Progress

I had a busy week here.  Just about finished the part of the new chicken house in time for the arrival of our 65 new chicks.  We ordered them from Dunlap Hatchery in Idaho.  Today is the shipping day so I'll be receiving a phone call about 8:15 am from the Greenbank post office.  I just have some finishing touches to make, hang the heat lamps and set up the water and food stations.  I'll use wood shavings on the floor.

The new chick coop with the brooding section almost completed

I built the floor about 2 feet up off the ground.  I have found through experience that rats love to live below chicken and duck coops and they will chew through 3/4 inch floor boards.  By raising it at least 12 inches off the ground stops them from nesting there.  I was thinking of using a concrete slab as a floor as it would be easy to disinfect, but a friend told me that he has rats living under his.  I measured the height of our garden cart and thought if the floor was a few inches higher than the cart, it would make cleaning the coop easier.  Just push the material into the cart rather than lifting, so I built it two feet high.

About three years ago when I sold the property across the street (a real estate listing of mine), I arraigned to have a contractor put in a curtain drain in that property.  I thought while they were out I would have them trench three feet deep from our barn to the area where I was planning on building this chicken coop.  I ran a power line and water line from the barn to this area and yesterday connected power to the new coop.  I hooked up a 20 amp circuit breaker (a GFCI breaker) - no more extension cords!  I now have an outlet in the brooding area and can connect the heat lamp directly.

The box of new bees - about 5 lbs

Sunday morning we received two boxes of new bees from a local bee keeper.  I partially took apart the box they came in and put a box in each hive.  Today I'll remove the boxes and take the cork out of the queen's cage.  I'll put a small marsh-mellow in the tube and in a day or so she'll eat her way out of it - then fly to mate with a drone.  Our old hive (the swarm that moved in) died over the winter - which is not unusual for a new swarm.

Gary getting ready to put the box of new bees in the hive

 The bees we received were New World Carniolans.  The New World Carniolan was originally established in 1982 by Susan Cobey and Tim Lawrence in California.  Tim Lawrence is now the Island County Extension Director.  New World Carniolans are a cross between Old World Caniolans (from Germany or Czechoslovakia) and Italians selected for specific traits of gentleness and hardiness.  They are relatively gentle bees and will fly on cooler days than pure bred Italians and winter over in small clusters, which means that they need a smaller amount of honey to get through the winter months.