New Babies!

These are baby pekin ducks. Boy what an adventure their life has been so far! They were hatched Monday, October 25 and shipped from California to Cincinnati, Ohio. They arrived here this morning Wednesday, October 27.

I ordered 12 "straight run" baby pekin ducks. Straight run means you get luck of the draw - basically, you have no preference if you get either boys or girls. Hopefully, you get 50/50 and the hatcheries do try to give you that mix. The boys will be our "next generation" meat ducks and the girls will be our egg layers. So look for more duck meat this coming Spring! We will probably be ordering more meat ducks in March as the duck meat seems to be very popular. Also this Spring we will be offering meat chickens.

By the way, do you know how to tell the difference between a boy duck and a girl duck (outside of the "obvious"). A girl duck has a loud, obnoxious quack (gee, I wonder why?). The boy duck sounds like he has a bad cold and has a hoarse quack. Also, a boy duck has a feather that curls on his tail. So the next time you go to a duck pond, you can impress your friends by telling them which ducks are girls and boys!

The Bee Lady??

Yesterday a beekeeper came over to help me with our bee hives. The original beekeeper that placed the hives here has sort of abandoned us. He had cancer earlier this summer, but I know he recovered. We quickly figured out he was more interested in getting free eggs than helping us learn about beekeeping. When my husband reminded him of the original agreement, he disappeared leaving us with two beehives that we had no idea what to do with.

As always, God intervened and last week, a beekeeper showed up at my door wanting to know how my hives were doing. Thank you God!! I explained our situation to him. So yesterday, he showed up with two "bee suits", a "smoker" and various "bee gear" and we opened our two bee hives. To say, I was apprehensive is an understatement, but it was kind of neat too.

After several hours of cleaning out hives, the verdict is very good. We have two very healthy hives (yeah!!!). The original hive has about 30 pounds of honey in it - this is what the hive will live on during the winter. The beekeeper said this hive will definitely produce enough honey for me to harvest by next July (let me see . . . B & D Honey, B & D Bees . . . no, I think B & D Honey sounds better).

The second hive is not as productive. He told me I need to "feed" the hive. Now how in the heck do you "feed" a hive. It is not like you go to Kroger's and get bee food. The beekeeper wasn't too specific on this part - just get some sugar water and spray the frames. Yeah right. That means opening up the hives and removing the frames that are covered with buzzing (and sort of ticked off bees) and spray a sugar water solution. And, it gets even better, we need to do it by this weekend. The beekeeper did offer to help if I can't find anyone else to help me. I did get the name of a lady out this way who does "bee rescue". So I am going to give her a call this morning to see if she will come feed my bees. Never thought beekeeping was so complicated.