I thought I would share a couple homestead fails we have had recently. I try to look at these events as learning experiences. "Try" is the key word here.
If you are new to bee keeping this may not look like a bad picture. Plenty of healthy looking bees building comb and using propolis to seal up the hive. The problem is the comb is going perpendicular to the top bars. This is called cross-combing and is bad for a hive if you want to manage it properly. I should have checked the hive earlier and corrected it sooner. At this point my plan is to wait until spring and harvest this quarter of the hive for honey and watch them more carefully when they are drawing comb.
This is whats left of the pole beans I planted a while back. I posted earlier on an assassin bug I found in the garden eating a bean leaf beetle (Cerotoma trifurcata). Well I guess I needed an army of assassin bugs to deal with the amount of bean leaf beetles that came this year. They ate every single plant that sprouted, but they did not touch the established pole beans growing 15 feet away. Maybe they just like new growth. I planted the beans late, hoping to get a second crop this year, so maybe I need to start them earlier next year. I will use this area to plant winter snap peas soon.
