Hen problems

One death, two ill birds, moulting and brooding chickens, a sharp drop in egg production. We are not having too good a time with our hens at the moment. On Saturday our white leghorn died suddenly. She was a lovely bird with a huge comb and she laid beautiful white eggs. Over the weekend we moved two of our hens to the back garden. One is lethargic and not eating. The other is eating well but is limping. Back on the allotment and one of our copper blacks has gone very broody. She gets up in the morning, eats and then returns to the nest box and sits on any eggs she can find. She is also moulting (as are some of the other hens). All this has contributed to s sharp drop in egg production. We normally get about 14 eggs a day. On Saturday we were down to three though we are now up to seven or eight a day.

The copper black is in for a treat. As she is brooding, and as we have lost our only hen which lays white eggs, I have ordered 6 exchequer leghorn eggs. This is a white hen with black speckles. And they lay white eggs. The eggs arrive on Friday and we will let our copper black brood them.

Ducklings moved outside

The ducklings have outgrown their brooder box so we took the decision that it was time for them to move outside into their own pen in the back garden. They moved in yesterday and will be there for a week before we move them to the allotment. They have taken well to their new situation. There was a couple of heavy showers through the day and they seemed to enjoy them!

Promoting the cause

Low Fell in Gateshead was the venue for an annual fayre yesterday and I was there with preserves, eggs and leaflets to promote the cause of self-sufficiency and, in particular, to drum up business for the Allotment Cafe which we run once a month in Marley Hill Community Centre, in the next village up from where we live in Sunniside. The next cafe is on 30th June. It was a successful day, and a sell-out for the duck eggs, all of which had gone by the time I remembered to take the photo above of my stall.

Another swarm

Just when I thought the swarming was over, on Friday another appeared. This time it was on the hedge, rather than in a tree. Capturing it was therefore relatively easy. I was able to drop most of the swarm into the swarm box in the early afternoon but left it overnight as we had too much on in the evening. We came back at 5.30am and rehoused the swarm in a hive - this is now our 10th. It stands alongside the other new hive and the weaker hive (though it is now looking stronger) at the bottom of the herb garden (see photo above).

Swarm rehoused

I'm just back from the allotment where, in the moonlight, we rehoused the swarm I captured this afternoon. So, Hive 9 is now in place, next door to Hive 4. I hope they are all going to be happy with their new neighbours! The bees themselves were a bit frisky. Despite wearing smocks, I was stung once. David, alas, was stung 5 times. I will check the hive (from a modest distance) tomorrow morning when I open up the hen houses.

Last year, the extreme weather conditions caused the bees to go onto swarm overdrive. I was hoping to avoid swarms this year, especially now that the weather is drier and warmer. We are having fewer this time round but when an existing queen and a large number of the worker bees leave a colony to set up home elsewhere, there are fewer bees to gather nectar and make honey. A new virgin queen in the hive needs a few days to get mated and then needs to establish herself. Nevertheless, we've got another hive from today's exploits, even if we did see a second swarm head off into the distance.

The ducklings are growing

The above photo is of the ducklings that hatched at the start of the month. They were about three days old when I took the photo. Now look at the following picture of the same ducklings taken this morning, about 2 weeks later.



What a difference a fortnight makes! They are growing so quickly that we may have to find an even bigger brooder cage for them before we move them to the allotment where they will join their parents. Like all ducks, they are very messy and need to be cleaned out every day. They are getting through 3 or 4 tubs of duckling crumb feed a day and drink large amounts of water, getting though about 4 litres a day.

They will be making a guest appearance at the Whickham Community Festival on 29th June. There will be a medieval theme so there will be a "village duck pond" though the ducklings will be in a large cage on the grass. The following day they go to Marley Hill Community Centre's "Sunday in the Centre" event. They will be in a cage outside the building and kids will be able to enter a competition to name them.

The one that got away

I have just spent the last couple of hours dealing with two bee swarms on my allotment. The first was on a branch in an ash tree that overhangs the neighbouring allotment. It was spotted by Liz, the allotment holder, who then phoned me to tell me it was there. The second was on the hedge between the two allotments. I spotted it when I arrived. The hardest one to capture was clearly going to be the one in the tree - or so I thought. We had to get step ladders and a long handled tree pruner. At the top of the ladders and feeling very unsteady, I managed to chop off the right branch which then fell onto a sheet I had put on the ground. I then quickly poured the bees into a swarm collecting box which is still sitting on the ground, waiting for the final few bees to go in.

The hedge swarm turned out to be a different matter altogether. I shook it into a cardboard box which I them turned upside down onto a sheet. This is the usual practise when a swarm box is not available (we have only one). Quite a few bees were still flying around and I noticed that they were forming back up into a swarm on the hedge. Clearly I had failed to capture the queen in the box. I decided to leave the swarm for an hour to let it fully reform before attempting a second recovery operation.

When I returned for the second attempt, I decided it would be easier to chop off the branch of the hedge on which the swarm had formed and then shake it into the box. Alas, as I sawed into the branch, the entire swarm took to the air and headed off as a cloud, flying in what appeared to be a predetermined direction. I watched as the swarm disappeared over the hedgerows.

So whilst we are in a position to create a 9th hive, we lost the opportunity for a 10th. Whilst that is disappointing, it is not the end of the world. It is likely that the swarm had already identified a new nest site, hopefully in a hollow in a tree or some other sumilar place, rather than in a building. That said however, Sun Hill Aged Person's Unit here in Sunniside has had a feral honey bee colony living in its roof space for five years and it has been no problem to the residents.

Another feral bee colony, assuming it's not in a location that will cause difficulties for people, is no bad thing, given the loss of bees, both honey and bumble, over the past few decades. Meanwhile, this evening, we will transfer the swarm in the swarm box into a spare hive (which David is assembling now).