We were framed

We only got a chance to work on the cabin on Windday…I mean Sunday.  We framed a lot of the walls when my family was here last weekend so we started putting them in place this weekend.  Our plan was to attach the OSB sheeting and then set up the walls already covered.  We sized the walls so we could lift them with OSB already in place.  The wind, however, said differently.  We started to set up the first wall and nearly flew off the back of the platform.  I don’t know what the wind-speed was officially, but it was ridiculous-miles-per-hour by my reading.

So, Plan B…We decided to set up the walls sans OSB just so we can say we made progress.  There is a fair chance we will regret that later when we have to go back and hang the OSB, but doggone it, we have walls up!  Emily’s granddad came up to help us.  He’s been around the sun 86 times but you would never know it.  He was a huge help in getting these walls in place and we couldn’t have done it without him!

Poppaw...86 years old and we couldn't have gotten the walls up without him!

You may notice that these walls look a little different than most walls.  Good eye!  We are roughly following the Advanced Framing Technique.  What that means for us is that we are building with 2×6 boards rather than 2x4s.  We are also building on 24 inch centers (the space between boards) rather than the more typical 16 inch centers.  You can read the details on the link, but we are excited about the potential savings in materials costs and the potential for improved energy efficiency.  That and we like the weird looks people give us.  It sort of flies in the face of traditional house framing which makes it all the more appealing.

 

Building a wall…and the view out the front door!

 

Abigail surveying the scene…that’s as far as we got!

So, anyhow, we got the hardest walls set and plan to work more this weekend on getting the remaining walls up.  We will need to get the OSB started too.  I figure we will set up some elaborate pulley system to get the wood in place so we can start on the roof.  If we get wind again this weekend, I am going sailing.  Let’s see, I will need to get that old washtub and some sheets…what else do I need to build a sailboat?

 

See all of the progress on the cabin

4 Comments

warren, October 20th 2011 | Tags: , , ,
Posted in Cabin, Family, Land, Nature, WV

Solar Powered Electric Fence

Part of moving the bees to our place in the country is so they can be out of town and away from people.  Of course, getting away from people means getting them closer to good old mother nature herself.  For anyone who has read Winnie the Pooh, you know that bears like honey when they get a rumbly in their tummies.

Bears don't read very well...

Not much will really stop a hungry bear, but the official recommendation is to enclose all “country bees” in an electric fence.  When a bear attacks a hive, the bees always come out in great number to ward off the attack.  Bear fur is typically too thick to present a problem.  The only sensitive place on a bear is apparently their nose/mouth area.  While my electric fence is a little more “juiced” than a bee sting, most folks agree that a bear has to learn about the fence with their mouth or nose.  I’ll talk more about that another time, but it makes sense that an electric fence properly set up should deter all the Poohs out there.

So, you may be wondering how solar power can deliver enough juice to make a bear even notice it was there.  It turns out that the people who make electric fence controllers make a version that runs on DC (i.e. deep cycle batteries, not house current which is AC).  The controller I bought is designed to power up to 25 miles of fence.  All told, I have maybe 1000 feet of wire strung on a few poles, so the charger will deliver a good shot when it fires.  I won’t bore you with the calculations about the capacity of the battery but it is roughly the size of a car battery just for perspective (a car’s starter battery would not work here though…this application needs a long continuous  draw on the battery rather than the quick hit when you start a car)

The battery, fence controller, and charge controller

The instructions show that the fence will run for 2 weeks on a fully charged battery of the proper specs but I do not want to have to worry about whether the battery is still charged if I don’t make it out there for a few weeks.  Instead, I bought a solar panel and a charge controller to keep the battery full.

See? It's pointed south

I pointed my solar panel south and angled it to the optimal angle to get direct sun.  Output wires from the panel go into the charge controller which regulates the power going into the battery.  The charge controller makes sure the power is the proper voltage and that the battery does not get over or under charged. The charge controller also has a “load” connection so I connected the fence controller to that connection and we’re off and running!  All of the charging/controlling/shocky-shocky stuff is inside a beehive surrounded by my other beehives as a sort of a theft deterrent.

