Royal Relief

Honey bee on swede/turnip flower. I left the last half dozen
to run away to seed and the bees love them.

Bad weather, strong winds and heavy showers have kept us a bit pinned down of late. I have to admit to having got badly behind on the gardening. It has been fairly warm, so the weeds have charged onwards even when it's been too wet to get out and tackle them, so I have ground still needing clearing before I can plant things, and seeds still sitting here in packets which should have been in the ground long ago.  Any big projects have been parked for the moment and we have been snatching opportunities to do little jobs in the sunny intervals. These have mainly been livestock, so this post will be a bit of a livestock update.

Our bees on our apple blossom. We are delighted with this
'first' for Feigh. 

The biggest news is that we finally got a chance to crack open the bee hive and were quickly able to establish that we had larvae in the brood frames which told us immediately that the Queen Bee must still be alive. This was a huge relief as we were worried that we might have squashed her in our clumsy, amateurish efforts to re-hive the donated colony. This would have been serious and embarrassing. To lose one colony in a year, as they might say, is unfortunate.... but to lose two...... But no, it is now 25 days since our re-hiving, so any eggs laid by the queen prior to that would have long since completed their larval stage, pupated and even emerged as adults. We are happy bee keepers.

The swarm-box is strapped to the big ash tree, top right. 

At this time of year, beekeepers start to think about swarming, potentially losing their queen and half the work force, possibly catching them or, even better, bribing someone else's absconded colony to fetch up and stay at your apiary. We have our swarm-box strapped to the ash tree but this year, anyway, it is unlikely to catch any prime-swarm of ours. Our queen, we know has been wing-clipped as well as colour-marked, so if our workers decide to swarm, they would boot her out of the colony but then instead of flying off with them to hang in a tree, she will fall to the ground and probably get lost in the grass.

Colour codes for queen-marking.

Some bee keepers do this to try to stop the swarm taking off (the idea is that they realise they have lost Her Majesty and return to the hive). If we are lucky she will gather a small number of workers around her on the ground which we might spot and be able to rescue into the skep, where we can then gather some of the swarm or some workers from the hive to make up a new colony. It's a long shot. You have to hope that the swarm only leaves the hive when it has set up replacement queens ready to emerge from their own pupae and that these (virgin) queens get successfully mated on their mating-flights before returning to the hive to carry on the good work.

Poppea talks to Mary through the fence while Towser watches

Meanwhile, in the pigs dept, our two young ladies have reached the 3-month-old mark. They are thriving, very strong in the appetite area and now grown bigger than the dogs by quite a way. We are very happy with them. They have also become quite tame by now and allow me to measure them with the tape measure (see earlier post) to estimate weights. They seem to be about 17 kgs, possibly a bit smaller than last year's Tamworths but we did not manage to measure those till they were a bit older. I am being a bit more careful to control food intake on these girls as we are aiming for a carcass with a bit less fat covering. They also seem to be a lot more into rootling and churning up the ground, but again, when we got the Tams the ground was dry and hard for their first month, where these animals have had plenty of rain and easy-peel turf.

The Hubbards at 3 weeks feel some first sun on their feathers
and grass under their feet

The Hubbard chicks are cracking on too and have quickly out grown the bodged-up brooder box (made from 2 big potato crisp box 'outers') we have them in upstairs in the spare room. Luckily the weather has turned nicely warm, so we have been letting them out in the sunshine in one of the rabbit runs, all be it with one end well wrapped against the rather chilly breezes and a good layer of shredded wood and hay in the 'bedroom'. They are also just outside the front window where Liz can keep a close eye out for any signs of chilling - there have been none - the birds race about happily chasing each other, scratching for food among the grass and doing some practise play-fights as they set up their pecking order.

The old tumble-down apple tree is in full bloom. It never
ceases to amaze me. It looks almost rotted through at the
broken base but there must be just enough intact sap-wood
to keep it going. 

We rescue them back indoors at night for now, but will soon be letting them do a 'sleep over' in the rabbit run. They are only 3 weeks old tomorrow but these are no ordinary 'little cute fluffy chicks', they grow and put in weight like no other bird we have met. I should probably weigh some tomorrow but in the commercial world these guys make oven-ready weights in 80 to 100 days. It will take longer in our free range set-up - we normally give them 4-5 months. At 6 weeks we usually let them start to explore properly by lifting the end of their run in the morning so that they can escape, and then, for a while, we chase them all back home with a food bribe in the evening. They may voluntarily start to use the proper chicken coop.

New ear tags for the twins. 

