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-2* with a -20* wind chill here now. I sure glad I’m retired and not on call with the electric company any more.
I spent a long day yesterday thawing my daughter’s water line. Got it going around 10pm and got my stuff gathered up and home around 11:30. Sat dow2n in the recliner and woke up after 3am.
Lots of hobbies here. Building bows, arrows, game calls, reloading, etc. I have some flame Maple burl laminations I’m going to use for my first take down bow build. It’s just got to warm up a bit.
I hope my bees survive Robin. It’s danged cold out there. I made a bee vacuum with interchangeable baskets this past week. Just need some #6 hardware screen to finish the baskets. That size is very hard to find.
Some of my game calls
This is a bow I built for a cousin several years ago. He passed away from cancer and the bow came back home. There’s a pretty good story involved about this that I may write about.
My cousin shooting the bow on the first outing.
Enough for now.
Dennis
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I decided I needed to go for a woods walk and swap out my trail camera cards. These have been out since mid December. I got to the first camera, a real cheapie, shut it off and swapped the card. Turned it back on to check the battery voltage and everything was fine.
Second camera is a new Wildgame camera and this is it’s first outing. Battery is still good, swapped the cards, and headed for camera three.
Number three is the oldest of the trio and has been in these woods for probably three years. I mounted it a little higher than normal because I had one camera drown here last year.
Got home to check the videos.
For some reason #1 had no videos. I’ll have to check it next outing.
Camera #2 had 1017 videos on it. Very few had animals in them. The Wildgame cameras have very good photo and video quality but their sensors are way too sensitive. I think a mosquito would trigger it. LOTS of videos of woods. Wind, rain, fog, snow, anything and everything triggered it. Right around two weeks ago the night videos started getting dark. The IR LEDS started flickering and fading out over the next week. I need to bring it home and put it in a baggie of dessicant. Maybe it got wet????
Camera #3. Old reliable. Somehow it got reset to take pictures, not videos. The videos are much better quality than the pictures. I wound up with 2238 mostly grainy pictures of deer, squirrels, and a few coyotes. For some reason it would detect something and then take a picture every ten seconds for a couple of hours. Maybe it is time to retire this one.
Here’s a few shots of the woods. It was a good day to be out.
I spotted this tree a couple of months ago and showed it to my 8 year old granddaughter and explained what bird did this. She thought it was neat. We have lots of Pileated Woodpeckers around this area and when they go to work it sounds like someone is beating the tree with a hammer.
This gives an idea of the size. The hollowed out area is around ten feet high.
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Went out to try calling in a coyote or other critter today and swap out a couple of trail cameras. I didn’t get any takers on the free meal offering so I wandered the woods looking for shed antlers. Strike two. If the bucks have shed their antlers they hid them.
I put out a brand new Wildgame trail camera two months ago. It has great video but the trigger is so sensitive I think a bug would set it off. The LED lights are also flickering and dimming. Within the past week it almost filled a 16GB card and completely drained the batteries four days ago. I have it in a baggie of desiccant to see if it might have gotten damp.
A old time tree stand that’s seen better days.
And a view of the woods beyond it.
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Robin, have you ever tried catching bees with a swarm trap? I started putting some together today and will hang them out next week.
These are fiber plant buckets. I coated the outside with a water sealant and then plugged all but one hole in the bottom of each set. This will leave an entrance hole for the bees. I’ll hang a used hive frame inside, put the two bucket halves together with screws and seal the top of the seam. I’ll drill a small hole in the back end for ventilation.
The used hive frames will give off the wax and propolis odor which will help attract bees to it.
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I went out yesterday to hang two more bee swarm traps. I have access to about 800 acres of timber and river bottom land that is owned by the company I retired from. I did some high water travel and turned around at one point. I knew the water was too deep. This is three days after the rain we had and the water in these pictures is still moving at a pretty good clip.
My turn around point. I could see water over the road at least 3/4 mile ahead and know there are two spots that are wallered out. County grader doesn’t maintain much down here and this water is moving toward me.
Looking back where I came from. The water crosses back across the road about 1/4 mile away and runs off into an old creek drainage. It is deep at that corner but is passable.
The wood ducks love this flooded timber.
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Took my pickup for a test run yesterday. No more bearing whine. I went down to the company lake to check my swarm traps. No luck yet. Temperatures are still too cool. While I was there I checked the Bald Eagle nest. This nest has been active for about 20 years now and I could see at least one chick in the nest now. Several years ago I spotted 13 eagles around the lake one winter day during the migration. This is as close as my phone camera would zoom in on the nest and one adult (sitting up and to the left of the nest).
