Ground-breaking News in the world of Stingless-bee Beekeeping: Today was a good day to check on the bees. Unfortunately my last transfer was not successful (bringing my success rate to a ridiculous 50%) and it was time to clean the dead hive and make some improvements for another transfer.
Dead Brood Comb in the Brood Chamber.Dead, Rotting Brood Removed.
After cleaning and disinfecting the hive I added some improvements to deal with the cause(s) of this problem: parasitic fly and too much space. Number One: Seal the hive with beeswax. No excuse for this really…it has been laziness on my part.
Sealing up the Hive Parts with Beeswax.
And Number Two: Bypass the honey pot chamber for three to six months (maybe longer) until the bees have completely taken over the brood chamber using blocks of wood that fit together in such a way that they only leave a small passage through the honey chamber.
Blocks of Wood Bypassing the Honey Chamber.
To commemorate this simple hive, I have called it the Gnome Mark III Stingless-bee Bee Hive. The previous UTOB Hive ended up having two established colonies (again), one in the honey chamber and one in the brood chamber.
Brood in the Honey Chamber (again).
This is what I transferred into the new GM III hive today.
This morning (Thursday), we woke up to the distant rumbling of thunder. I suddenly remembered that I had written in the previous evening’s blog that I wanted it to rain. Well, what I should have said was that I intended it to rain at night to fill up our water tanks and that I wanted it to be dry and breezy in the morning for Gnome to fix the water pump. Since our plans were thwarted by the elements, we both agreed whole-heartedly to try to sleep in a bit more and managed to fall asleep again. “Sleeping in” is an extremely rare event for us but we felt the duress of the water shortage and needed a bit more time to come to terms with the situation. All morning wake-up calls were ignored as mad doggie “bow-wowed” and goosie honked to try to get our attention. We finally got up as the orchestra of animals and birds elevated to a crashing crescendo.
I opened up the back door to let the breeze in the house and saw the cat frolicking about in the back-yard eating and playing with a dead frog. He was the only one that did not make any noise. Since we were late he decided to do his own cat thing. As soon as he saw me, he casually walked into the house licking his chops and paws. He brushed passed me and went into the kitchen to chew on a piece of lemongrass to, presumably, freshen his breath after eating dead frog.
Meanwhile the rumbling of thunder sounded a lot nearer and the sky lit up with a lightning strike. The clouds were a dark, slate grey looming over our house. The plans of Munchkin and Gnome aften go astray….we were most upset with the whole situation. I bleated and lamented shaking my finger like a mad Chinese woman. Gnome gesticulated wildly in a well, hot Latino way. If you were a fly on the wall, you would have thought we were doing the “Hokey Cokey” at each other.
Meanwhile…the cat sprang up on a chair and started kneading the cushion in preparation for a whole day of relaxation…ahhh time to sleep.
More madness ensued as I complained about washing clothes with buckets filled with tadpoles. The tadpoles actually stuck to the clothes. I was most vexed with this tadpole-sticking situation…
Meanwhile…the cat finally noticed the commotion and mildly looked in our direction as if to “lend a kind ear” but then shrugged his shoulders and decided he didn’t want the cushion and settled down on the floor.
Cat Settling Down.
The rain clouds gathered and we knew all the yelling in the world would not change the inevitable. After the morning cup of tea, we hauled buckets of water (tadpole free) into the house.
Meanwhile…the cat was doing this:
More Sleeping.
The rain started with a gust of wind, a mild pitter patter and then it was a deluge. Gnome looked at me with a winning smile and told me that it wasn’t all bad. The water tank would be filled up with the heavy rains and he promised me that he would fix the pump problem. It was just not going to be Today! I smiled back at him and realised that everything was alright. These are the challenges of life and we have to get through it together.
Hello Everyone!! Goosie is recovering very well from his traumatic doggy attack and was released from Farm-ICU today. He made some quiet honks through-out the day and then sounded a loud HONK in the afternoon and drew me his usual dastardly-look to tell me that he was back in action. To top it all off, our missing duckie suddenly reappeared, as if by magic, tonight for feeding time. We had no idea where she had been for the last 24 hours…we tried doing doggy sniffing and patrol all round the farm perimeter today looking for signs of her…and then she just pitched up for food tonight! No questions asked, we quickly ushered her into the coup. Wow…we are so pleased that everything has ended well and all our duckies and goosie are safe.
Missing Duckie Came Back!!
