Must be some pretty big bees!
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Will the top be an emerging drawer? For the cocoons, if you are harvesting them.
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Work has been progressing slower since I got called back from furlough, but Iāve started working on the real vehicle which is partially made with aluminum honeycomb composite panels. A sleek sheet metal body will come eventually. I reluctantly replaced the ducted fans with some motors with 9" propellers, which provide much more thrust at the speeds this ride operates at, and also use less energy.
Today my son just broke his backwards speed record when combining the new fans with a leafblower.
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Yāall are so knowledgable, bit of a bleg hereā¦ broke the top flared edge of a ceramic vase that was a wedding present. The body is fine but the top is all jagged now and wasnāt possible to glue together the pieces. Want to try to sand down the rough edges so it looks nice again and wouldnāt be a danger, is there a particular sand paper good for this sort of thing orā¦
(and yes, I know I should take care about ventilation and breathing etc)
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I know a restorer who could make it look good as new as long as you still have most of the pieces. She did a great job with a porcelain horse with a broken leg and hoof. (I canāt seem to find the picture, though.)
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Maybe a wide belt sander? Very fine grit and go very slowly. Squirt water on it to keep it cool.
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Iāll echo what @MrShiv wrote: slow, fine, and wet to keep it cool. Have you seen tile saws? I donāt think that would be a good tool, but use those principles as inspiration.
Please post a pic of what you end up with!
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ETA: this was supposed to be a reply to @Kii
Iām not sure. This is the first time Iāve tried this. From what Iāve read, I should take the nest blocks inside and put them in the proverbial cool dark place for the winter. Then in the spring, Iāll use a āemergence boxā for the babies.
The shelf was really only because I saw houses built like this in the pictures. I will probably use the upper part for cut off pieces of bamboo or other tubes.
Source: http://extensionpublications.unl.edu/assets/pdf/g2256.pdf
@NukeML This might make another good boy scout project
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We have a couple of store-bought ones on the back yard. The Gila Woodpecker methodically checks all the cells every day, so we havenāt had any luck hatching bees.
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Good point about the woodpeckers, of which we have an abundance. I will probably cover this with 1/2ā hardware cloth to keep away the birds and wasps.
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That house is looking great!
Iām using paper tubes. With those, in late fall, you unwrap them and put the cocoons in an organza bag in the cool dark place. Then in spring, you move the cocoons to the emergence drawer at the top of the house, put in fresh tubes, and wait.
We had no takers on the house last year, so weāre placing it somewhere different. Iām not sure if I will use the emergence drawer or just put the tubes in a box for emergence.
The point of the paper tubes is hygiene. No mite build up from year to year. Though that isnāt supposed to be a problem for the wood blocks. Female carpenter bees clean their nests well.
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Potting up some plants. Zinnia, marigolds, two kinds of basil, oregano, thyme and rosemary. Iāve never planted herbs other than basil before so I had pretty poor yields.
Moved the cold hardy plants out to the cold frame. Until I get my temperature figured out I have to remove one panel in the morning then put it back on in the evening.
I have an idea for using an arduino I have laying around to control a fan and louver based on temperature. To be determined.
Gladiolus bulbils are sprouting. These are the little buds that grow under the bulb. When you dig up your bulbs in the autumn you can collect these and grow new bulbs (takes two years).
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I made a wire straightener for all the trellis work Iāll be doing this summer. Using this I can take rolls of cheap, 9-gauge tensioning wire and straighten it. The five pulleys are adjustable so this can be a wire bender too. It isnāt perfect but good enough for what I need.
Also, come get your strawberries!
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Strawberries! I missed having strawberries - a blight of some kind of bug took the whole patch a few years back - so I ordered a whole bunch with stimulus money. The husband claims heās going to build a little terrace for them behind the herb spiral. Weāll see what happens in May when the plants arrive. (Itās still way too cold to plant strawberries here - we had a blizzard on April Foolās Day.)
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Iāve been reading about companion plants and now I want some borage for my strawberry patch
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With some help from me, my partner installed drip irrigation in the big raised food bed and built 4 other beds. The long one and corner one also have drip irrigation. The drips still need a bit of a work, but they will be ready for the hot times of a texas summer. I did lots of the planting.
Food bed is still random in what we planted. Tomatoes, fennel b/c the child likes to pet it, swiss chard b/c the child thinks it pretty, same for broccoli. Rainbow carrots, pole and bush beans, peppers, and strawberries. If I can find some, I want to add borage near the strawbs and nasturtium near the tomatoes. We have a volunteer sweet potato vine we may keep by training it to drape down the wall. (partner swears he only threw skins in the bed over the winter but I am not so sure)
Beds in front of windows have butterfly weed for early monarchs, native milkweed seedlings, random native wild flowers, and sunflowers. Kids bed also has lavender. Can you tell where the kid helped plant seeds? Weāre going to have a sunflower forest! I expected bunnies to eat more seedlings but the huge winter storm killed a lot of them.
And one last pic. This potted meyer lemon spent the storm in the garage with a glow lamp. Still lost every single leaf. We thought it was dead, but happily some TLC has helped it leaf out even more densely than before.
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Killed the bunnies or the seeds?
JK, nice garden!
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