Bees and Trees

Morgan Glasser

In this week's blog I would like to take a moment and talk about my final project and a little about what we did on the farm. This week on the farm a couple of students set up the irrigation for the apple trees. There was two trees that had already been set up but the four others that we planted last week need to be set up. In order to keep the the irrigation pipe from being punctured we need to dig little trenches to place the pipe in. To keep it safe underground it was surrounded by a pvc pipe. When the pipe was lined up with all the trees and covered we made holes in the pipe to place a drip piece in. Once we finished we tested the water and it worked perfectly.

On Wednesday I had a graduated redwood student and current bee keeper come to the farm. The reason for this is because of my final project I would like to have bees on the marsh next to the farm. That day we both went out to inspect the site where the bees are going to go. When we were out there we talked about clearing the area up a little to make it easier to access the bees but still keep them hidden. Another thing we discussed was how many hives should be on the marsh. We both agree that 2 hives is the least we should have for a couple reasons. The first is that if something happens to one of the queens we can just move a queen from one hive to another without have to drive far away to get one. The second is if one hive is struggling we can move more bees to the struggling hive to help it get back on its feet. Another thing that we talked about when it would be a good time to put the bees in, and because of the rain the bee season has been pushed back a little. We need to wait till the rain is stopping and once it gets hotter. Hopefully in about three weeks we can put them in. But before that there is only one hive on the marsh so we need to get another one and make sure we have all the right tools to maintain the hive.

Once everything is in order and checked buy the beekeeper and approved we will have bees on the farm.