Oh, by the way, without thinking I tried to use a regular household switch at the gate to turn the power on and off.  Of course, the fence controller pushes somewhere around 10,000 volts which didn’t even slow down for the switch rated for household current of 110 volts.  If you want a switch, make sure you get one rated properly…same with any wire you may need to use (I only used fencing wire which handles the charge nicely)

So, I hope some of that makes sense.  So far it is alive and well.  Let me know if you want more details…

9 Comments

warren, September 12th 2011 | Tags: , , ,
Posted in Awesome, Bees, Land, Nature, Technology

Change of address

Etched in my back…er mind…is a picture of a bad interaction with the bees last year.  It was shortly after that episode that I decided that if I was to continue to have bees, they had to be away from people.  We bought property out in the country early this Spring and one of its main purposes was to be a bee yard.  After this weekend of labor, I am happy to report that the majority of the bees have been relocated to the new bee yard and seem to be doing quite well.

It sounds so simple, doesn’t it?  As you might have guessed, it was anything but.  Of course, any test of one’s mettle always makes for a good story if nothing else.  To ease the move, I decided we would mostly enclose the bees with screen and other stuff the night before.  To enclose the bees the morning of the move would only stir them up and make the process miserable.  Each hive got the screen treatment except for a small access ares for the bees to come and go.  The plan was to screen that final access point, throw the bees in a truck and go.

My father-in-law and I started before sunrise to carry the bees from his back hillside to the truck.  So, we grabbed ahold of 150 or so pounds of bees+hive+honey and prepared to stumble down the hill, guided solely by the sweet glow of the…yeah, it was dark.  We tried to carry a heavy bunch of bees down a hillside in the dark.  FAIL.  Oh don’t get me wrong, gravity works and we got the bees down the hill and into the truck but it wasn’t fun.  Luckily, the first one took us so long that it was daylight before we got to the next ones and they all went pretty smoothly.

 

We finished the electric fence of doom a week or so ago so hopefully any bears, raccoons, or bee-lovin’ dinosaurs will find that my bees are not on the menu.  I still have 4 more hives to move but it was such a relief to get the first batch moved to their new address in the country!

8 Comments

warren, September 7th 2011 | Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Bees, Land, Nature, WV

Solar wax melter

In a comment yesterday, Ed mentioned reclaiming wax after the harvest is done.  For lots of people, honey is what they think of when they think of beekeeping.  There are tons of other things that beekeepers can harvest or use from the beehive though.  Wax is a big item on that list.  In one of yesterday’s pictures, you can see that wax capping that covers mature honey in the honeycomb.  When I extract the honey, I have to remove those cappings with a knife to allow the honey to be removed from the comb.  Some folks might be tempted to throw all of that wax away, but those wax cappings add up quickly.

When we process honey, we uncap the honeycomb on the frames, place it in the extractor, run the extracted honey through a kitchen strainer to remove cappings and pour it into a bottle.  That is the extent of our processing.  Besides making a more pleasant looking honey, we run it through the strainer to harvest the wax cappings in particular.  So, I collect the wax cappings from when I use the knife to uncap the comb as well as the little bits of cappings that come out in extraction and let them drain (as both are covered in/full of honey still).  The bees are given access afterwards and they complete the bulk of the clean-up for me.

After the bees have their time, the cappings get thrown into my solar wax melter.  It’s basically a black wooden box with a baking pan and a bread pan inside, covered by a sheet of plexiglas.  The box rests at an incline so it faces the sun properly.  The baking pan has 3-4 small holes drilled in one edge at the bottom of the incline, and the bread pan sits under those holes.  As the sun passes through the plexiglas,  it heats everything inside like crazy, just like any greenhouse would.

The honey begins to melt and runs down through the small holes into the bread pan.  Any bee parts or other detritus are too big to flow through the holes.  Honey sometimes flows with the wax but the melted wax floats on the honey very nicely.  After everything cools, the wax hardens and comes out very clean.  I pull the wax out, feed any honey to the bees and marvel at how awesome the wax looks.  And let me tell you, the smell is incredible!