Also cracking on are the twin lambs, who made their 6-week birthday on the 7th May. This means that they need to get ear tagged, so we had some fun rounding all 5 sheep up into the cattle race so that we could tag these and check everyone's feet, trim and spray if necessary. No foot problems this time, so with Louise now officially (IE0455809)00002H and Thelma 00003A we are all legal and booked into my paperwork. You don't tag till 6 weeks because the ears would be so tiny and the tag so huge compared to the ear, it would be uncomfortable for the lamb and there is a risk of nicking a blood vessel. Hulking 6-weekers have their blood vessels nicely spaced apart on acres of ear - you can aim more reliably with the pliers.

Turkey eggs in the borrowed incubator
(many thanks, Charlotte!)

The new turkeys did not miss a beat on their egg laying with the move here, so we were able to give the half dozen asked for by a possible new friend of ours requested by Charlotte. This is a lady with a tup (ram) who we may be able to use come August, to service our Polly and Lily (plus one?) so we are looking to schmooze her up a bit, with turkey and Buff Orp eggs as the main bribe currency. Our turkey hen, though, Barbara carried on a-laying, happily joining in with the chickens' current habit of dropping the eggs in the known stash under the elderberry tree in the woods, but also (once) on the nest of the broody Buff in the Tígín. We decided that we might as well incubate a few of these just to see how we get on. We borrowed Charlotte's incubator again (Thanks C) and have set 8 in it. They take 28 days to cook, so are due on 8th June.

(Top to bottom) Chestnut, soapwort,
lemon balm, sweet woodruff and
comfrey in the nursery area

That broody Buff has stuck with the job tucked down between the concrete blocks and the camping toilet and is almost there now, with the 'proper' eggs due in 2 more day's time. 'Proper'? Yes, we were rather horrified to see on Sunday that she had left the nest and there was 'now' a white Hubbard adult hen sitting there, presumably laying an extra egg. Moments later Miss White was off and cackling and the broody Buff had nipped back in, so we could not see if there were extras. The next day we caught them again and discovered that Miss Buff was now sitting on 13 eggs (!), 7 more than we'd set under her and one of these the aforementioned turkey egg. We recovered that one.

Cheese and bacon 'swiss' rolls.

You do not have to be a chicken expert to see that these eggs have turned up at some unknown time between our true start-date (April 24th) and now, so will only be part-incubated by our Day 21 (Thursday). When (if) the 'proper' six chicks hatch and start to get active, Miss Buff will abandon the nest and take them off to play, leaving the unhatched eggs as failures to go cold. We have an option, if we see the move and can rescue the eggs still warm, to nip them into the incubator but that way madness lies. You end up with baby chicks of all ages moving through the rearing processes not necessarily compatible with each other (size differences etc). It is not going to be dull, anyway! We have, meanwhile, closed the Tígín door on the broody. She can do her last few days without interference from her 'sisters' and sitting just on the existing eggs. And yes, we could have marked the original 6 eggs, but hey, that would have been way too sensible.

Dunhills all? The gang on the calf-muck heap. 

That about wraps it up for this one, with most of the livestock covered. The rabbits have not had a mention but they are just mooching along calmly enjoying their big new run. The dogs and cats are just the dogs and cats. No news is good news.

Of Swarm Lures, Turkeys and Kangaroos

A post of three thirds. I wonder how many bloggers started with a title like that tonight? I like to keep my subject headers a bit 'noticable' so if you are entrigued, read on and enjoy it. Two of these stories are triggered by tip-offs from Anne, but the first is a tribute to ace carpenter K-Dub, who we have met before (16th June and 6th July 2013)

A swarm-lure or 'bait box'. 

Bee keepers seem to spend a good part of their time worrying about their colonies swarming. Swarming is that event in (roughly) May/June when your old established Queen bee ups sticks to set up a new colony with half your workers leaving behind (you hope) a queen cell or two containing pupating replacement (virgin) queens who will take over. It is the honey bee's way of doing that Darwinian thing of increasing in numbers and taking over the world. It has worked very well for them for 30 million years, well before man started 'helping' them. The individual bees breed by normal insect-ish means  but if they did not swarm, then they'd stay in the same hollow tree for ever, so swarming is the way that the colony, hive or 'super-organism' increases in numbers.

I've never had much time for Smithwick's beers, but this 'Blonde'
was OK. Impressively quaffable. 

Bee keepers can try to stop this by a variety of methods but it is a forlorn hope - the urge to breed is hard-wired in and they might as well try to stop their teenage daughters from fancying the local boys, or their dog from chasing that she-dog down the road who is on heat. All they can really do is hope to influence the timing and then work to contain the swarm within their apiary and thereby not lose half the honey-gathering workforce.

Ooops. We seem to have acquired a couple of turkeys.