New things on our farm:
Gnome only uttered one word, “melomel.”
Cashew Fruit.
The Kun Batz (Ketchi Mayan name for Belize wild passionfruit) has ripened to an edible fruit and tastes like a cross between a lemon and water-melon…very good!
Ripe Kun Batz.
An unusual wild green pod growing, which we had been watching for 9 months, suddenly exploded. The dried pod looks like a nice ornamental for displaying (soap, maybe?!).
Interesting Pod with Seeds.
We are going to germinate the seeds because the vessel looks really pretty; it is boat-shaped and could be lacquered to make it last.
Close-up of Pod.
We are glad that we can share the highs and lows of our farm life in this Blog!
In the heat of the lazy afternoon fowl-play was afoot as we heard the sudden beating of wings and then a HONK that sounded like a shreek and then then the crash of mad chasing under the house. I ran out and caught a glimpse of a dog pouncing on my poor goosie as it fought back valiantly with its wings and beak. As soon as the stray dog caught a whiff of me, it scarpered quick smart off the property. Goosie was left in a state with blood on his neck and a severe hurt look on his face; he refused to look at me in the eye and beat a hasty retreat towards the shade of the coconuts.
Goosie.
After all this pandemonium, we suddenly realised that the goosie’s duckie buddies (white duck and two brown girls) were missing.
Duckie Buddies.
Gnome heard distant quacking coming from the pond where the fowl go to swim during the day. We walked the 150 yards, in silence and fear, to the pond and noted a trail of goose feathers as we went along. When we finally got there, the dog was there drowning one of our poor ducks in the pond. As soon as the dog saw Gnome, it sprang out and bounded away. We stayed for a while in the pond area with the poor, bedraggled half-drowned duckie swimming around dizzily in circles. There was no trace of any other ducks and we scoured the pond area to no avail. Eventually, the half-dead duckie got so distressed that Gnome said that it was best to leave her alone until routine feeding time.
We headed back to the house in a forlorn state wondering about our duckies. I checked up on Goosie and he seemed okay sitting under the coconuts. All of a sudden, Gnome and I heard WakWakWak (White Duckie Male Quack) and goosie perked up and hastily bobbed his head from side to side, frantically looking for the source of the noise. As soon as white duck came into sight, Goosie gave a mild honk of relief, ruffled his feathers and slyly sidled up to his best buddy. Gnome and I felt much encouraged by this re-union.
Goose and White Duck- Best Friends.
And so we waited the long hour until feeding time. During this time, we tried to put together the events of the afternoon and realised the brave actions of our goosie. Since the goose feathers traced back from the pond to the house, it looked like the goosie took flight back to the house, luring the dog with him. Meanwhile, this gave the rest of the ducks a chance to run off to safety while goosie ran “interference” to save his buddies. Awwwhhh…what a Champ our Goosie is!!
Hero Goosie!
When it was feeding time, we went back to the pond and, to our dismay, found no trace of our distressed damsel. We felt so terrible for leaving our duckie behind earlier and walked back to the house, desperately unhappy, feeling the weight of the world on our shoulders. We fed the rest of our animals and performed the rest of our evening routine. Just as the sun was coming down…it was a deep red tonight like blood spilling across the sky…we heard an insistent QuackQuackQuack outside the duck coup. Our duckie (the dizzy, swimming one) had returned and was trying to get into the coup. Oh, we were so pleased to see that she had recovered and did not look half-drowned anymore!
So far. So good. Only one duckie missing and most probably taken out by the stray dog. Goosie is alive and recuperating. Sleep tight duckies and goosie…don’t let the bad dogs bite!!
Hello There!! I will try to catch-up with this post and bring you up to date. On Tuesday night we had a scary, gusty storm that resulted in a power-cut for most of the night and of course, the Internet went down with it. The storm has brought cooler weather with grey clouds and it even rained heavily this morning. The Internet started up again today…yay…it is so insidious how we feel that “we need Internet” and life just isn’t the same without it. When I down-loaded my bunch of late emails, they weren’t all that exciting and most of them were spam, anyway!
Well, since it was a Rainy Day, we made Pineapple Melomel (mead with fruit). Yesterday, I had bought 20 ripe pineapples from the market for BZD 30.00 (USD 15.00) in an attempt to excite Gnome into making some more booze (nice, sparkling, champagne-like stuff) for me. After I got the pineapples loaded onto the truck, he gave me a whiny look and said that he was hoping that I had bought the plantains instead of the pineapples. That remark got him a “Chinese Woman Look” and stopped the complaints quick smart.
