October light and lightness

I love the dark grey skies of fall...

Sunny morning bliss face

Hive two has some nice looking honey! On Saturday G helped with two of the hives.  It was part inspection to see if there was still brood (and therefore evidence that the queens were alive) and part rearranging of frames.  We pulled any frames that didn't have drawn comb or honey and condensed everything the best we could.  I'm still feeding them some syrup with the hopes that they will store it. But once the days and nights are consistently below 50 F the bees won't take down the cold syrup.  Hive two doesn't have a huge population, but it also doesn't have much in the way of honey stores.  I'm not sure why.  They could have been robbed by bees from other hives.  They really need more honey if they are going to make it through the winter.  Folks are saying it's going to be a very cold one.  This year I'm going to try some different hive covers for winter.  They are actually insulated, and made in Canada! Hoping that will help a bit.

I've been using some of our hops and prairie sage in the bee smoker. There's a compound in hops that kills varroa mites.  But I have no idea if when used like this it actually does anything. But it smells great, and the sage makes a nice thick smoke. It almost smells like marijuana though, so I have to wonder if our neighbours are getting suspicious about our activities over here!

I pulled some tulsi from this spot and the chickens very quickly discovered that it was the perfect soil for a dust bath.

Glad they left my chard alone...I managed to save it from the frosts over the last few weeks.

That's it for now. Not feeling much like writing these days.
 I'd rather be outside with my camera now that glorious fall is here.