Out with the old and in with the new.

Last night, on the way home from work, Teresa stopped to pick up the 14 new baby chicks joining Silver Hill Farm.  Upon arrival home, Piper proceeded to lick all of the chicks and then sat next to their box wagging her tail, with a distinct expression of pure joy on her face. 

 

On the flip side, one of our Columbian hens has been going downhill fast.  She started acting a little strange about a week ago.  The past few days she was just sitting in the corner of the coop and not even roosting at night with the other hens.  Thursday morning she did not even attempt to eat the bread that was thrown into them...not a good sign.  Being the proactive people that we are, we decided we'd better process her, rather than let her die naturally and miss out on the meat!  So last night at 8:30pm we found ourselves processing one of our favorite hens while being eaten alive my mosquitos. 

 

You know the old saying, "Out with the old and in with the new!"

Pasture Life

A candid photo of current pasture life.

Release the Bees!

 

The bees have been released.  The entrance blocks have been removed, allowing the buzzing within the hives to come pouring out. 

 

Everything looks pretty good so far within the hives.  Both queens are still in their queen cages but others are working to release them.  Now I will check in on them every few days to hopefully see some comb being built on the foundationless frames so that the queen has a place to lay brood and the rest have a place to start storing honey.

The bonus?  Nobody has been stung yet.

The Italian

Pretending to be an astronaut?  Nope.

 

 

There has been somewhat of a population explosion at Silver Hill Farm.  Approximately 6,000 Russian Hybrid honey bees have arrived from Georgia via New Jersey. 

 

What is this?  A hitchhiker...believed to be an Italian strain bee (and dubbed "The Italian") who appears to have made the trip by clinging to the outside of a package.  We couldn't waste such tenacity so she got dumped into one of our hives.

 

The key to our success...one of our queens.  The bees have been placed in their hives and are (hopefully) working to release the queens by eating through the candy plug that keeps them contained to the small queen cages.  The hive entrances are currently blocked in order to allow the bees to acclimate to the hives.  Stay tuned for the release.