This is what we did.
We removed the heads and scrubbed them in the sink:
Washing Pineapples.
I then started chopping up the pineapples. Whilst I was doing this, I kindly asked Gnome to take some pictures of this process. All the pictures were soooo baaaad!! They were out of focus and made my hands look stumpy and small…or, are they really like that? I had to re-take some photos:
Chopping Pineapples…Look No Hands!!Pineapple, Chopped.
Gnome put the pineapple chunks through the juicer to get the juice and the pulp:
Juicing Pineapple.
We ended up processing 10 pineapples in all because it was actually a lot of work and the juicer was over-heating and complaining with the work-load. So, we managed to get about 6 litres (1 and 1/2 gallons) of juice from it all.
Frothy Pineapple Juice.
We got an extra 2 litres (2 quarts) of juice from the squeezing of the pulp:
Squeezed Pineapple Fibre.
We waste nothing!! We gave this and some pineapple peel to the duckies this morning. It was a Pineapple Feast…look closely at silly white duck…he even has a bit of pineapple stuck to his head.
Pineapple Fest For Duckies!
We have noticed that our duckies are totally neophobic with food unless it is yellow in colour. So, I was received by joyful and frenzied quackings today when I brought out the basin of pineapple waste.
Duckie Eating Pineapple.
While I was out playing with the duckies, Gnome proceeded with the making of his pineapple melomel; honey and fresh Toledo rainwater (very fresh!) was added to make the batch up to 5 gallons. Gnome will be posting up the recipe in Bored-in-Belize over the next few days.
Heating Melomel:
Heating Melomel.
Yes, I know…it all looks very yellow (just like all the other pictures) but believe me, this will taste great! Tomorrow, we will be processing the rest of the pineapples and adding honey and fresh ginger. In the words of Gnome, “Make it a Metheglin.”
About a week ago, I opened up my stingless-bee, bee-hives to check up on the little darlings and discovered that in one of the hives the bees had started to build brood comb in the honey pot storage area. When I saw it, it was about half the size seen in the photo below. It doubled in size in a week!
Brood Being Built in the wrong place. This is where honey is supposed to be stored!
Out of curiosity, I got in closer to have a goosie:
Brood Comb Being extended with honey and pollen pots visible in the periphery.
It would appear that the bees have built an auxiliary brood area with new queen and everything in the middle of the honey chamber, co-existent with the original brood in the brood chamber with its own queen; so, two hives in one. I hypothesise that this is due to the depth of the honey chamber (which is currently set at 2 3/4 inches). The honey pots are about 1 inch tall so it is obvious that there is plenty of volume for a “nest” of brood comb even over a layer of honey pots.
I decided to test this hypothesis by reducing the depth of the honey chamber to 1 1/4 inches. Here is the new hive, which I have called the Gnome Mark II Modified UTOB Hive:
The New and Improved Gnome Mark II Modified UTOB Hive.
Compared to the original UTOB Hive:
Original UTOB Hive.
I admit, not a Mind-Boggling Difference but putting it together in Dry Season Super Heat Time made me feel like it was something amazing and deserving of its own name!
Anyway, I took the “extra” brood out and put it in the brood chamber of the new hive:
Transferring Brood from the Old Hive.
…Into the new hive:
Brood Placed in the New Hive.
Here’s another shot after more brood was moved over:
All the Brood Moved to the New Brood Chamber.
And that was that, all the hives were sealed up and put into their places. Now it is time to wait another month or so before checking on them again…
I pondered over getting a hand-held vacuum cleaner for a long time. The main reason is because I live in Belize and it isn’t a matter of going down to the shopping mall or going online and ordering it on 24 hour delivery. Making a decision to buy something which can’t be bought in Belize entails ordering it on-line, sending it to a shipping company which transports to Belize, sending the invoice to the shippers, waiting anywhere from 2 to 6 months to get it shipped here, paying duty and transportation and then driving to the final collection point which is a 2 to 3 hours away.
And so I cogitated, procrastinated and then did some more thinking and finally told Gnome that I really, really wanted a Eureka hand-held vacuum cleaner. I went on-line to Amazon and noted that in some of the reviews, many people mentioned that it was very heavy for a hand-held machine. And so I told Gnome that the vacuum cleaner was 5lbs in weight but I wasn’t sure if this was too much for me to handle. With a glint in his eye he mentioned that the Cat was 5lbs in weight (at that time). He said rather nonchalantly, “Try the cat.”