I thought I would add this. This is not how I would recommend how to plant trees unless you want an impenetrable wall.
There was two small open tracts of land here totaling about ten acres. Our company biologist decided we needed to plant Pecan and Oak trees. He ordered the pecans and acorns and we stored them in our warehouse. Each of these bags were about 200#s apiece and there were a lot of them. I told the biologist that that was way too many seeds to plant in those small plots and he stated that half of them wouldn’t sprout. We ate so many pecans we were sick of them.
Planting day arrived and he hired a local farmer to disc up the plots. He then brought in a manure spreader and loaded equal amounts of pecans and acorns in each load and spread them on the plots and then ran the disc over them again.
This took place around 2002 or 2003. The trees are now fighting for space and are 30′ tall and more. You can’t even throw a rabbit through the mass. I don’t know where our biologist got his information about half of the seeds wouldn’t sprout but they didn’t know squat about the Neosho River bottom soil. It would surprise me if there was a dozen seeds that didn’t sprout. The only trees that are more than 2-3″ in diameter are the ones near the very edge.
About 2007 we burned off the grass on the lake dikes and also the tree plots. The biologist came by about a week later and had a fit telling us we had killed all the trees. I told him it would be a good idea to have someone make a couple of passes through them with a small brush hog. He would not hear of it.
This is what the forest looks like today. It would be a great place to cut tipi poles.
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Since we have drifted onto the covid vaccine, I have received the Moderna vaccine, and ended up with blood clot in leg (calf). A very strange coincidence.
Just in time to ruin any early season turkey hunting.
I’m posting pic of my voluptuous legs that show the swelling. If inappropriate, please delete.
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Been busy as heck here lately.
Had to do some work on my septic tank drain, lots of hair like roots.
Installed a rain gutter on my daughter’s house–needs two more.
And among other things acted like a beekeeper. I made some swarm boxes and hung them in various places around the lake owned by the company I worked for. I’ve been checking them every two to three days and yesterday evening it finally paid off. I had a swarm moving into one of my planter bucket swarm boxes. The cluster of bees seen in this picture is maybe 1/5 the total size of the swarm.
I set up a hive box and lowered the buckets down and eventually set them on the hive box so I could separate the buckets.
Notice the shrubbery standing taller than the grass. Those aren’t tree saplings. It’s lots of poison ivy I’m wading through but I’m not allergic to it,
I separated the halves of the trap and shook the bees into the hive. This is just part of them.
A look inside the top half. Every bit was totally covered with bees before I shook them into the hive. They can hang onto the rough interior of the bucket pretty good.
You always have to have a hero shot.
I found the swarm around 5pm yesterday and went home to gather the stuff needed to box them up. After getting them in the hive box you have to make sure the queen is in the hive. I didn’t spot her but the way they were marching into the hive and fanning makes me certain that she was in there. Then I waited until they settled in for the night before I plugged the entrance and loaded them in my truck for the ride home. It was 8:30 when I got home and put them in the apiary.
This was my first swarm catch and it was an interesting adventure. The bees were very docile even through all the jostling and bumping. It was a lot of work but I probably came home with close to $200 worth of bees.
I videoed all of the catch and will post it on youtube later.
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I went out to fill the birdbath (bee waterer) and noticed a lot of bees around a nuc box that I did a walk away split on around a week ago. I figured it was probably other bees robbing the hive so I opened it up. I was surprised to find this queen inside.
I am thinking I may have caught a small swarm that moved with the split. There was not enough time for them to produce a new queen.
I decided to check the swarm that I caught eleven days ago. They have been drawing out a lot of wax and there are eggs and larvae in different stages of development already and they have cross combed two frames very badly. It’s amazing how quickly they work.
So now if the queen stays in the nuc box I doubled my hives in just over a week.
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Had quite a day yesterday. Finished my hive checks that I got rained out of the evening before and got stung on the end of my trigger finger through my rubber glove. It was my fault because I mashed her when I pulled a frame. Finger is Ok and slightly swelled.
I went out for a drive to check the swarm traps and saw this young Great Horned Owl. It was either having a hard time learning to fly or it had accidently fallen out of the nest.
I got to the trap where I caught the first swarm and saw activity around it so I went home and got my stuff and did another catch.
This swarm is about 1/3 the size of the first one. The bees were all congregated at the top of the bucket. The end of the planter bucket is 12 inches in diameter and the bees are about 1.5 inches deep.
I think they had gone into the bucket that morning or maybe the evening before just before it started raining. They really didn’t want to leave the bucket. Every time I shook them onto the hive and table about half would go back to the bucket. After the fourth or fifth shake I laid a shirt across the open end until the majority had calmed down and gone into the hive. I had one sting my leather glove, again, because I had mashed her but it didn’t get to skin this time.
