Rain on the Whey!

I know it's cheesy but Erin and I have been having alot of fun making our own cheese lately. We started with mozzarella, then made a farmhouse cheddar and are now making Gouda. Cheddar and Gouda are hard cheeses that need to be pressed. Rather than buy a press for around $200 we decided to build one. The first design didn't work well at all and we ended up using a cement block (48lbs.) and a can of pineapple. The second design is still being tweaked but is working pretty well. Both designs can bee seen here.

Rain is here and it is amazing to see the garden grow! This is one of my favorite times of year because with a bit of rain you can quite literally see the garden grow if you slow down enough to pay attention. We have harvested spinach, radishes, and one cucumber from the garden and are waiting for the strawberries to ripen. new cucumbers and squash are popping up everyday on the vines and the peas, beans, and corn are rocketing skyward.

With all the rain the bees have been cooped up inside the hive hopefully drawing out comb, and raising brood. When the rain stops and the sun comes out the air is filled with activity as they scramble to gather pollen, clover nectar, and water. At times there are so many bees in the air you wonder how they avoid crashing in to you or each other.

I visited a friend's bee yard last weekend to see how his first year is going. He started in a different way than me. He started his bees from nucs or nucleus colonies. He bought two nucs containing 3 frames each of bees, brood, pollen, a queen, everything. he put those frames into boxes and frames that he bought from an old beekeeper over twenty years ago. He had always intended on getting into beekeeping but never had the time. This year he decided to do it. His first colony seems very active and appears very busy. There are several stages of growth within the frames and the bees seem to be raising brood and collecting food. The other colony seems weak and quiet. We saw larvae, and emerging brood but didn't see eggs. It was a bit overcast so we may have missed it. The brood pattern appeared scattered and not nearly as full as the other. We discussed some of the possible reasons and he is going to ask the folks at his local bee club for ideas and suggestions. I wish him luck because I know how excited he is about finally being able to start keeping bees. On a side note, the Uof MN classes and literature suggest starting bees on new equipment and using package bees if you are new to beekeeping. They claim that if you start this way as a new keeper you should have a couple of years of experience under your belt before any major problems crop up. This is not to say my friend did anything wrong, any number of things can happen to any colony at anytime.