April 1st

No not April fools day just the first of the month. Things have been crazy with the bees here lately. My brother and I have collected 14 of the last 16 swarms that have been found or offered to us around here. Four of these have been from the hives that were here on the homestead and the others from folks calling or the eagle eye of my brother. He can spot a swarm hanging in a tree while driving down the road at any speed. Most of the spotting has been at low speed thank God. But it is uncanny how he does it. As close as the side of the road to as far as 100 yards out behind the house in a jumble of saplings that passes as a planting of trees for management purposes. We now have 14 hives here and 4 more at his house. Can I tell you we get from 1 to 3 swarms a day and have now for about 2 weeks. We can't even build enough boxes to keep the new arrivals happy much less the ones that have been here for a year now.
On a good note Sutherlands a store in Alexandria that has anything you want or think that you need. This is a store with anything from building materials to bluejeans. Gardening supplies to grills has started carrying beekeeping supplies. A little expensive but real handy for things that you don't want to have to make or wait on a small order for. We bought all of the deep frames and foundation that they had in stock day before yesterday. There will be more in on this coming Tuesday.
Oh yes and I have to tell that I did a bad thing this past Monday. I sold 2 single box hives to a couple of local guys without telling my brother. I had to promise not to do it anymore. He wasn't happy but it didn't last long because we caught 3 swarms the next day and the money from the sale made it possible for us to shop for supplies without having to come up with anything out of pocket.
We may start a small business building hive bodies and frames out of cypress lumber that brother's eldest son cuts and mills locally. This is what we've been building boxes out of for the last two weeks and it makes some really fine boxes. This should do away with the need for painting the bodies as well as the cypress turns to a really beautiful shade of gray left on it's own. I guess it depends on if we can produce them at a reasonable cost.
Did I mention that there is a YouTube channel involved with this blog now? If you go to YouTube.com Aand type in itsmesrd in the search window it will take you to my channel. So far there is only a few videos one on transferring a nuc hive to a full size box and one showing how to can pork. The technique used in the pork video will work for any meat that you would want to can.
Follow the link for a video of me working the bees
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mfby_wr8fw