Found my 2 queens, and its getting busy

This weekend has been busy. My brother and I have cut the grass, not completely mind.

We have left lots of the ground uncut as it has flowers and various different types of grasses, which prior to the cut looked beautiful, it still looks beautiful but in a different way, more of a man made beauty, with paths and lanes. Previously you could almost see waves and ripples blow through the orchard as the wind brushed across it. What we have cut is still tall about 3 inches in height. It does make getting around the orchard much easier. We can also comfortably sit and have a picnic again. You can now walk around each tree with great ease. The mower also mulches so most of the grass has been shredded and will compost back into the ground.

We had a gap in the fence, which was originally used to bring horses and equipment in from the stables, it also meant guard dogs from the stables could get into the orchard, that gap has now been closed and fenced, the dogs were sightly mi-ft.

On Saturday I listening to music while cutting the grass, the headphones cut out the noise from mower which is very loud. Anyway one of the large rottweilers got in and got behind me. This particular dog could attack if your back is to it. I turn around and realised she was their and she scared the Hebe-gibes out of me. So the hole is now closed, just in case.

The cutting of the grass is time consuming and I had split the work up between me and my brother. We have put paths around so you can walk from one tree to another, and are able to walk all the way round the orchard.

While my brother was cutting the grass and he almost walked into a swarm that had settled on a tree. He was scared, very scared. I later found another swarm on another tree. So now in the orchard, we have four hives. I will be removing them within th

e week. My wife has a friend that wants bees in the garden, so he may be getting 1 of them, and the other will go to my parents garden. The bees at my parents have suffered from chalk brood this year. The bees going to my wife's friend will be looked after by me until he is trained up etc. In fact collecting the swarms was good experience. I enjoyed it and I have a video of me doing so, which may get posted.

Most of the trees that were planted December last year have a layer of course wood shavings around them so that the roots do not have to compete with anything else, the wood is untreated and should decompose down overtime, it may take some of the nitrogen out of the ground but over time it should be fine when in decomposes down. That's the theory.

Then on Sunday, we had some friends come over and walked around the orchard, some of the friends had helped to plant a number of the trees back in 2008. It was nice too see them and they seem to like how the trees have developed. I took some of them into the hives, to do the weekly checks. Still no eggs in the main hives. Lets see next week. Told you it was a busy week. This coming week I will have the extractor so I will be extracting the honey from the orchard within the next couple of days. So it's all go. I also have a number of trees where I have to clear the undergrowth, so the they do not compete with the trees. This job will take some time and gets started tonight.