Lessons learned harvesting my first goose.

Let me start with how it all went down. 

I didn’t mean to name the geese but, like an earwig that burrows into your brain, the name Bruce the Goose was named in my mind, even if I didn’t say it out loud. I later named the other goose, Bradshaw after Nick “Goose” Bradshaw from Top Gun.

I invited my son-n-law, Noah and my nephew, Zane (13) over to help. Noah Brought his brother Ethan and Zane brought his friend (whose name escapes me).

The first thing I did was to catch Bradshaw and place him in a cage inside the house. I didn’t want him to watch.

Then we caught Bruce and placed him in an old duffel bag like I had read on Homesteadingguide.com. This turned out to be excellent advice. It calmed Bruce down and helped to make the whole harvest more relaxing.

As I mentioned in an early blog, I had bought a 16.5” meat clever to do the deed with. I made sure it was razor sharp. We also made a chopping block out of six scrap 4x4’s and placed it on a saw horse.

I had intended on placing a string around the birds neck but decided not to because I was worried it might stress it out. I should have used the string.

Once everyone was ready, I gave Zane the camera and had him record it. Since I couldn’t find an instructional video - I will use the footage to make an instructional video later this year.

With Ethan holding the bag, I unzipped it just enough to allow Bruce to peak out.

I removed my hat – it just felt like I should.

Then Bruce, of his own accord, laid his head out across the block (see the picture). That’s when I did it.

The chop severed Bruce’s spine but I left about a quarter of his neck intact. Blood sprayed out and we let the bag fall to the ground.

With his spine severed, I know Bruce wasn’t in pain but it took about a minute for him to stop moving. In the video, you can hear a sad death grown about five or six times – I didn’t notice the sound in real time.

I had been very stressed about killing the bird but when it was over, I felt completely normal. I realized that Bruce was no different than the other birds I had bought from the store over the years – I was just more involved this time.

“I’m not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” – Woody Allen

So what did I learn?

1. The duffel bag is a great way to kill a goose. It calmed the goose down and it calmed me down.
2. Use a string! If I had tied a string on Bruce’s neck, then I wouldn’t have rushed my chop and I would have cut his head clear off.
3. Cutting the head off removes just as much blood as slicing the throat. Countless videos said that if you cut the head off, the heart would stop pumping out the blood. This was not the case with Bruce. The blood sprayed out and when I cleaned him, there was almost zero blood inside of him.
4. Fatten up the goose. I wanted Bruce’s last days to be as happy as possible but allowing him to free range kept him from putting on any weight. Bruce was the skinniest bird I have ever cooked. In fact, he was barely an appetizer.
5. Get a young goose. Not that I had the option, as geese are really hard to find. But Bruce was older and his meat was so tough that I LITERALLY broke a sweat carving him on Christmas.

All and all, this was a good experience and I will definitely harvest more birds in the future. I’m not sure I will harvest a Christmas goose again but only because I made a turducken from scratch that came out much better (so that may be our new Christmas tradition).

Lastly, this is my first blog of 2019. Since I got so much traffic last year, I have moved to WordPress. I will continue to post the same blog on both Honeyhomestead.blog and Thebunglingbeekeeper.blogspot.com for now. However, I encourage you all to become followers on the honeyhomestead.blog site.

Moth Prevention & Winter Preparations

My last preparations before winter: #8 hardware cloth lined with dryer-sheets and covered with cedar chips. The whole feeder cost roughly $6 to build and fill. However, I believe it will prove brilliant on all fronts. The dryer sheets should catch the beetles - the cedar should deter moths - and both should insulate the hive, while wicking away moister.

I also placed a Fat Bee Man corrugated sign trap in each hive, as well as a swiffer sheet and beetle buster trap on the top bars. That's every trick in my bag.

After having the temperature dip into the 20's I thought I might have waited too late to winterize my hives. Luckily, I was blessed by God with a nice warm 67 degree day. Noah was working so I asked my 13-year-old nephew, Zane to help me out. He was a huge help and I wouldn't have gotten done without him.

