Apr 11

You Can Lead a Chook to Water

waterer-old-001

Well, the automatic watering system I built a couple of years ago finally bit the dust as the plastic hardened and cracked after being exposed to daylight. It was a good system, but it was always meant to be an interim solution until I fired up and built the proper, you beaut, whizz-bang one.

The system I had in mind would use an external tank and a float valve to control the level in a mini-trough

 

 

 

Using mostly parts I had lying around, except for the float-valve, hose-connector and end caps for the section of storm-water pipe, I commenced construction.

I wanted the tank to be on a stand to provide small amount of positive pressure for the float valve. I had some old bits of scrap length of metal fence post offcuts so I welded up a table and topped it with some old pieces of treated pine (I figure using treated pine waste increases it’s useful life and prevents it from going to landfill, for a while at least).

waterer-stand-001waterer-stand-002waterer-stand-003waterer-stand-005waterer-stand-006waterer-stand-007waterer-stand-009waterer-stand-008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is seriously over-specified and took a lot longer to weld up than I anticipated but that’s what I had lying around.

 

 

The watering trough was considerably easier to put together, although I spent ages trying to decide how to provide a solid base. The trough itself was just a short section of 100mm plastic pipe with two end caps glued on and a section cut out along the length.

waterer-new-002

 

After that, it was just a matter of filling it with water and playing around with the location of the float valve to make sure it didn’t overflow. Once the location was determined a hole was cut into the end of the trough and the float valve was fitted.

 

waterer-test-001

 

One last final test to make sure everything was working correctly before doing the final assembly. Because it was getting a bit late I left it set up overnight and rechecked it in the morning and added the feet before installing it in the chook shed.

 

The next morning (well only just, as I had a leisurely start to the day) I moved all the pieces into place and installed it in the shed. It sounds easy when you say it fast like that but in reality, it wasn’t much more difficult. There was a bit of fiddling, cutting a hole in the wall, getting the hose lengths right, making sure the trough was secure enough etc. but it all came together quite well.

waterer-install-004waterer-install-005waterer-install-003

 

 

 

 

 

Well, not quite!

waterer-install-002

 

There was a leak at the connection on the tank. I thought I had sealed everything and I had used teflon tape etc. However it turned out that the rubber seal was damaged. I quickly cut a replacement from an old bike tire inner-tube, fitted it and voilà, perfect!

 

 

All in all it has been a very satisfying exercise, although the extra time, effort in welding, grinding and cutting somewhat offset the use of the free metal offcuts I used for the tank. The overall price, only for the parts I had to purchase, was about $50. If I had to purchase all the parts it would have been considerably more, but that’s the point really, re-using “waste” items or found objects to provide a useful function. The watering system should provide many years of fault free service and it will certainly be a lot easier to provide water to the chooks.

 

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Apr 08

Glutton for Punishment

As if I hadn’t already been obsessing enough over bees and all things bee related, on the the Easter weekend I went to a mate’s mum’s place to help him clean up some of the hives and rubbish left over after they sold most of the hives his dad used to keep.

beekeeping panorama

After his dad passed away over a year ago they had sold around 150 hives but there were 4 or 5 left that were in particularly poor condition and/or were my mate’s hives. In addition, a swarm had taken up residence in one of the empty hives left scattered around in the yard.

beekeeping-cleanup-001 beekeeping-cleanup-003

We went through over 90 boxes and retrieved around 25 that were in good enough condition to reuse or repair. The rest are slated for the fire. We also went through hundreds and hundreds of frames looking for those that could be reused. Most of them went straight into the incinerator to get rid of them and to reduce the risk of disease spreading to the working hives. The frames that can be properly cleaned and restrung will be used to start managing the hives properly again.

beekeeping-cleanup-002burning-down-the-hive

On the second day we tackled the hives and rehoused all the colonies in boxes that were in better condition. They still need a lot of work to rehabilitate them fully but they are in good enough condition to give my mate time to refurbish and repaint the remaining boxes so that he can get the hives back into good working order.

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It took a bit longer than anticipated to complete the rehousing but it was a satisfying days work. Although I got a bit of stick from my better half for not being able to spend a day sightseeing like I had promised.

Next Easter, Guaranteed!  I promise 🙂

 

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Apr 06

Bloody Fox

Thursday night before the Easter weekend, about 20 minutes before I went out to lock up the chooks, a bloody fox got in and killed the lot.

I went out there a bit later than usual and the dogs next door and two doors down were going berserk. I found two, still warm, bodies inside the coop and another two near the hole under the fence where the mongrel animal got in. There was no sign of the fifth chook and presumably the fox carried it off.

evil-fox-2

Apparently it’s been hanging around since Australia Day and was seen raiding the table at the BBQ when everybody was inside. I should’ve been more vigilant but I wasn’t and without a dog now it was much more likely to happen. Now, three of the chooks were quite old and destined for the pot anyway but that’s not the point. We should have had the place more secure and I’m changing the layout of the enclosure to help prevent any problems in the future. In the meantime, I had to source some replacements.

