Tag Archives: weather

April flurries bring May…..worries?

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I am looking outside at a snowstorm.  It is April 6 and it is snowstorming outside.  Brrr.  It has been too cold the past few days for any sap to flow.  The forecast for tomorrow is promising for good sap run.

I am torn between feeling elated that I’ll be able to get at least one more boil in before the end of the maple syrup run, and feeling angst about the cold weather’s effect on the health of the bees’ that I am ordering.  Talk about a new feeling, being worried about bees.  The bees are not even in my possession yet and I am already worried about them.  I must remember that the bees I am ordering from my local supplier, Mahmoud at Forestdew Honey (www.forestdewhoney.com), are overwintered in an indoor,  climate controlled ‘beedome’ so they will not be subjected to the erratic weather conditions outside.  The bees I have ordered are New World Carniolians.  While half of the colonies I am getting will have imported queens, the other half will have Ontario queens.  (My reasoning behind this: why not?)  I will take note of which are which and make observations on whether the colonies featuring imported or domestic queens perform better. Courtesy of my Opa, the beeyard will host several homemade hives, as pictured below.  IMG_1552What a craftsman he is.   The bees will be ready for pick-up in late May.  In the meantime I have more beehives to assemble and a bee yard to prepare for their arrival.  That, I believe will keep me busy as a bee until they arrive.

 

Maple Syrup on the Brain

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I thought we were nearing the end of our season here in Eastern Ontario.  However, upon checking the ever-changing weather forecast it appears to be lasting at least one more week.  Everything in my life has been revolving around maple syrup for the past month.  From checking the weather forecast about 5 times a day to even muttering in my sleep about the float level of the evaporator, this is an all-consuming hobby of mine.

Maple Syrup Season 2

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I’ve been getting all of my ducks in a row these past few weeks.  Since we tapped the trees 2 weeks ago, I have been stacking wood, cleaning tools, organizing equipment…and waiting for the sap to flow.  And waiting some more.  Since that week of sunny days with above average highs, the temperatures have dropped again (and I dare say plummeted last night to -15° Celsius with a wind-chill of -25°Celcius). Needless to say I’m antsy; I want to have a boiling day!  I’ve been keeping myself occupied by  double-checking that all of our equipment is in order, and doing beekeeping research (a story for another day).  In particular we’ve been fine-tuning our sap-transportation process.  Since the RTV has mini-caterpillar tracks on it meant for getting around in the bush now, it’s inefficient to be driving it back and forth to the house to empty the 50 gallon collecting tank out.  I purchased a bigger tank (over twice the size at 125 gal) this winter that we will situate in the truck bed instead.  So we will be dumping the buckets into the RTV tank, pumping sap from the RTV tank to the one in the truck, driving the truck to the sugar shack and then pumping the sap from the truck tank to the holding tank outside the sugar shack.    We mulled over the best way to do this given the equipment that we already own and settled on purchasing an additional pump to leave in the second collecting tank for the season.  Getting the proper sized fittings and tubing and quick connects has been a trial.  At Canadian Tire and then at Home Depot we went in search for the correctly sized brass fittings – no dice.  They had male 1/2 inch converter for garden hose, and a female 3/4 inch for vinyl tubing.  Plastic and pvc but not brass.  I reined in my compulsion to pull my hair out in frustration.  The only purchase that resulted from that excursion was garden seeds for pretty flowers.  We finally accepted that the most reasonable and economical solution is to duplicate the system that we already have instead of buying additional converters to fit the extra tube that we have lying around.  Meaning, we simply need to buy more tubing with the right inner diameter.  Big sigh.

Ducks!  Attennnnntion!  And waddle!