Washington soil is stubborn. Put a spade in it and you can hop up and down for an hour on it without penetrating more than half an inch. It’s gravel. Glacial till. You can shovel it if you slant your shovel sideways and hack, like somebody shoveling coal on a steam locomotive.
Say that driving stakes meets the same problem. The only help is to have the ground a little damp. But I got out there to put the back-board on the flowerbed in front of the mural, and swung a regular hammer to little avail, got a slightly heavier mallet, got one in (there are 3) and finally borrowed a ball-peen hammer of slightly greater weight from our neighbor. I hammered that sucker until I was dripping sweat, and swearing. Jane hammered one right in. I spent the next half hour trying to get the next one in, and I swear there must be a rock of size somewhere directly under it. But we finally got it.
Joan’s husband came down to help us move dirt. This was very welcome. We got most of it shifted. And we started to put up the arbor that goes with the garage—and one board is split. It’ll go together all the same (Elmer’s glue is your friend) but we are now stalled with the top board in a brace being glued. We’ll add a couple of screws for good measure.
The rain is coming. But we are so close to finished on that thing it’s so tempting just to go until we drop.
I finally got Jane to give up and come in before she had heat stroke. And we are now parked inside for the duration, since the next thing we have to do involves that board that has to set for 24 hours.
Tomorrow it will be done-ish. -Ish, because Jane still sees areas she wants to fix, but for all practical purposes we are now a garden.
This is the lush time of year for the pond: we have 2 waterlily flowers in bloom, the algae/green slime that the fish love to nosh on gets too mature for them and floats to the surface, and I am cleaning the filter daily with a high-pressure hose. I’m figuring about 4-5 pounds of dead algae a day out of that filter, which is involved with a UV light that explodes the algae cells that pass by it. The filter is markedly lighter when I reinstall it. I don’t have to shut the pump down for this operation, however. I just yank the filter, hose it down, shove it back in, and on it goes. Our fish are growing like crazy, have now reached 4-5 inches, and are fat. We’ve used no algicides or baneful chemicals that might harm pond life. We have waterboatmen, the occasional dragonfly, various midges, etc, and the occasional worm or mysterious swimmer. The fish are omnivorous, though thank goodness they can’t catch the dragonflies. I’d like to have frogs, but the koi would make short work of those. And turtles are out, because they nip the fish. So we just keep it a fish/bird/flying insect sort of pond.
My Mom tried to do frogs… turns out one of her cats has a thing for them…
One of the surprising things I have learned from having a bird bath is that they attract bees. It appears that bees need a source of water as much as birds do.
We’re trying to support bees, but we keep getting wasps. I suppose we should support them too.
The garden undoubtedly appreciates the overflow algae compost.
A big enough frog wouldn’t disappear down a koi gullet. See if you can get a big ol’ leopard frog or bullfrog; even at 5″, I’d think a koi would have a rough time with anything bigger than a spring peeper. I was thinking a newt or salamander, but those are skinny enough to be a snack.
BTW, after you get below the 6″ of sand in our area, you start hitting lava pebbles. It’s like trying to shovel tennis balls.
Bees definitely need water, especially in warm weather. The interior of the hive has to be kept at 95 degrees in order to be optimum for brood. Drones develop at a lower temperature, about 93 or so, I believe. Workers need that 95 degree temperature to develop properly.
Foragers will seek out water sources and will bring back water just as if they were bringing nectar. They will also communicate the location of the water sources to the other workers, so every bee who flies out for water will know where to find it. Unfortunately, many times, the water is a swimming pool, or a water dish for a pet, and when the bees are trying to get the water, something disturbs them, or swats at them, their natural defensive attitude arises. Unfortunate for the recipient, but even more so for the bee.
