Just a weird colony this year

I just can’t make sense of our bees this year. They were never raging but always strong, sometimes happy rarely mad. In spite of their effervescence the whole Summer, they never brought quite enough to stock up the whole hive. I’d sit and watch the entrance, seeing them go back and forth, but rarely with pollen attached to their legs. The whole time I’d wonder what they were up to outside if not gathering pollen.

So I just don’t know what to make of them, they have some decent honey and I hope they’ll surprise me once more by making it through the Winter. I have to say that since we started producing maple syrup, I see the work to sweetness ratio a whole lot differently for bees.

Cleaning shit up

IMG_6717

Capped honeyIMG_6746

Robin stayed with me behind while Nicole did all the work 😀 His first time so close.

IMG_6730

We tried to extract 3 frames and we moved them close to the house for processing the next day. Unfortunately, the bees found them soon the next morning and a huge mess ensued with confused bees and humans. We just gave them back, for now…

Harvests

As usual, we have more squash than we know what to do with and the tomatoes’ taste is way more intense than anything you’ll find in a store.IMG_5985

Because we get loads of everything every day, we started a little farm stand. It won’t make us rich, but it’s fun and lets us try the waters of something that we are hoping to develop a bit.

IMG_2471

Garlic Harvest

We pulled the 200 heads we planted last October; they did great and were very easy to take care of. 200 heads at 8 cloves per head is 1600 cloves total. Of which 200 will go back to Peter who gave us our start, 600 will go back into the ground for next year and finally 800 will go in our bellies.

IMG_5623

IMG_5744