What Did You Do Today?

[JW_Halverson]

I walked that no good skinny black dog of mine for about 2 hours in the woods.  Dang near felt guilty for wasting that kind of time, but it was in the mid-50's and the sun was shining.  When I got home, I fired up the grill, slapped a 2 lb venison backstrap roast on and cracked a bottle of nice Argentine malbec. 

Pappy is right....Life IS good!

[MWirwicki]

Clintster!  That coyote skull looks great! 

[mullet]

Shot a nice Osceola on Opening morning.

[osage outlaw]

Thanks Matt!  I have some other skulls that are about done.  I'll post them in a couple of days.

Today I enjoyed a beautiful spring day at a local 3D shoot with my brother in law, my niece, and her boyfriend.  My niece was shooting her pink graduation bow I made for her last year.  She was kicking my butt pretty bad for the fist dozen targets or so.  Then I caught back up and ended winning.  Her boyfriend was shooting for the first time.  He was using an older compound but picked it up amazingly well.  I have him interested in a primitive bow but I don't have any he could shoot.  He is tall with long arms so I bet his draw is close to 30"  We only saw three other trad guys there.  They were shooting recurves.  They had some nice targets for a small shoot.

[JW_Halverson]

Wow, Clint!  That daughter of yours is quite the looker! She either favors her mother or was adopted.  Either way, you better keep an eye on those boys in your neck of the woods!

Get this current one working on a bow stave for himself, you can tiller his mind while he tillers his bow.  Who knows, he might get so het up on bows that he forgets about your daughter!

[Eric Krewson]

Logging onto Turbo Tax today, got to get it done, bummer.

[osage outlaw]

JW, that is my sisters daughter.  Her boyfriend seems to be a good guy.  He is working on becoming a cop.

[bowtarist]

Had a hive die out this winter and was lucky to reconize it for the wax moths took over. Today was my only day to harvest, even though it was about 33* I had a space heater to take the chill off ,but the honey was slow and thick. Took about twice as long as summer. I also didn't have a hot knife that was working for me, so I used a capping scrapper. I dont filter, so I have a few days til the wax cappings settle to the top.  Yummy surprise for this time of year. Got 18 quarts of spun honey and 5 quarts of comb honey, just comb, no honey poured on top of it. got another quart+ of maple syrup coming off the stove soon too. SWEET day!! dpg

Looks like a fun shoot Clint! and that skull is white as all get out. Needs some paintings on it.

[chamookman]

Yesterday actually, but remembered just how much I HATE putting a grip on a Bow - GRRRRRRRRRRRR ! Finally finished the Yew character Bow - Pics will be posted soon. Bob

[Poggins]

I hate to lose hives , looks like all of mine made it this winter now if the trees would just start blooming . Sounds like you left a lot of honey on that hive .

[bowtarist]

I hate to lose hives , looks like all of mine made it this winter now if the trees would just start blooming . Sounds like you left a lot of honey on that hive .

I suppose so. I usually don't even harvest the honey from my place anymore. These absconded, not a single bee to be found in the whole hive. I've got some great foundation and I didn't even spin it all, I left about three or four frames of older looking honey. Now I hope I get just half the calls for swarms that I got last year and I'll be set up. I need to get all my ducks in a row for swarm season. Scared there might not be as many swarms this year due to winter kill offs. I take responsibility for there demise, it was total neglect. I suspect they were honey bound by the amount I got off two suppers. Yea, I hate to loose them to the winter too, usually something I didn't do in the fall is the cause.       

[JW_Halverson]

Funny how attached you can get to a swarm of bugs, ain't it?  We lost two of our four hives last summer, but the two remaining hives are coming into spring strong.  Because of our winters, we chose to switch from Italian bees to Russians.  Italians are supposed to be calmer, but that has not been my experience with these hives.  Russians die back to a smaller swarm over winter and use far less honey....and these two hives have really proven that.  But they look kinda funny with the tiny little fur hats on their heads.  And I don't even wanna talk about their AK-47 stingers!

[Poggins]

I know what you mean JW , if I lost my bees I'd have to get more .
On warm weekends I will set out by my hives and watch them work , neet how many different colors of pollin they bring in ( I'm getting yellow ERC and an orange from the elms ), they've been working hard lately with the warm weather but no flowers yet .

I started with a couple of hives that were swarms and then bought some from a guy when he went out of business , tried some new queens one time and then the die offs hit , lost almost all of my hives and stayed with the ones that survived , also found some isolated colonies in an old building that was being torn down and a couple from a wood cutter that cut some hollow trees with bees in them .
I stick with my bees and do not treat them in any way , chemical free , I split my hives when they try to swarm and save a few queens from my hives to replace old queens when needed .
My bees have their days , most of the time they are gentle but sometimes they can be testy .

[JW_Halverson]

A week ago my bees were doing some foraging close by the hives on a 55 degree day, they were carrying BLACK pollen!  So I started backtracing them and found they were in the landowner's mulch pile where he has been throwing coffee grounds.  He grinds his beans pretty fine and the bees were packing it home to the colony!

I've searched online and can't see anything about this being bad for them. 

[bowtarist]

That's funny Jw, They must be getting ready for those early spring mornings that are ahead, or maybe they will mix it w/ royal jelly and you will have a spaze queen or workers too. 

I've been keeping bees since 2001. Had bee fever for about 8 years, now I've calmed myself some. I use/used integrated pest management when I use anything. I have collected drones in late summer and taken them way down the road, painted little white spots on their backs and let them go, then rushed home to see them fly back into the hives. I also eat most everything that comes out of the hive, when I do swarm prevention, I tend to eat the queen cells. One of my favorite eats fromt the hive, give it a try come May. Also cured myself of tennis elbow w/ bee sting therapy, I'm a big fan of that. I could go on and on and on........dp