The Hunnicutt Homestead

News from the Hunnicutts

Our breathing hasn't yet slowed as we are running to plant our garden as soon as the rain stops.  It is not fun planting in mucky conditions.  We have had a very cold, wet May this year.  Supposedly that is unusual for Ohio.  Just when S thought he was done with burning wood, I inform him that the house is at 66 degrees which is WAY too cold for me.  It's a good thing I'm not married to the dairy farmer next door- he doesn't heat his upstairs in the winter time but turns the water off to his upstairs bathroom so that the pipes don't freeze!  Meanwhile he and his family sleep under many blankets!

We planted several cold weather things back in April.  Now we are racing to get the rest in.  I had to replant my onions.  Not a one came up!  I've decided to plant all my herbs inside the cold frames so that this fall when it begins to get chilly we can just pop the top onto them.  Only one of my lavender plants survived the Ohio winter (Hidcote for those of you who are interested).  We were late with the mulch and coldframes so hopefully we'll have better luck this year.

Something is already chewing up the leaves of my green beans, and a rabbit has eaten 12 strawberry plants.  I'm thinking rabbit stew again...

My bees are doing well.  Our friend, Tony, from the beekeepers meeting, spent two hours with us the other day inspecting our hives.  I learned so much!  Tony helped me find 2 of my queens, and we identified the nurse bees, the drones, and of course, the workers.  We identified drone brood, and queen cells.  I had a colony with plenty of queen cells as well as bees.  It was getting ready to swarm.  We had to find the queen and split the hive, killing all of the queen cells that would be in her hive box, and leaving the other queen cells in the remaining colony.  It took us a while but we found her.

Another hive I had split wasn't doing well.  They were queenless and deteriorating.  We ended up rejoining that split.  My new colony seems to be doing well.  I'm hoping to get lots more honey this year and I am already smacking my lips!

Hopefully I'll have something more interesting to say next time.  That's all for now!