I failed to spot the queen but I’m sure she is in the hive because they all marched in and stayed. I’ll find out tomorrow afternoon when I open the door and let them check out the area.
Being in the middle of a couple of thousand bees flying about you is a neat experience. The bees were never aggressive toward me during the transfer from the bucket to hive even through all the shaking and bumping.
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I thought I’d give everybody a peek at the place I’ve been bee hunting. I retired from the big electric company here in Kansas and I have access to right at 800 acres of timber and lake ground. The best thing is it’s only about six miles away from my house.
We’ve been having some rain so it’s a little muddy.
I call this the Wood Duck Marsh or mid summer it is Skeeter Flats. Plenty of water for them right now and my mushroom hunting area in under water.
I took some video in this section of timber a few years back when I was turkey hunting. The ground was saturated and every step was squishy underfoot. Every step would result in a big cloud of mosquitos swirling up about knee level.
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Glad to hear TJ is mending well. I know a couple of guys that went through that surgery and didn’t follow the therapy regimen. It didn’t work out well for them.
Richard, when I was in southern Arizona (on a different kind of hunting trip) I heard and saw three large swarms fly over camp. You could hear them coming. We also saw a large swarm in a tree when we were out the first day and I told everybody to circle way around it.
My brother sent me this picture. He went out to gather eggs last Sunday and when he reached into the nest box he felt fur. He got out his flashlight to see what critter had gotten into the nest and found three kittens and two eggs. Next day was three kittens and four eggs.
One of their cats had moved in with the chickens over the winter and they get along fine.
I was watching my granddaughter last Tuesday so we went to look.
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I pulled up to the mailbox Friday and could see something sticking out of the grass by the edge of the road. Turned out to be this big fella.
I was staying with my granddaughter that day and on my way home I did a swarm trap check. I had another swarm move into the same trap that I caught the last two in. Out of seven traps I caught three in this one and none in the others.
Saturday evening was gathering time and I brought them home.
Here’s another short video to cure any insomnia you have.
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I had a visitor when I went out to get the mail yesterday. Another turtle has shown up and I think it is a Red Slider. I found one a couple of years ago under my Mulberry tree and it looked like it was trying to dig a hole to lay eggs. I went out a little later to check and it was gone. I must have disturbed its digging and it moved on.
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I’ll look that up Ray. Sounds interesting for sure.
My bone spur is still there. The insurance apparently knows more about medicine than the Dr. so they denied any MRI and told me I had to go through physical therapy for six weeks first. The therapist put me in traction twice a week for three weeks with no relief from the spur and told me to go back to the Dr. Now the Dr. is trying to get the insurance to approve the MRI since I didn’t go through the full six weeks. Three weeks cost me $240 in copay. I’m thankful I’m not on the govt healthcare plan anymore or I would be paying full price of $1200. I hope I get something done in the next year…….or two…..or….
On another note I went out for a woods walk and changed the cards in my trail cameras. Found a few rubs and a couple of scrapes. As much as I want to I won’t be hunting this year. Dragging out a deer would not be possible with this bone spur. Dragging out the doe I shot last year was an excruciating ordeal and I wound up taking the tailgate off my truck and using it as a ramp to finally load her up. I’ve devised a winch set up to load deer now but still won’t be able to drag one out of the woods. Looks like my weapon will be my Nikon this year.
The bucks are starting to chase the does here. I had several videos of them. Here’s a frame grab from one of the trail camera videos. Two does bickering over a choice Bur Oak acorn.
I need to take some lens cleaner next time out. These cameras have been hanging for 3-4 years now. I’m surprised they still work.
Here’s another shot of a rub with my Remington Model 41 .22.
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I finally had my MRI done yesterday. Laid inside of the machine and listened to it buzz and beep for fifteen minutes and for the rest of the day my upper teeth/jaw hurt. You can’t have any metal in there but does it affect teeth fillings?
I spent last week in Tulsa, Ok at the ABABMX (American Bicycle Association Bicycle Moto Cross) Grand National races watching my youngest daughter race. This is her 11th year. Saw a lot of old friends and made some new ones too.
She is riding as a team member of Bombshell Bicycles and her points standing is high in her class so they traded her old bike out for a new one free of charge.
She qualified for Wednesday’s Race of Champions and did pretty good in her class.
3711 riders had pre-signed for the Race of Champions and there was a long line at the registration trailer signing up that morning. I don’t know what the rider count for the Grands event that started on Thursday and finished late Sunday evening.
I hope everybody had a good Thanksgiving.
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