Dance around, Molly then have some Squirrel Heads and Gravy!

I have been having trouble getting online for a few weeks. But I worked on my computer and got it going again. Well there has been alot go on in the past few weeks. Right now with gas going so high I will probably not be posting as often as I can only get online intown and intown is about 20 miles away.

I have been learning lots of new tunes since I last posted and several of them are still very rough so I wont destroy your ears by playing them for you. But I did think that I might play a couple that are half way decent.

I was asked to try out for a position in a local band by one of the band members so I am learning a few tunes they do so that I can be prepared.

For those of you who are interested, The chickens are not doing very well. Physically they are fine but the egg laying is really bad. I have 26 birds (27 minus 1 that died the day after I bought it) and I am getting about 1 to 3 eggs a day and so far I have not seen an increase. I am very unhappy about this situation and I am wondering if I got shaisted on the deal. It has been 2 weeks and I am hoping that in another two weeks I will be getting at least 18 eggs a day but it doesnt look good. Not sure what I am going to do about it.

All the corn is in, the cucumbers, peas, greenbeans, radish, and of course the spinnach, lettuce, and broccoli (the latter three were planted way back in march), all these are in the ground. We have had some good rain the last few days so we will be able to water less and save electricity to the well pump.

They are calling for a freeze tonight so I am going to be working on that today.

I went to a field trip with our local beekeepers association here "Ozark Beekeepers Association" and watched and worked some the procedure to split a hive to create a nucleus hive (nuc). Learned a tone in one outing and it will only get better. I have discovered that I need to start two hives simultaniously because they say that I will have a better chance of knowing when problems arrive because I can compare one hive to another.

There are a lot of neat things that they do to take care of the bees, one is using a sifter and putting powdered sugar on the frames and brushing them down into the hive. This controles the varroa mites because the bees get the sugar off an in the process they groom the mites off.

I was hoping that I might be able to find a swarm somewhere to cut the cost of startup down but I dont expect that. I need to get two nucs and currently they are selling for $109 each. I am building a second roof and screened bottom board so I can set up two hives instead. At this present time all the locals do is put powdered sugar on the bees until after the fall honey flow and then they will medicate with ....well I dont know yet but I have some time to get started before I need to find that out.

It is so much easier putting point A and B together when I have read about the procedures and information about bees first then go and see it first hand. It was a blast.

Anyway here's my new tunes.

Red Haired Boy:

Dance Around Molly:


Squirrel Heads and Gravy:


Hope you enjoyed.
Should have some beekeeping pictures soon.