We staged all of the feeders and traps on top of each hive to minimize the amount of time each hive would be left open.

We then cleaned up the apiary and removed all the unused equipment - a full truckload (which might be part of my pest problem).

Lastly, we began placing the feeders. The first hive I opened was dead and filled with wax moths. I felt sick. The second hive looked good but then the third hive was dead. I could have thrown up!

With no other choice, I carried on. In the end, I lost three hives.

"Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes." Zig Ziglar

Last month, when I extracted honey, I placed the empty supers back onto the hives in hopes that the bees would clean them and refill them. However, the flowers were all but gone and I think this gave the moths a window of opportunity. I think this was the cause of my losses.

I started the year with 7 hives. I made all successful splits and increased to 23 hives and 1 NUC - however, I lost a total of 6 hives in the past few months. Leaving me with 17 hives and 1 NUC. If God is willing and I don't loss any hives over the winter, I should be able to divide 17 into 68 or possibly as many as 136 (that would be 4 successful exponential splits).

My actual goal is 100 hives by the end of next season. So for the rest of the winter, I will be in the wood shop building hives. I'll post on that as I progress.

However, for now my bees are in God's hands - I have done all I can do.

Hive Count: 17 Hives and 1 NUC

2018 The Future Looks Bright

"Never pet a burning dog," - movie quote from, A Good Year.

I do my best to keep this blog purely focused on my beekeeping but something strange happened last week that I don't want to forget - so indulge me and then I'll tell about my extraordinary beekeeping year thus far. Or just skip down past the italic part.

On Wednesday, 4/18/18 I woke up singing the 90's song "If I had  a Million Dollars" by the Bare Naked Ladies. I like the group so that's not really odd. 

However, the first thing I heard when I got to work was a conversation that had this line in it, "You got me F***ed up talking about what I would do with a million dollars." Not an unusual conversation given I work in a casino.

Then I went to Walmart after work and the overhead speakers were playing... "If I had a Million Dollars" by the Bare Naked Ladies! So I drove to Arkansas and bought a lottery ticket - and, of course, I didn't win. 

The time between when I bought the ticket and when the numbers were drawn were filled with pure childlike daydreams. I imagined all the things I would buy, the way I would invest, the people I would help, and those I would shun. I also thought how empty all of my future achievements would be and how lonely my wife and I might end up. In the end, I wasn't even disappointed not to have won the lottery.

I've spent a lifetime looking for signs and have never found one. Nonetheless, if this year proves to be an epic success, then perhaps I'll look back on this day and say, "All the signs were there."

What a great bee year so far:

It has been three weeks since I made my splits and they are all doing well... no, they are all doing awesome!

I didn't realize it had been three weeks until just now. I don't have a great excuse, other than the weather has been fairly cold and rainy. Not to mention that last week, Dr. D's father died - I keep my bees at his family's country homestead.

However, that is all spilled milk. Saturday, I went to Dr. D's and my bees were busting at the seams and about to swarm.

I moved 5 frames of queen cells to a new hives with nurse bees (Hive number 14). I would have split 10 of my hives but I didn't have enough lids and bottoms to do it.

In the other hives, I did my best to cut the queen cells out. This is always risky, as you might miss one.

Queen Cells

I then went home and got more boxes and frames and added a box to the 10 overly full hives. The other two hives were doing well but still had two empty frames each - so I left them single stacked for now.

If all goes well, then Wednesday I will make lids and bottoms and Saturday, I will make 10 more splits.

Hive Count: 14 Hives.

BTW: I had a heart scare two months ago and so I have been meditating in the mornings before work to lower my blood pressure. Well, the bees were fairly cantankerous at first on Saturday but then I took a minute to control my breathing and meditate, the bees calmed right down. I suspect my agitation was putting off pheromones and once I relaxed so did the bees.

Chickens: 107F Heat Index

This weekend was hotter than midget porn - 95͒ F and 60% Humidity.

