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I am ready for the snow

This is a typical case of conditioning the deer to aid a kill. That is the line that I draw to define where I will not go with my hunting practices. I have too much respect for the species to resort to training them to give themselves up. It is too much like fasteddie's example with the goats. That sort of stuff starts to take the hunt out of hunting for me. There are other practices that people do in the name of hunting that cross over my personal limits, but all these things are personal lines that I have drawn for my idea of hunting. Others may draw their lines differently and as long as the practices are within the framework of the law, they are entitled to their own versions of hunting.

With all this cold weather and snow, Maple producers are hoping for a good, extended maple run season. Maybe. Temperature now need to get up in the 30S with below freezing nights.

Crazy story this dates back a while. It was probably 1992 and my wife an I bought a house on Long Island. The original owner was a Ham radio operator. I would get letters from people in other countries trying to contact him. He had passed. From what I found out During WW2 he contacted ships off the coast and actually had President Roosevelt visit the house for some reason.

Being new to all of this, I put a ton of thought into how I wanted to prepare my hives for the their first winter. And, what I came up with, I then found out some others were also already doing and had a name for it. They were calling them "condensation hives". I insulated my tops to an R30+ factor, and the sides R10 +or-, and with no upper entrance, only bottom entrance for ventilation. My thinking was to create an environment for my bees that would allow the heat to be trapped at the top, moisture to move and form on the side walls rather than around them in the upper chamber or rain down over them. This would allow water to be available for their needs, but not causing them to get wet. Also, with the hive much easier to keep and stay warm, I figured their energy expenditure would be far less, so their food demand would also be less, and if eating less hopefully less need to do cleansing flights in the middle of the winter. Less eating = less pooping! Finally, I thought if it stayed warmer in the hive, the need to cluster just to survive the cold might be less, and if they were able to more freely move about it would allow more bees to be reached when I vaporize oxalic acid for varroa mites. As much as I hated to do it in December, with everyone talking about how bees can starve over the winter if you don’t check on them, I caved to the pressure and braved it one afternoon for very quick peeks into my hives. Other than my obviously lost October colony from a cutout, my other hives all had lots of bees. And while I couldn’t see how much their honey stores were touched, the supplemental bee fondant patties I had placed in my feeder shims were barely touched. I snapped a couple quick pictures of each hive when I opened them in December so I could remember better what was going on once I got back to the house. Even though they had plenty of food, not knowing when I would be able to open them again, I added an extra fondant patty to each hive for good measure. Three hives had moderate numbers of bees in the top. The fourth hive had only a couple bees at first, but when they saw something going on, more started walking up to check things out. My one hive that is routinely the most aggressive really reacted, and as soon as I cracked the hive open a bunch flew out at me and attacked, and I had to quickly shut it and back up and fight them off for a minute. lol I was doing this December check without any bee suit or gloves, or smoke. I was really more worried too many bees would fly out and freeze, than what they were going to do to me. There were very few bees dead in front of my hives each time I checked on them. I’m really hoping for a break in this weather where it gets in the mid 40’s at least, so I can peek and check on them again.

That sounds a lot like Lollipop Farm . We use to take kids there to see the animals . You would put a coin in what looked like a gum machine . when the goats Would hear the crank turn , the would come running for a treat . Same as the deer feeders .

The only experience that I have had with bees, other than being stung, was the bee-tree that I found a few decades back at the top of the hill behind the house. It has long since been empty. It was a short stunted red-oak tree that had a split in the side with honey globbed around the hole, and bees flying in and out. I never found another wild bee-tree before or since. I guess there is a shortage of wild honey bees, so I am glad there are some bee-keeping enthusiasts like you around. I see hives around all over the place around here. Apparently bee-keeping is a pretty popular hobby. Ha-ha-ha.....I have been known to steer around honey bees when I am mowing.