jdmidwest

My bee student at work, I started a hive for him last summer and let him get things going. His wife called today, swarm on the house. I followed him home, it had moved to a small tree covered in honey suckle vines. I sit back and coached, he had his wife in the middle of it too. Decent swarm, we put them in a new hive and all is well. I gave mine some extra room a few weeks ago to try and cut down on the swarm. I am going to try some splits tomorrow if weather permits.

Mine does 18-20, Buddies 60/40 runs 30-35. Plenty fast for running skinny. I have seen many that make us look like we are sitting still. Special Built 300 hp outboards and Scorpions probably hit 50. I have not been to the boat races in Doniphan, but there are hi power boats that show up to run. That part of the Current River has no horsepower limits. And, much like Lake of the Ozarks, people die on the river each summer.

Its the wide open lake. Not looking for chunks or disturbances like the river runners in Jets do.

They always seem to hit a fence post if its handy. I have seen the swarm hang on a few days in the weather if the queen does not have the energy to make it any further. Swarm queens are over a year old to start with and have swelled up bodies for laying eggs. They drop off a little weight to make a swarm flight, but tire easy. The swarm flight is normally staged with a few stops. Queen bees start out as a special cell that is fed better and given more room to grow. Bees usually make several queen cells prior to swarming, the first queen out goes around and stings the other queen cells to prevent competition. Then she makes her breeding flight to find a drone and collects the sperm that she will make brood with for the rest of her life. If she makes it back to the hive and does not get picked off by a bird or nature, things go well. The swarm is their way of going out and making new hives. They prep for it by making the drones (male bees) and more queen cells. Then she leaves with a portion of the workers to make a new hive. The queen cells hatch and start over in the original hive. They can sense the ability of the queen, if she seems to be failing, the workers will start building new queen cells and start the process. The new queen will hatch and take over the hive. This is how I make "walk away splits". Take a frame of eggs and brood that they will make a queen cell out of, some extra bees and brood, some honey. They will realize the queen is gone, make a new one and start a new hive.

Why not, they sewed her's on.

Fur was good, then it sank. It picked up when otters became fair game and coyotes were being used about 10 years ago. Then, it fell into nothing. Now, you do it for control.

I always fry the breast up and boil the dark meat. Dark meat makes a good turkey salad sandwich to eat for lunch after fishing or looking for morels. We never wasted anything. Ducks were always the same way. Breasting is just lazy on them. I have those that like the hearts and livers. Then the leg guys. I usually plucked and singed the mallards and woodies. Many like those whole, skin on. The one thing I have done is to skin a turkey. A wild turkey skin does not have enough fat on it or does the meat either, to roast whole. Like all other game, hang by legs, skin down, and have a nice clean carcass to work with. Save the wing bones for turkey calls, spurs for key rings. Stuff the beard in the spent shell you picked up at the scene, because you are a good sportsman and don't litter, and make a memory.

I am squirting a lead pill thru the brain pan if I ever go close to Ca. Save myself the misery.

Way too early for the peppers and maters. They will sit and not grow much till Mid May when it warms up. My strawberries have been blooming for a week now. Not sitting fruit yet. Usually picking by Mother's Day.

I am still in zone 5. Usually done by Easter or Turkey season with the frost. But we have been nipped in May. Everything around the Mississippi River basin is greened up pretty well. All things to the west have still stayed safely dormant.

Yep. Tennessee River is still the king of the Catfish. Amazing what you can catch if you try for them there. We hit a bunch on tubes one time, all 4-5 lb fish working a bluff area. We tired of catching them and pulled off. Could not catch a bass because we kept hitting the catfish. We could sit on the dock of a summer nite in 30' deep cove and chunk livers, catch a mess in an hour.

Its an excellent fishery for sure. I really love the spring and fall there. Been going there for several years on Easter weekend. Bass are either on in the lake or white bass are running in the river. The skipjacks are just fun to catch. Talking to a guy at the dam on Saturday, they are worth $5 a piece for the big ones and you can keep 100. Many buckets were being pulled out. We tossed all of ours back.

Growing up on a farm, unless it is kept aside for breeding, nuts off. We always neuter the farm dogs. Growing up, there was always a nut cutting every season on bulls and boars. If there was any brood stock, they are kept pinned up and separated from the rest. Dogs, horses, bulls, and boars. They were only let loose when the females came in heat. It does change them, calms them down.

Good thing they hit the lower one. I had not seen that kind of trap, looks simple, like a big ole toad stool. Did you bait it with pheremone or anything? It was the first nice day around here today, I probably should have looked at mine. But I had other projects then went inside. Clouds rolling in, rain for a few days.

Nice fish. What did he hit on?

Nice job. Gonna try this weekend if weather holds out. Youth season was a bust, not even a whiff of a bird.

Must have been back before global warming... Rabbits in the shed will freeze tonight, and tomorrow night also,

Back in the 80's, I hunted an area when the wild birds had mixed with the tame ones. There was one almost white and several mixed. They all looked more tame than normal wild ones. Tail tips were light. I was never able to bag the white bird. But I did take some pics of the flock, on an old 35mm camera. They are in a box somewhere.

One bass of the day and it had to be this ole gal. 20" and full of eggs. Scaled at 5.0 and released in good shape. Fishing was tough. Pickwick Lake was choppy with big rollers. We tried it for a while and got tired soon. Went down to the river below and started catching Skip Jacks and White Bass on crankbaits. We had been messing with them all afternoon and then I hit this gal. At first, I was thinking the first drum of the day. But she was tugging hard and my net man got ready. She broke the top and the rest is history.

Cormorants are pretty thick on Pickwick and the Tennessee River. They had a roost on a dike tree a few years ago. Stinking place to fish around. River went to 300,000 and blew that tree out. Gulls and Pelicans also getting thicker down there. Usually see several loons while we are out.

The new in thing is to let your yard go and give the pollinators blossoms. Save the money in gas by mowing less.

As long as your pointer goes the right direction, all is good.

First and last gun I ever bought at Cabelas. Their personal company background check database, which they run before submitting to the one that actually needed to be done with the FBI data, showed a flagged female in Georgia that live in a town like mine, in Georgia. That was the last time I will ever buy a firearm at a store like that. Really, MY license info is not even close except for the city name. But it related to a 30 minute delay till the Management made a floor decision to let it proceed. Locally, I can complete a transaction in 10 minutes with my squeaky clean record in the FBI database.

Made a run on one of my spots, only 2 soggy little yellers. Full of mites.

The new Federal Form for purchase of a firearm has 3 boxes in the sex field. Male, Female, Non Binary. I check both, I am Male and Non Binary. I do not own a Binary Trigger group that fires on pull and release. Have not found a use for it... The first box after personal info like name and address asks for either Hispanic or Latino or Non Hispanic or Latino. Then you chose your ethnicity which in my case is White. https://www.atf.gov/firearms/docs/4473-part-1-firearms-transaction-record-over-counter-atf-form-53009/download