the best smoker fuel.
After quickly rigging up the trellis I got stuck into the hives. Both are going strong, even though the big hive is still mostly living in the top box and it looked like there must be a queen above the excluder. I'm not even sure if that's possible and I'll need to consult my proper beekeepers to see if what I did was the right move.
As usual I cribbed a single frame for my honey supplies and refreshed the beetle traps. The hives looked really good, the small one Ryno bought me was full and finally went into a bigger box, I'll try and sneak a look next week to ensure its going ok. I stole a few frames of brood from the big hive to give it a boost. I couldn't see any small hive beetle at all. The chooks now live underneath the hive, a theory I have heard breaks the breeding cycle of the beetle. See if anything crawls into the new traps I guess.
All in all it was a successful little outing. Now I just need to find the cows, fix the break in the fences, clean up the bales, plant some more fruit trees (gotta get the avos in), run the irrigation lines from the dam up for the orchard, get two loads of mulch in for the orchard, plant some more veg, mow the lawn.........
*Twin B has a name, which I use when referring to him, mostly, but it drives some twin mates of mine mad to refer them as half of one entity.