One such way is to build a 'swarm-lure' or 'bait box'. The idea here is that the swarm 'swarms' out of the hive but then gathers on a handy bush or tree (or bank ATM machine, fence post, car engine bay, sky-scraper) to regroup (around the queen). The swarm then sends off scout bees to look for a more sensible home (hollow tree, chimney etc) and, within a few hours, has a committee meeting, decides on the best location found and zooms off to go and invade it. The beekeeper tries to pre-empt this by providing, in a handy tree, a more attractive new home than any available in nature.

The theory goes that this should be a box of roughly 40 litres capacity (a 15 inch cube or so) about 12 feet off the ground, containing some old hive frames which will smell familiar to the scout bees augmented, some say, with lemon balm scent (which apparently smells nice to bees). People build them out of all manner of scrap wood, planks and boards, rough aul' wood with splits, knots and cracks. Nobody spends any money on them as the hope is, as I said, rather forlorn. The bees have to swarm, and find your box and decide that that is the best accommodation around. Good luck with that.

Charlotte de-crates the hen bird.

I decided to give it a try and knew that the nearest carpenter around who might have a supply of scrap wood, was old chum K-Dub. I made contact and punted my 'scrounge'. K-Dub was happy to oblige. Come down, he said and raid my scrap pile. I scrapped into a notebook a quick drawing of what I'd need based on the required internal dimensions which would suit the bee hive frames.  Well, K-Dub being who he is got all intrigued by the idea and, instead of leaving me to find scrap wood, started offering to cut 'this bit of board' to size on his huge, powerful, bench-saw, then started to assemble it and quickly (less than an hour) built me a superb, luxurious box which knocks anything I have seen into a cocked hat.

The swarm bees (if they happen) will be dazzled! It is glued and screwed, It has a landing ramp outside the entrance hole and handles to lift it by. K-Dub even gave me a tin of old varnish which he'd had on his shelf "for 4 years", that I might paint the box and return the rest of the varnish. That guy is just THE BEST kind of neighbour, friend and carpenter. If I'd taken the wood and done it myself, I'd still be doing it now and there'd be splinters, gaps, jaunty angles and Heaven knows what. The bees may well have used it but this box will feel like the penthouse suite!

The male ('stag' or 'Tom') is not sure whether to come out of his
crate.

And so to turkeys. You may have spotted some pics higher up the post. I have been hankering for turkeys as my next species in 2015 for a while and had mentioned this to Anne. She tipped me off that there was a poultry 'Bring and Buy' at Kiltimagh (in Mayo, our neighbouring county) today. I fancied a couple of young females of the old fashioned 'Bronze' (single breasted) variety and an unrelated male (they are called 'stags' or 'Toms') to use as our parent generation. These guys would not be eaten for Christmas, but any progeny would be fair game (next year). So, with Liz still away, I rounded up Charlotte (who also needed some turkeys for a friend) and we 'went equipped' - money, pet-carriers, early start.

Crates in the car.

Well, Kiltimagh turns out ot be a rather small event with only half a dozen sellers including the petting zoo owner but among these was a lady with a crate in her van containing an immense and impressive 2014 breedable pair of turkeys. The hen was apparently in lay (so Charlotte bought half a dozen fertile eggs for her friend) and the stag/tom/male was strutting his proud stuff with tail up, wings lowered and all his facial extravagance on display. This is all retractable bright blue and red skin and we now know is known as the 'caruncle, snood and wattle'. He was also 'gobble gobble'-ing loudly to protect his woman. He stole my heart. To cut a long story short, we bought the pair and they are now at home in the middle part of the goose house, settling in prior to being allowed out free range (in stages). More pics of these guys in future posts.

Kangaroo steaks.

Finally, our local branch of supermarket Lidl has gone a bit crazy with frozen meats of all sorts of different species - wild boar, ostrich and even kangaroo. Anne had commented that Simon was quite taken with the latter as it was lean and of fine texture without being as gamey as venison. You should always try these things, so I was in Lidl yesterday and picked up some kangaroo. Well, I was impressed. The only serving suggestion on the box seemed to be a rather basic two-side fry, 7 minutes a side which gave it a 'well done' finish, to which I added a 5 minute rest. On reflection you could easily do a rare version. The pic on the box looks quite pink, so I think that must be what they have done for the advert.

I served mine with new potatoes and a mix of roasted veg with Cajun seasoning (courgette, peppers, red onion, tomato, garlic) and washed it down with an Australian Shiraz (homage to the Ozzie-ness of the kangaroo?). I had deliberately not flavoured the meat, except for a bit of salt, because I wanted to taste the base flavour. It worked well though it would be quite pricey at €5.99 for the pack, though possibly intended for two and my only other (piffling) criticism was that the meat was already chopped into 5 small bits, rather than  two decent steaks. Worth a try, then, if your Lidl's are doing it. Thanks for the tip-offs Anne on both Turkeys and Kangaroos.