So, once the honey is cleaned (and yes, truthfully, it sometimes takes a few runs), it can be used for anything where wax is needed.  Usually, people make candles but folks also use it in soap, for quilting and woodworking (as a lubricant) and for handlebar moustaches!  Honey is a major crop from the bees, but wax is also significant and just plain cool.  And what better wax to process honey than with the help of the same sun that allowed the bees to make it in the first place!

 

6 Comments

warren, August 25th 2011 | Tags: , ,
Posted in Bees, Nature

Thank you berry much

We have been busy as cats in a sandbox and it seems that we haven’t had time to do anything, much less anything interesting.  Every now and then, though, we get a chance to take a few minutes to do something simple.  Since it’s July (holy cow!  It’s July?!), something simple means berry picking for us.

 

We have an excellent raspberry patch at the house so I can stumble out in my pjs and grab a handful of berries.  Our patch makes many more than a handful though so we pick and freeze berries every day.  Our raspberry patch is pretty interesting.  Of course there are berries, but the new feral kittens hide out in there too (anyone want a kitten?  Energetic.  Free to a good home).   I have seen all manner of bugs and spiders also.  Honestly, our raspberry patch is a biology lesson (in a good way) waiting to happen!  I love picking berries just to see what will pop out next!

Black raspberries...not the same as blackberries

By the way, did you know you can spread berries out in a single layer on a plate, freeze them, and then put them in freezer bags.  The individual berries remain intact so you don’t end up with a berry blob.

Blackberries!

Anyhow, raspberries are easy for us.  It’s the blackberries that are painful.  I think they have to be that way for folks to appreciate their awesomeness and I am willing to let Emily make the sacrifice.  We all pick them actually.  By “we”, I mean Emily and I pick them.  The kids always seem to wander off into the woods at our secret blackberry location to “look for more berries”.  Uh huh.

Sweet reward! Blackberry pie!

So, blackberries are especially good right now and I love blackberry pies more than any other pie (except maybe Emily’s strawberry pies).  I have an excellent wife who not only helps pick the berries, but also makes me pies!  Thanks you berry much!  You are my favorite wife, Emily!

6 Comments

warren, July 13th 2011 | Tags: ,
Posted in Food, Nature

Coopers Rock

A few weekends ago, we went on a little getaway vacation to Coopers Rock State Park in Bruceton Mills, WV.  I was mainly excited for the cabin in which we were staying and the hot tub it advertised on the back deck.  Never did I imagine how cool the park would be.  More about that later.

So, we got to the cabin after navigating the Grand Canyon road back to the place.  The cabin itself was nice and did in fact have a hot tub.  The kids jumped right in as Emily and I unpacked and prepared for supper.  I am not sure why, but the power went out and we were without water or AC.  When you are not prepared, both are pretty important.  Anyhow, several hours later, it came back on and all was well…even the well.  We could shower and do dishes, etc.

On Saturday morning, we gorged on cheap powdered sugar donuts and Doritos then headed to Coopers Rock (it seems like there should be an apostrophe in there but there isn’t).  Little did we know, but there was a celebration of the anniversary of the founding of the park.  The place was teeming with things to do as all sorts of groups offered nature talks, projects,  and hikes.

The kids built cool birdhouses and painted rocks.  We played on the play ground (where I tried my best to dislocate my shoulder).  We saw rescued birds of prey from the West Virginia Raptor Rescue Center and even got to touch a red tailed hawk who was very friendly.  It turns out, she was essentially raised in captivity so was not bothered by people.  The other rescued hawk and owl were not so friendly.  Still, they were awesome!

I think the best part of the park though, was walking the trails under the rocks.  We explored some and saw great rock formations.  The kids and I walked into a cave/tunnel and went all “Dora the Explorer”.  Abigail fell in the dirt and got muddy.  It was perfect and cool and a great time to be together as a family.

If you ever pass through the northern part of WV, stop in at Coopers Rock.  Its views are breathtaking and there is all sorts of fun to be had there.  It turns out that the hot tub was very popular, but it paled in comparison (for me at least) to the beauty of our state, just as it is!

7 Comments

warren, June 22nd 2011 | Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Adventure, Awesome, Family, Fun, Nature, WV

Camping!