Summer in the Mississippi Delta is like nowhere else on earth.  It's hard to say what is more demeaning; the way my sweat soaked shirt clings to my chest or how my testicles cling to my knee. Yeah, it's that hot.

Despite the heat, I did manage to build my chicken tractor. It's double wrapped with chicken wire to prevent predators from chewing through. I still need to build a roost inside and add some out rigging to prevent opossums from digging under but the hard part is done.

My wife has fallen in love with our chickens and doesn't want to put them outside but it's getting to hard to keep their cage clean enough to keep them in the backroom. So for now, they will be outside in the pen during the day and in the backroom at night. However, in a week or three, the chickens will have to go outside full-time.

Uncapping Knife Explosion

"The last time I heard a boom like that, Japan surrendered the war." Nelly

I bought an Uncapping Knife last year and just got around to trying it out this week. The first time it worked okay but kept getting so hot that it burned the honey - perhaps that is normal.

What is not normal is that on the second use... IT EXPLODED! No exaggeration here. About three minutes into the process the knife short circuited, blasted a hole in the side of the knife, and began throwing sparks and slag as far as two feet away. It literally looked like fireworks! Some of the slag sprayed out and burned my wife's arm before I could get it unplugged. Luckily she only received minor burns - though she was rattled for a while afterwards. We were lucky - blessed!

Since Amazon won't post my review, here is the link to the product so you don't buy the same one:

HLPB Electric Honey Uncapping Knife Stainless Steel Hot Wax Knife Scraping Blade Beekeeping Tool

Well that was just part of the day. My two grafted queens were, as I feared would happen, destroyed by the beetles. Hive-VD (giggle giggle) had the shiny frames that heralds the death of the hive. I removed all but two frames and manually killed all the beetles and larva I could see.

My chickens will be in at the end of the month and I hope that they can help break this beetle cycle.

THE GOOD NEWS:

The miller frame that I placed in Hive-VE has lots of Queen Cells. I suppose they just needed a day to settle in before they began building them. So I will have enough queen cells to make several splits this weekend.

What happened in both hive VD (giggle giggle) and VE were blessings. The presence of two accepted grafts, showed me I was on the right track. So now that the grafts are ruined, it gives me a chance to try again this week. At the same time, I won't loose any ground on my splits, since VE has plenty of queens to go around.

I made a new grafting frame with three kinds of cups to see if any of them do better than the other.

All and all, it was a good day.

The Best Easter Eggs Of All – Queen Eggs

My biggest hurdle of beekeeping is not mites, moths, or beetles – it’s self-doubt. It took all my resolve to go out to the bee yard at Dr. D’s.   Actually, Noah wanting to go with me is what tipped the scales.

I would have gone anyway, but it might have been later Saturday or even Sunday – hell I might have waited until today! It’s like having a workout partner – some days you don’t feel like it but you go to keep from letting your partner down.

So I went. And it was wonderful! I swear that kid is good luck. All the hives are doing well.

This is the order I checked them:

Hive-D.1 is weak but the queen is laying eggs now.

Hive-D.2 was much stronger with two frames of brood.

Hive-B had several frames of brood and had drawn out nice straight comb on the foundationless hives.

Hive-A had a little brood. However, when I handed Noah the frame of brood so I could continue my inspection, he found the biggest, fattest, orange tailed queen I think I have ever seen.

Hive-C is doing well but I haven’t opened it for a proper inspection given that it has anger issues.

Lastly, Hive-D is slammed full of drones – obviously queenless.

So here is what I did:

Hive-A was fed but then left alone (Though this would have been a great time to split it since I had the queen in hand).

Hives at Dr. D's

Hive-B was fed and I took out one frame of uncapped brood and placed it in Hive-D.1 (in retrospect, Hive-D.1 is so small they may not be able to keep that whole frame of brood warm enough.)

I took a frame of eggs out of Hive-D.2 and placed them in Hive-D so that they could raise a new VSH queen.