The Cat.
I wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that comment so he further explained that I should lift up the cat with one arm and shugle him about like I would a vacuum cleaner. And so I did, with the kind permission of our pet cat, Ewan. He didn’t seem too heavy to handle and he didn’t seem that bothered by my man-handling. And so Gnome concluded from my cat-vacuum cleaner emulation experiment that the Eureka was to be bought and I should go on-line immediately to purchase it and fulfill my cleaning requirements.
Six months later we collected it and brought it home. I was beaming with hope, pleasure and excitement as I unwrapped the box like a Christmas present (a belated one at that). It didn’t turn out to be heavy at all…Munchkin power can handle a measly 5lbs in weight and it worked like a charm.
Now the funny thing is that it is a running joke that the Eureka and the Cat are both sucking up all the crumbs on the kitchen floor and under the dining room table. We have a good old laugh about it…which is which? We have even started calling the cat “Eureka!”
Which Eureka?!Eureka and Ewan Lounging.
HaHa…we know how to entertain ourselves out here in the middle of nowhere!
It was a really, really hot day today…so hot that it felt like we were walking in painfully slow motion, trying to wade through heat. And so, after miso making duties this morning, I had more munchkin duties to attend with. One of the main things was to process (cut and dip in lime juice solution) a whole bunch of ripe bananas and sun-dry them. Phew…I couldn’t take the thought of cutting about fifty bananas in the baking heat! I bleated in despair through a sweaty head of hair at Gnome and as usual, he managed to turn the situation into a positive one. And, so Gnome declared, “Let the bananas rain down on my piggies!”
Today has been officially named National Piggie Day in Belize. To commemorate this day, a gift of sweet bananas was given to the community of Paradise Pastures.
Yay!! Bananas!! Chomp, Chomp.
In addition, Gnome personally made a Pom Toy (courtesy of Piggieworld) with 5 pieces of coloured yarn and a fork.
Mayor Gnome Loves His Piggies!!Piggie Pom Toy Made By Mayor Gnome.
Official inspection of Pom Toy. Our rural piggies are not sure what to make of it…can you eat it?!
Piggie Inspection.
Remember to mark on your calendar: 24th of March is now officially National Piggie Day in Belize. We might get them to wear national costume next year!!
Everything is pretty peachy at Paradise Pastures presently. Last night, our first mother was admitted into the brand new maternity ward with cervical dilatation and contractions. Later on this afternoon, the proud first time mother gave birth to two beautiful female babes:
Baby Dehlia-Piggie. Oh, what a beauty!!Dehlia-Piggie Frolicking. Moving all four limbs!!Juanita-Piggie. Perfect Poise.
All Piggies are happy and making their happy noises; their hearts sing out to Mayor Gnome for providing the Maternity Ward.
The Susan B Anthony Maternity Wing.
The Susan B Anthony Maternity Ward comes fully equipped with water, biscuits (Cachorros) on tap, plenty of leafy greens, cabbage and a Midwife!! Mayor Gnome has certainly pulled out all the stops for this spacious facility.
A couple of months ago, Gnome made Lime Sulphur as a Bored-in-Belize project. One of the many uses of it is a dip for dogs and cats. It can be applied for mange, fleas and ringworm. We tested our formula on the two dogs and the cat today (not the guinea pigs!!). We poured out a quantity of the concentrated lime sulphur and diluted it with water in a bucket:
Measuring Lime Sulphur.2 Gallons of Diluted Lime Sulphur.
A rag was dipped into the bucket of solution and the dogs and cat were soaked with it. Prior to this, they all got a wash with our sulphur soap. There were no complaints from any any animals concerned as we sponged them copiuosly with this bright yellow fluid. They seemed to like the smell of rotten eggs!!
Sulfuring Doggie.
Sorry, no picture of the other doggie because we both had to hold her down because she is the mad one that likes to lick toads.
Sulfuring The Cat.
The cat actually stayed still and did not seem to mind the extremely pungent smell. After all that, we were both smelling of sulphur; Gnome said that he felt spiritually cleansed…I think he was referring to fire and brimstone and all that stuff!!
Ground-breaking News in the world of Stingless-bee Beekeeping: Today was a good day to check on the bees. Unfortunately my last transfer was not successful (bringing my success rate to a ridiculous 50%) and it was time to clean the dead hive and make some improvements for another transfer.