Holy cow it’s been awhile since I have posted. It seems like time is flying! I certainly need to remedy that. So, last weekend, the hottest weekend of the year (so far), we went camping on the bee farm. I had to set more fence posts in the ground and I have been itching to stay up and see the stars and listen to the crickets. You know, they say you can find the temperature by counting cricket chirps for 15 seconds and adding 37. I don’t think I could count fast enough to make a good measurement so I am sure that it works. It was hot!

Anyhow, I dug more fence posts and cut a bunch of trees and brush. The kids mostly read their kindles but they also went on a rock hunt. I told them I would pay them if they would find sufficient rocks to make a proper fire pit. I wanted to hear crickets and by golly, I wanted to smell like smoke before I laid down for the night. The kids were great. They actually dug some rocks out of the ground. I suppose they saw it as an easy way to make things happen fast…find huge rocks and dig them up…make Dad carry them to make for an instant fire pit. Well, they did a great job though my back may never forgive me after carrying some of their finds.

All of this is to say, we got pretty hot and sweaty outside working all day. Luckily, I bought that tank I mentioned in the last post. We had 35 gallons of water to set the concrete posts, cook and bathe. Of course, bathing was a relative thing, but we made the best of it taking a cold water bath at our campsite.

Oh, I don’t want to forget…on the way walking the path between the tent and the car (which housed the water tank), I happened upon a copperhead. He wasn’t wearing pants thankfully or there would have been two of us in a code brown status. I grabbed a shovel and went after him but he was headed for the woods too.

We finally got cleaned up and went to bed. Rather, we went to clumpy ground…it could hardly be called a bed (gee whiz have I become soft in my old age). I never did get a chance to really look at the stars.  Still, camping on our land was absolutely wonderful!  We ate mountain pies and roasted marshmallows.  We giggled in the tent and woke up groggy.  It was a marvelous weekend, stiff backs and necks aside.

There is lots more fun to report including driving the van 60 mph across our hay field…but you will have to wait until next time to read about that!

6 Comments

warren, June 7th 2011 | Tags: , , ,
Posted in Family, Fun, Nature, WV

Our woods

We spent our time at the property on Saturday walking in the woods.  Our plan was to walk more of the property line as we still haven’t seen the entire place.  We did hike the better part of the boundary and discovered all sorts of excellent things!  Except for the constant chatter of kids, the sounds of the woods were magnificent.  Actually, the chatter wasn’t so bad either as the kids were having fun.

When I was a kid, hiking in the woods was not high on my list of fun.  I played in the woods a lot but plain old hiking wasn’t good for me.  I was so surprised that Isaac and Abigail walked the entire 2 miles in the woods with only a small handful of complaints.  Incredible!

We did walk the better part of the lower edge of the place and saw all sorts of beautiful flowers and animal tracks of all sorts.  There were too many deer tracks to even keep track of but the kids tried to identify every print they came across.

That's Abigail's finger...she's the brave one

We spooked a turkey and saw the biggest centipede the kids had ever seen.  We found just a little bit of poison ivy and a lot of slippery moss.  Squirrels barked and birds announced our path through the woods.  All around us was noise but it felt like silence.  It was marvelous walking in our woods and this weekend was the reason we bought the place!  I am absolutely positive that my blood pressure is still lowered because of it!

10 Comments

warren, May 2nd 2011 | Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Adventure, Awesome, Family, Fun, Nature, Thoughts, WV

First swarm of the season

We had just finished Easter lunupper (brunch sounds so nice…what do you call it between lunch and supper? Lunupper?).  We rolled into the house and had a message.  The caller reported a swarm of bees near a popular chain restaurant attached to the big mall in the city.  The swarm was at the top of a cedar tree and was “the biggest swarm ever seen” by the manager of the restaurant.  I was pretty skeptical about the size as most people have never seen a swarm of bees so big could mean anything.  Still, I decided to roll down with Abigail and my father-in-law to find out.

