Ken teased me one day while we were out working, calling me “fancy”, and its a joke we’ve run with the last few months as we build new fences, hives stands and equipment. But seriously, I’m gearing up for when we can reopen to the public for workshops and classes, and I’ve been focusing on improving visitor experience and to improve my own work flows when tending the hives.

The fences keep the sheep from rubbing against the hives and accidentally knocking them over. Ken and I spent some time planning on how we can also make them functional. Newly built fences will make it easier for people to lean over and watch demonstrations, and we call this area “The Observation Deck”.

The Observation deck, where visitors can lean over and watch demonstrations.

With the new and improved fence, I can stack equipment on the middle and top rails, hang my hive smoker, and the bees can fly through the slats without any trouble. This replaced a T stake and chain-link enclosure that was built to enclose a veggie garden. The garden has since moved down the hill, and when I first came to toe property there was one lonely beehive here. Now there are 7 hive stands and 10 posts for mating boxes!

The work on the Garden Apiary with the Observation Deck was completed in May. Then we set to work on the Walnut Apiary, where I graft my queens. Judith kept being stung on her way to collect eggs every evening any time I inspected hives in the Lemon Apiary, so I decided its time to move those hives to a more remote location. We had a look at the Walnut Apiary and decided to expand it from 4 hives to a dozen to take in the Lemon hives.

The Walnut APiary in the Demo phase. Very Not fancy.

I don’t have many photos of the Walnut apiary before we started the work, but here is one the first day we began. I’ve started to pull the chainlink fence off, and Ken’s moved the first few eucalyptus rounds in to make the ground more level. The tubs will go below the eucalyptus and we’ll grow potatoes or herbs in them.

I had a few days of looking at this before we could set aside the time to hang the rails. The day we were to meet again for the rails, I found myself standing on top fretting that it still wasn’t quite enough room for the number of hives I wanted here. I kept thinking that the soil will surely settle and I will need to keep leveling any hive stands that are placed here. And then it occurred to me that there isn’t really a need for sheep fencing here, since the rounds are about 22-24 inches tall and the adult sheep are too big and heavy to go climbing up to rub on my hives. So Ken and I had a meeting and agreed that using a hive stand to enclose the area would solve all of my problems at once.

I won’t lie, Ken did most of the work and I was his assistant. He has the patience of a saint, and if the rail wasn’t perfectly level the first time, we redid it until it was.

Ken setting the lag bolts to tie it all together

Making sure the rails are level. Ken really puts himself into his work, pun intended.

I snapped all of these shots when he wasn’t looking and I didn’t need to hand him a tool or hold any rails. Needless to say, I’m really excited about the improvements!

Here is the last shot of the day before we signed off and joined Judith under the apple tree for cider. Beyond the fog is a view of Mt. Tam across Tam Junction and Tennessee Valley. I have a great view from here! This will be my main area for raising queens for next summer, and with the new stands I can set up enough hives to raise up to 200 queen cells at a time. From there the cells will be moved to one of my mating boxes at bee yards in Marin.

Below the apiary is my truck, and beyond that you can see a few of the coops for the egg part of the Woolly Egg Ranch. The Ranch is a super cool place for me to have my home base, and Ken and Judith’s values overlap really well with my own. The coops are constructed mostly of salvage from Ken’s community of contractors, and as you can see, if there isn’t solar on a rooftop then there is greywater catchment for use in the orchard. In the background to the right you can see a big pile of logs that were harvested during summer fire maintenance on the property, and they’ll sell some and burn the rest in state of the art wood stoves designed to burn clean with little carbon waste expelled into the air. Over the last two years we’ve been working on improving the soil to reduce erosion, though right now you can’t tell because the chickens eat everything green and love their dust baths. You can see a few chickens in the lower right hand corner of the photo as they make their way to their favorite spot next to my truck. Over the next few months I’ll be working in this area below my apiary to make it green again so that when the spring rains come we don’t lose any topsoil to erosion.

Beekeeper's Notebook

Making it Fancy at the Woolly Egg Ranch