Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Around my place we have a stack of different native bees and wasps.

The cutest are little tiny ones (4mm long) that dig tunnels in the drive way.

Today I found a new one.

I'm building the balcony on my house using hard wood that requires all the nail holes to be pre drilled. When I finished up last time I had just pre-dilled the holes in the bearer and the corresponding holes in three joists.

What has this to do with Bees? Well that was three days ago and today when I went to nail them all together today I found a larger black bee (about 10% smaller than an exotic honey bee) in the holes and the little blitter had filled each one with a plug of 2-4mm grains of sand. It has taken me about 1/2 an hour to get the holes clear.

She probably laid an egg in each hole, then plugged them up to keep bad things from happening to the eggs.

Did bad things happen to the eggs????? You carefully drilled more holes and transferred the eggs, right??

I recently when back over to QLD and stayed on my parents property. We changed out 12 racks and got 40kg's of honey, we had to leave tons in there because it was too heavy to move.

I also made a pretty good furniture polish out of the wax by mixing equal parts wax and turps. the turps basically thins the wax so it can penetrate the wood and water proof it.

Noooo. They are dead I tell you, dead, dead, dead

observed a wasp one day and it was busy with something of importance it seemed as it was really buzzing. After it left I checked what it had been doing and low and behold it had a spider wrapped up in its own web. Uses the spider for a nursery and food source all in one.

Down on Table Rock Lake in SW Missouri on my dads acreage there are lots of borer bees that bore nests on the underside of overhanging wood. My brothers and sisters and I are scrambling for financing these past few days as my dad, without any warning, placed his property of 31 years on the market on Monday. Thanks to the observation of his neighbor we were alerted to this and took quick action. By our reaction to the news that he had done so and the interest we showed in keeping the property he did take it off the market and agreed to sell it to us instead. I think he is maybe losing a little bit of his faculties so my sister and I are travelling down there to visit and observe him a bit. You see our mothers ashes are buried on this property and his final wishes were to have his ashes buried there also. He simply stated that he needed to pay down his credit card debt. The amount he listed the property for $25,000 for the 3 1/3 acre with 2 bdrm 1 1/2 bath house and outbuildings and swimming pool all in native stone, new well pump and septic tank less than 5 years old within walking distance to the lake. Value of the property we estimate at around $125,000 in its current condition. With a little work it would be worth considerable more. whew close one it was. in the 4 hours it was listed on the realtors website they had 22 inquiries.

well caught Dan

I am going to take that neighbor a gift of thanks that is for certain.

Sad to hear about your old Man Dan. Look after him, it'll be hard, but worth the effort in my opinion.
Btw, I hope that neighbour is gonna get some fish when you harvest :-)

naw he likes to garden in the rocky ground down there. does a fair job too I might add. I will give him short education on AP and a small barrel system with consultation anytime he needs it.

sorry for getting off topic folks

I went to the Kansas Farm Show yesterday, met a beekeeper got his phone number as they farm them out.
Also saw a solar heat exchange panel. It looked quite simple. a small solar cell powered theromostatically controlled fan exchanges air through a black plastic housing that you can place on the side of a building. installs in about an hour and will heat a well insulated room of 750sq ft. 1889$ for a complete kit