Anyway, what they do is bring the water back, regurgitate it so it’s sprayed across the comb, and then the house bees, who are fanning their wings across the sprayed area move air across the moisture, which evaporates and takes the heat out of the hive. You do not want to close the top cover of a beehive in summer for this reason, nor would you want to close it in winter, either, because of condensation from the bees’ natural respiratory activity. Water that condenses on the top cover drips down on the bees, chilling them, and that ultimately results in killing the entire cluster of bees.
Oops, went into another long discussion of Apis apis mellifera. My apologies, nadiin.
neat info, howsomever.
Since you appear to have bee knowledge, can you explain what seemed like an odd behavior to me? My birdbath is the square one with the celtic knots on the inside of the bowl, and the bees will generally either cling to the sides or land on the middle part when it’s above water and suck up water from the edges. But after I put in some fresh water, they were mostly on the edges of the bath, but there were a few that would fly over the water and just briefly touch it with their rear ends, where the stinger is. Were they just testing to see if it was shallow enough to land in, cooling off, or doing some other unknown action?
And I have these little plastic sachets that are supposed to keep down algae growth by using up the excess nutrients that get in the water. (http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=9089+9367+14583&pcatid=14583) And I use soy based birdbath cleaner to clean the bath out. Do you think either of those would hurt the bees? What with the trouble bees are having recently, I don’t want to stress them out more.
Somewhere in Compact Space, Hallan Meras has this look on his face as he stares at yet another lifesupport filter that needs to be cleaned, feeling this connection with “someone” across the light-years…
😆
I swam in my swimming pond in Spain last week! amongst the lilypads, 3 pink ones and 3 creamy ones. with frogs sitting on them. and Natrix Maura, a spanish version of the grass snake, bumped into me. he was so horrified, after a couple of sneaky looks he hightailed it out and I didn’t see him again. totally harmless and very shy. I had a bit of green in the water as the pool guy had been to do some more planting, finalise everything, and give the plants some fertiliser – which made the water green up slightly, but it was going again as I left. it has a carboniser which pumps carbon dioxide through and pool circulator and skimmers and a “plant filter” basically the idea is that the plants around the edge clean the water and you swim in the middle. lots of wildlife – damselflies, pond skaters, tadpoles – dinner for snake – swallows and bats drinking in flight – I hope later newts as well as frogs, and dragonflies ….
Neat!
oh and frogs are noisy enough, never mind bullfrogs!
Froggy went a courtin’ and he did ride, uh-huh.
I don’t believe those sachets will hurt the bees. As I said, most of the water is used to cool the hive. As for why they fly over the top of the water and brush it with their abdomens, I’ll venture a theory. Bees do not land on all 6 legs at once, but rather the hind legs hit first. Watching a bee land is kind of like watching an object that is not truly aerodynamic try to be graceful in landing. There’s no way a bee can be graceful, especially when she’s trying to get into the hive and there are other bees trying to get out. Worse than Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras. She’s going to land on the hind legs, so when she tries to land on the birdbath, she really doesn’t see the water as such. When her abdomen hits the water, she knows she can’t land there, and tries to find the areas where she can land and draw up the water through her proboscis. Do the sachets float in the water? The bees might use them as platforms to stand on while they’re drinking. Otherwise, the center platform and the sides will be sufficient. If you happen to see a bee in the water struggling to get out, you can gently push it to the side of the birdbath, she can’t sting while she’s trying to swim, and won’t sting anyway. But, you can also just push the water along and she’ll eventually float to the side, and can crawl out from there. A piece of wood or paper to help her out would also be welcome.
Yes, I have a little bee knowledge. I’ve been keeping bees for about 8 years, and I don’t know squat about them. Bees have been doing what they do for millions of years, humans have been keeping bees for only about 150 years. The book says the bees should do this, but the bees never read the book, so every day I go out to work in the hives, I learn something. Sometimes it’s a painful lesson, other times, they know I’m there, but since I don’t do anything to disturb them overmuch, they just keep an eye on me.
Joe, I was clicking around the Shejidan site and discovered that it’s your birthday! Hope it is a good one, the cats are giving you lots of attention, and that the next year is a joyful one.
