Well, I got six pints of glazed carrots put up yesterday, but one of my jars cracked in the canner. I don't think I had the jars hot enough when I put them in. Oh well, it's a lesson learned. The glaze was very simple - just one cup of orange juice, two cups of water, and two cups of packed brown sugar. Even hubby really liked it!
We have a sick chick... I think. I've never had chickens before, so I'm not exactly sure how to tell if a chick is sick. But I have had other sick animals, and they just seem to be not themselves when they're sick. Poor Fur Ball doesn't run all around and scratch and fly and fight over bugs like the others. Today she just sleeps. She will occasionally preen her feathers (which I take as a good sign) and get up and peck around for bugs a little. Her overall appearance is very good. Her eyes are bright and she is still perky looking, even if she doesn't act perky. She likes to be somewhat near the other chicks, but seperates herself somewhat. I was going to seperate her from the others so that they don't get whatever she's got, but she just hollered and hollered when I seperated her, and I didn't want her to give up on life just because she was alone. All in all she doesn't seem too sickly, so I'm taking a chance and leaving her with the rest of them. Any advice anyone?
I've learned that one shouldn't use used frames in your bee hive, that is, unless you've cleaned them up. Otherwise you risk the spread of possible disease to your hives. SO.... We have been spending an hour here and there scraping all the wax off the old frames and pushing out the foudation (the sheet that the bees build their comb on). Then you have to bake the frames at 250 degrees to kill off any bacteria or disease. Each super (box that you stack to make a hive) has 9 or 10 frames and each hive has at least four supers and I have four hives. That 160 frames, ten at a time, one hour per ten frames. We'll be busy for a while!
Here is what the frames look like in my oven. Too bad you can't smell it too! All that bees wax, mmmm!!
Happy Trails!
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