As soon as we pulled in, a crowd gathered and watched us do our normal routine of surveying the swarm.  It wasn’t the biggest swarm I had ever seen but the manager had picked out the fact that it was a big swarm.  It was in the very top of a cedar tree.  Cedar trees are sort of flimsy at the top.  Unlike an oak or maple, the cedar doesn’t really have big branches against which one can lean a ladder.  It has been my foolish tendency to just go for it when it comes to swarms.  I just threw the ladder up against the green of the tree and climbed my way up.  I always carry loppers (is that a local term or what they are called?  Long handled tree pruners, anyhow) to cut branches.  The funny thing is that when you cut a swarm out of a tree, you need to hold onto the branch with the bees on it.  Of course, it also takes two hands to run the loppers.  I learned the first time I did this that I can hold onto the swarm with one hand and brace one handle of the pruners against my neck.  I use my other hand to close the loppers and cut the branch.  Now let me tell you, doing that leaning into the greenery at the top of this flimsy tree with a swarm of bees was interesting!

marching into the hive...

So the crowd continued to watch as the three of us did our thing.  We transferred the bees from the branch to the hive I brought along.  I gave the branch a good shake and the bees mostly fell into the box, but some fell onto the sheet I had under the box (another lesson I learned…put down a sheet first.  It looks more impressive and help me keep better track of the bees as they walk into the hive).  In a few minutes, it was clear I had the queen as the bees on the sheet and from the tree ended up working their way right into the hive.  We packaged up the hive and hauled it off in the van (much to the dismay/excitement of our audience).  I really like the “performer” part of catching swarms.  Hauling bees in the van is sort of the grand finale!

safe as can be!

Two things sort of struck me about this capture.  First, people were amazed that I let Abigail be so close to the swarm.  She was a great helper and loved every second.  The funny thing is, she had on a full bee suit so was at lower risk than the people around us who were concerned for her safety.  Silly people!  On the way home, she asked me over and over, “Why were those people looking at us?”  I explained that people were surprised at a kid working with bees, and even more so a girl kid working with bees.  I told her they were probably seeing a swarm of bees for the first time ever, and so on.  She talked about it all night long.  I think she was sort of proud more than anything.  I am still smiling about it…

fascinated!

The second striking thing was a man who walked up as we were doing our thing.  It was clear he was drunk.  He walked right up to us and began to talk to us far closer to the bees than I really liked but he was so curious about the whole deal.  He ended up sitting right beside our area and asked all sorts of questions.  He asked about the queen and I said she was bigger than the rest.  He said, “Bees have three parts, right?  The abdomen, thorax and head, right?”  He must have sensed my surprise because, with a smile on his face, he added, “I may be homeless but I’m not stupid.”  ”No sir, you are not.”  That brief conversation really turned my prejudice on its head.  I shook his hand (which I think surprised him) and we parted ways.  I think we both ended up with a pretty cool story to tell, though they are undoubtedly quite different.

Anyhow, I had a really great time catching this swarm.  The audience was fun, having my family along was great, and the homeless man was sort of good to remind me to listen to people before deciding that I know their circumstances.  Bees always teach me something…

Here are some more of my bee adventures and here are pictures of many of the swarms I have captured.

8 Comments

warren, April 28th 2011 | Tags: , , ,
Posted in Bees, Nature, WV

Holy hail!

It has been pretty nice the last few days, and now, with the weekend approaching, it turns to junk.  Last night, just as I was driving home, it decided to come a gully washer (for you Yankees, that means it rained like crazy).  As I walked to the car, it poured and I got wet clear inside my skin.  About half way home, the rain turned to hail and all hail broke loose.  It quickly turned to hail-so-loud-I-coudn’t-hear-myself-yell-in-the-car hail.  I mean it put down hail and meant it.

A friend suggested the hail had challenged her car to a MMA fight and the winner was not clear.  That pretty well sums it up.  I am sure that if we see the sun again, I will have dents all over my car.  Poor Steve…

Of course, hail is really ice and it became abundantly clear that I needed to be careful on the hail.  I slid at one stop sign which was an attention grabber.  Anyhow, I slowed down and got home just in time for it all to stop as fast as it started.

There were tons of blooms out and the bees had been busy on them.  It remains to be seen how the hail might affect the build-up of bees.  This is a critical time for them to be making more bees and collecting pollen and nectar.

I love spring for all of the new life that comes and the rain that sparks the world to green up again.  I might be able to do with out the hail though…just spring please!

7 Comments

warren, March 24th 2011 | Tags: ,
Posted in Nature, WV
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