The place I normally go just up the road is convenient but a a tiny bit more expensive at around $20 per point of lay birds but they didn’t have any and wouldn’t for a few weeks. For some reason it is getting harder and harder to source birds locally for a reasonable price. Another place near Mansfield was a possibility, particularly since a mate was up that way and coming back on the weekend.  But they told me they no longer do Gate sales and the next delivery into the local area wasn’t until next Friday! I finally found a place in Bacchus Marsh that had Isa Browns for $18 each. So, up I went yesterday afternoon and had a good chat with the owner Mark, about birds, bees and life in general. I got six brand new chooks for $110 plus around $8 for fuel there and back. All in all a good result.

I checked the birds today and realised that the automatic waterer is broken so that’s another job, but the chooks are healthy and settling in fine. To top it off, imagine my surprise when I found six eggs in the nesting box. You ripper! Very happy with the outcome now.

neweggs

So here are the new girls in their new home and lets hope we have many years of productive association. I’m still working out how to deal permanently with that fox. There’s still a bounty on them and I’d love to collect.

sixchooks

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Apr 05

How Sweet it is!

A few weekends ago I went up to Alexandra in the Victorian High Country to help my Beekeeping mate Pete with his beekeeping classes. Well, more precisely I was able to supply some full frames of honey from my new hives for his students to practice their honey extracting skills. In the process I was also able to extract the remainder of the honey from another four frames and bring home around 12kg of sweet natural honey.

the final product

I was pretty impressed, and so was Pete, with the amount of honey we extracted from the six frames, particularly since there was a cold snap on the day and we were working without heaters etc. so the honey was pretty thick.

Here are some happy snaps of the second day out with the bees, learning to make frames, firing up smokers, inspecting the hives and extracting the honey.

showing frames
making frames 001
making frames 002
making frames 003 making frames 004
making frames 005
smokers
suiting up
hive001
hive002
hive003
hive004
hive005
hive006
uncapping 001
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uncapping 002
me separating the honey
honey in separator
the final product

And how does it taste? Absolutely marvelous!!

 

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Feb 12

Thar’ BEE even more

Yes, I know! But just be thankful. Because my other choices included,

Two Bee (hives) or not two Bee (hives)” and “Bee-gora, there’s another one!” and many others, equally as cringe-worthy 🙂

This is another post that has been waiting in the wings (so to speak – and no, I’m not going to stop) for me to get around to finishing.

A few weeks after setting up the first of my own bee hives, my beekeeping mate, Pete, called me and asked, “Are you at home?”

“I’m at Kinglake”, I replied, “but I should be home by 10:00pm, why?”

“Oh, a friend of mine who works at Southbank called me and said there was a swarm on a tree outside their office and asked if I was able to remove it, so I thought that if you wanted a second hive, this would be a good way to do it.”

“Absolutely!” I said without hesitation, “I’ve got enough frames to make up another hive so, no worries”.

“OK, I should get to your place around 10:30pm, see you then”

As I headed home, I thought about the turn of events. I’d missed out on collecting two swarms in the backyard but, in the space of a few weeks, I was going to have two hives of my own. It would be interesting to see what these bees were like especially since they were right in the heart of the Melbourne.

hive ready for swarm
Anyway, I set up the hive in the backyard and Pete arrived just as I finished. He said that it was an interesting experience being in the heart of the city with his beekeeping gear on collecting a swarm. His friend had kindly given him an office storage box to collect the bees.

 

 

 

preparing the swarm

 

 

 

So, armed with a small flashlight, used sparingly to prevent the bees from attacking, we took out four frames to make some room and then we (read Pete) opened the cardboard box and upended the bees into the hive.

 

pouring the bees

 

 

 

A few more shakes of the box and the majority of the bees were in the hive 🙂

We weren’t worried about the spillover as they would find their way in.

 

 

 

inserting the frames

 

 

 

The frames were slowly lowered into the hive.

As long as you move things slowly the bees will flow like honey (!) around them.

 

 

fitting the lid

 

 

 

The lid was put on and secured.

 

 

 

 

 

dumping the stragglers

 

 

And the rest of the stragglers were unceremoniously dumped on the ground in front of hive to find their own way in.

 

 

 

 

checking for hangers on

 

 

 

 

 

We just had to check there were no stragglers on Pete before he got changed, then we packed up and called it a night.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the swarm the next day

 

 

 

The next morning, I checked and they had settled into their new home just fine.

 

 

 

They took a little while to start building up their numbers but that was to be expected but they are going from strength to strength now and they look like they are very good quality bees and they are reasonably docile.

We tried to figure out where they might have come from and we suspect that they may be from one of the hives that a number of hotels are keeping in the city now for fresh honey and pollination of their herb gardens etc. Wherever they came from, they’re a busy bunch of buzzing bees 🙂

Strange how things turn out, but…What will BEE, will BEE! (Told you I wouldn’t stop 😉 )

 

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