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Near miss to start bee season.
I've been doing some burning this spring(CRP, Field edges, timbers) and last night decided to burn my timber to kill off some of the thorns and honey suckle. I was doing it alone but thought i should be pretty good as one neighbor had burned and had a mowed path, one side a pasture and I had burned quite a bit across the creek and a steep ravine.
Short version, I lit the timber and then went to the area i needed to control to keep the fire off of a neighbor property and worked on a back burn. My timber has a lot of dead and dry sticks and undergrowth that needed to go away to make it a healthier habitat.
A couple of hours into the burn I was getting pretty close to being done as the back burn fire and main line were about to merge in most areas, but had another area it had burned up a ditch and started so I put that out....but realized I was out of water. I was zig zagging through the trees and brush and noticed a tree had burned across the ditch and started on the other side of the creek and the fire was about 20-30 yards from my bee hives.
I had to drive about a half mile around through a neighbor to get more water and hauled ass down and put the fire out about 30-40' from my hives. I was "that close" to killing off the bees that hadn't died already, and based on activity I'm not sure one more of them hadn't died in the latest cold snap.
A lot of people are picking up the "packages(2-3lbs of bees)" this week....so bee season is here.
I've looked at a couple of trees to do cutouts already and now that dandilions are blooming I'll probably start doing some of those before swarms get hot and heavy towards the end of May. Should have some pics to share in the next couple of weeks.
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