Then I topped off the sugar syrup in all the hives and called it a day.

I got stung three times – once through my suit into my chest and twice on my neck though my veil. Two of them left no lingering signs. However, one of the ones on my neck still had the stinger in it when I got back to the truck and looks like a mosquito bite this morning.

Hive Count: 9

The Lord Giveth and Swarm Taketh Away

Truthfully, it wasn't a surprise that the swarm was gone. In fact, I was almost expecting it. So when I opened the new hive and found only (3) little bees flying around in it, I wasn't surprised - but I was greatly disappointed.

The feeling was sort of a numb feeling. One of the worst parts was having to tell my wife - not that she would be anything but supportive. The night I caught the swarm, I sent her the video clip and she sent me the text you see here. She deserves better.

Maybe it was because I left the Lemongrass Cotton Ball inside the super. Maybe I should have captured the queen in a cage. Maybe I should have put a queen excluder over the exit. Was there something wrong with the pallet wood I made the super out of? Maybe it was just bad luck. I don't really know but I will try the queen excluder next time.

You ever notice how when good things happen it's a blessing but when bad things happen it's just bad luck - and there in lies my real disappointment. Yesterday, I thought God had sent me a good omen. Today, I wonder if he is paying attention at all.

I don't mean to sound so petulant. I'm trying to have faith. Actually my prayer this year, isn't that nothing goes wrong, but that when things go wrong, God will teach (or at least lead me to the answers) and make me a better beekeeper. Maybe that was what this was about.



Me and Zack painting hives back in 2006

Today actually marks the 11th anniversary since I bought my first bees. I'm not actually sure of the exact date (being that Easter moves around the calendar) but it was on Good Friday 2006 (I had to actually make a timeline to figure the year out).

I can't believe how much has happened over those years. Losses and Gains (notice the order of those two - obviously I'm a negative person). Finding my wife - losing Dale. Fortunes gained and fortunes lost. My heart attack, my mom's stroke, my daughter's sudo-tumor. I published my first book. I traveled to the Canada, the Artic Circle, Ireland, Mexico, Bahamas, Malta, and back home. All of that actually happened in just the past 10 years - It's been quite the decade and Jen was there for all of it.

By the way: the hive count is back to (9).

A Walk In The Clouds

This is a short one... not the kid, the blog.

I imagine everyone has a vision of what the perfect life would look like. For me, it's the movie A Walk In The Clouds. In fact, it is the very reason I became a beekeeper - as I mentioned in a past blog.

While I doubt I will ever own a vineyard, I still have this fantasy of the whole family coming home for the big harvest (Honey Harvest in my case). The whole family working together in the fields all day and then having a feast that night (of course everyone would share in the profit too). I know the whole thing sounds ridiculous and it is - and I am sure it will never happen.

Nonetheless, beekeeping is a good job - an average beekeeper makes upward of $70k a year. So I am encouraging my oldest nephew, Zack to learn the beekeeping trade (since on the ill-advice of his mother, he has dropped out of school at age 18). And I am hopeful that in a year or two, I will be able to employee him full-time or maybe he might even just work for someone else.

Of course, I'm not forcing it on him but I am encouraging him to help me out from time to time so he can learn. This is purely for his benefit, since he slows me down to a crawl when he is there. Just the same, yesterday I invited him to help me prep some supers for paint - partly because I felt guilty for spending all weekend with Noah (age 22) who was a genuine help. (Side note: Noah and my daughter are both graduating with a BSN from nursing school this coming Dec).

Yet when I went to pick Zack up, he had a scowl on his face. When I asked him why, it turned out that he didn't want to go. So I gladly left him. In retrospect, I think I need to sit him down and explain that this work is not for my benefit but for his. Then he can decide what to do on his own.

Anyway, a few minutes after I left, Zack's little brother, Zane (age 11) texted that he wanted to come and help. So he came down and we did a little beekeeping. It was a nice bonding experience and it definitely sparked Zane's interest. Who knows, maybe that big family harvest might happen after all.