Varroa Control - Drone Frame

As part of my varroa control strategy, if you can call it that, I inserted a drone frame into the brood chamber of my main hive, hive two. Drone take ~24 days to mature before emerging from the cell so the varroa are attracted to them. The extra 3 days increases the chances of another of the mother varroa's progeny reaching breeding age.

It wasn't fully capped but I didn't want the drone emerging and unleashing a flood of varroa on the hive. After removal I pulled 20 larvae and counted the mites on them. From this small sample I estimate that 1.5% of the drone brood where maturing while sharing a cell with a varroa mite family.

20 Drones, 3 female varroa

The chickens enjoyed eating the brood. Its not great for the bees because the chickens break the cells down so they have to be redrawn but I know none of the drones or their parasites survived.

The photo below shows a mother varroa mite and her male offspring. The male usually remain in the cell and have a very soft body. I'm guessing they don't like the sun either. This one is making a dash for the shadow on the tip of my thumb, under the larva.

My plan from here, once the new queen has begun laying, is to reinsert the drone frame and give the bees a month or so to repair the damage the chickens have done. By this stage there should be another frame of sacrificial victims so remove. I'll perform the same count and see how the numbers compare. I also need to put a sticky board under the hive and see what the natural mite fall is.

Garlic

As I've mentioned before I've had some good success with garlic in Christchurch. Garlic requires quite rich soil as it has very short roots. The soil in my raised beds is a mixture of saw dust, pig manure, chicken manure and few other goodies which seems to work.

Around this time last year I visited our local organic green grocer and purchased a few bulbs of organic garlic. I broke these up into the individual cloves and planted the larger ones. Traditionally garlic is planted on the shortest day and harvested on the longest day. Mine was planted just before the shortest day and harvested mid Janurary.

Planting garlic is quite simple. After the soil has had compost spread on it use the handle of a fork to press holes about 50mm deep and 150mm apart. Drop the cloves into the holes, pointy end up and cover with soil/compost. Then place a layer of straw or mulch on top to protect the new growths from frost.

The garlic can be harvested and used at any time, after it has grown but for best storage it seems better to leave it in the ground until the top growth has completely dried out.

Garden Log #1

I'm really bad at keeping records, every few weeks I wonder what I did last year, what I planted when and what the yields were. This post is an effort to keep a reference for future years so I can improve my processes and, hopefully, not make the same mistakes. I'm also interested in yields vs inputs and how the garden produce compares, financially, with the supermarket. I'm not expecting that it will be cheaper

One of the biggest challenges I find in keeping the garden productive is getting the timing correct. Its not just knowing what time of year to plant because the weather varies so much, however there are plenty of guidelines which I attempt to adhere to. The Yates garden guide is a very handy reference here.

Our front door porch is no longer used as an entry way and gets a lot of sun so it have become my seed raising area. It there now, planted in vermicast, are

• 1 tray onion seeds
• 1 tray salad greens

Last year I planted what I thought would be plenty of onions (one a week or 52 in total) but that is insufficient so I'll plant twice as many this year (120ish). We seem to have plenty of garlic but as I didn't keep records I don't know how many I planted. I harvested around 40 bulbs of very tasty garlic, so much better than what is available in the supermarket.

The weekend just been has seen me set up an experiment in companion planting it the hope that my brassicas (broccoli, cauliflower etc) will not be quite so infested this year. In the south raised bed (1m by 2.4m) I planted the following

• front row of Nasturtium and Marigolds (seeds)
• back row of Borage (seeds)
• 5 broccoli seedlings
• 10 garlic cloves around the broccoli seedlings

Its probably the wrong time of year for planting the flowers but the seeds should stay dormant until summer. I'll also put a cloche over them to keep them a bit warmer and keep the cats out.

Sweetcorn

I'm never quite sure what will grow in the Christchurch climate but I seem to be onto a winner with sweetcorn or maize. There's nothing quite like breaking a couple of ears off the stem, dropping it into a pot of boiling water and then serving it up, all in less than five minutes. Its very sweet, low maintenance and keeps the sun out of my son's bedroom during the day (a bit...).

I'm growing two varieties this year. The smaller one is Yates Honey Sweet, which we've had a few cobs from so far and it is very sweet. The taller one, which is over two meters high, is Red Yellow Maize from the Koanga Institute. The description says that 20% will be red and 80% yellow.

The ears can be eaten as sweetcorn when young or used to make polenta, porridge and bread when its a bit older. The color difference is quite stunning. The silk on the tops of the ears and the pollen bearing top are both quite different as can be seen in these photos.