And, incidentally, I’ve read several of your posts about bees and find them fascinating. Lots of interesting tidbits.
My father had bees for several years (at one time he had six hives, one of them in the back yard). He used a galvanized chick feeder/waterer with coiled manila rope in the trough, as a way to keep the bees watered – that was for the five-hive group. It seemed to work.
When it’s hot and dry, they’ll head for any water source. When I found the guy across the back fence had bees and they needed water, I bought a shallow clay (plant-pot) saucer with a broken edge, put a smaller saucer in the middle for extra landing space, and let the dripping hose keep it filled to the level of the missing rim – just about right for the bees. (It took some fast talking to get the store to sell me the chipped saucer, though.)
Two more bee questions:
1. Can you really track the bees back to the hive by seeing which way they take off and heading straight in that direction? If you can, how far do bees fly? I kinda wonder where these are coming from.
2. And, given all the news stories, how can you tell if the bees are africanized, and does that matter if they aren’t by their hive?
Well, well, well! Happy birthday, Joe!
Hippo birdie 2 ewe, joe-ji!
Wow! Thank you all for the birthday wishes. It was a nice peaceful day, especially since Birdie’s feeling better, eating and drinking, too.
Philospher, 1) if you’re quick enough, yes, you can track the bees back to their hives. In fact, it was how people used to find the beehives to begin with, watch the bee in the field, and try to follow it back to its hive and then mark the location so you could come back later and retrieve the honey. Bees fly at about 15mph, and will normally go up to about 15 feet in the air when they fly until they get to the nectary or the water source. Bees will normally forage out to about 2 – 3 miles, although they can forage out to 5 miles but arrive back home empty since they use the nectar they’ve gathered as fuel to get home.
2) Africanized honey bees can be detected through the use of a microscope, only. Apis scutella has shorter forelegs than apis apis melliferra, but only by a microsocopic difference. AHB hives are extremely defensive, and will go on alert much more quickly than European bees will, and the AHB queen will send out every worker in the hive to defend, whereas the European queen will send only about 200 or fewer and they won’t go much more than maybe 100 feet or so from the hive. One chased me last night on the lawn tractor, even though I was on the other side of the garage and in front of the other hive. It’s not clear whether AHB will survive the northern winters, but they are prevalent enough through the Southern Gulf Coast that any feral hive is presumed to be AHB, especially in Florida. The AHB venom is identical to European bee venom, but it’s the sheer volume of hundreds to thousands of stings that inject massive amounts of venom into a victim.
Bee venom is made up of a conglomeration of various toxins, some are neuro-, some are cyto-, and some are haemotoxins. There are also chemicals that are apparently designed to cause intense pain in the victim, others to excite the production of histamines in the victim (thereby bringing on anaphylactic shock if the victim is allergic). A honey bee injects probably 1/100 ml of venom, but it’s enough to let you know you’ve been stung. If you Google honey bee venom, you can find several studies that bread down the chemistry and function of the 8 known constituents. The other 19 constituents that have been identified have unknown functions as of yet.
Yay Birdie! And thanks for the bee info.
Try using barley pads to keep the algae down some. Its all natural and will not harm any thing. you can get them at petsmart or petco. or just get some barley straw and toss it in your pond. It will sink to the bottom. There some stuff in the barley that prohibits the growth of algae.
Evilwezal, thank you and welcome!
I am wrapping the lily bundles in netting and barley-straw, and I use liquid barley extract and a uv light to keep the water clear. Plus the koi nosh on what does grow. Barley is a wonderful thing. Leave it to Japan to figure out neat things with ponds.
when we filled the pond last year, fishless and bare, just dechlorinated, we had no idea it would de-ice this spring rife with worms and bugs and algae, and I’ve done everything possible to preserve that condition, which is natural fish food. Our koi, who started at three inches, are now pushing five, and fat, with very little feeding from us, and we are delighted by this method of keeping the pond in shape.