Hi Sara & Merry Christmas to you & anyone else reading my post.
I gave the toads a miss last night because I wanted to get an early start this morning to do some robbing.
A fermented honey smell doesn’t sound good. You can check your tray, as well as remove the flow harvesting caps & give each channel a sniff test.
Hive beetle activity creates an awful smell. Sometimes they’ll get started in an area that bees are able to overwhelm, before cleaning it up. That would explain a bad smell that comes & goes. If you have your bees working on starter strips, that can lead to a lot of drone comb, which can be a magnet, as I found out, for hive beetles to lay eggs in.
@JeffH Right back at you Jeff and a politically incorrect “Ho ho ho” too . No toads for me either last night, but I’m still on guard.
I check the tray twice a week and get SHB but so far only seen one grub two months ago. I don’t know how to explain the smell, it’s not foul but I’m planning an inspection the next good day we have as I haven’t put the flow super on yet and I’m thinking it won’t be much longer as the hive seems to be filling up nicely, fingers crossed. Hope you have a safe and peaceful Christmas and thank you for all the advice, it’s priceless
You’re most welcome Sara, one positive thing I did notice here at home was, once you catch the cane toads, they don’t get replaced all that quickly. I’ve only caught 2 at home here during this recent hot weather. I’m going to bury my 80 odd toads tomorrow, on account that I’m running out of freezer space. What happened was, I pulled two obscure toad parcels out, to get something else out, & now I can’t get them back in to shut the lid. So by tomorrow, those parcels plus 2 more will be ready to bury under where I plan to plant some sweet corn & sweet potatoes, after this next lot of rain we’re supposed to be getting.
@JeffH love your work JeffH until I found you I have been catching cane toads, swinging them by the leg until their heads collide with a solid object a few times and then launching them through the air as far as I can. Have to admit I did once find my lemon tree embellished with a rotting cane toad cadaver .
I’m a veggie grower myself JeffH so I’m very impressed with your cane toad fertiliser and a much better use of a commodity.
I’m just watching my pink papaya swelling, but found out that honeybees do not pollinate them, why I have no clue !
Hey @JeffH, you missed one! OK, probably not quite your neck of the woods, but she has now been named “Toadzilla”. Think about how much compost she would make!!!
I bet they didn’t compost her, though…
I used to want to be cremated, now I think that composting would be much better! I can do something useful after I am gone - fantastic!!
Hi Dawn, I just now looked at my computer for the first time today, in time to find your message as it came in. We saw that cane toad on tv last night. It’s a beauty. I guess you’d get a good feed off the hind legs of that one, not that I’d be interested for myself. Apparently you can eat the hind legs after skinning them.
In October 2022, California passed a law that allows human composting. However, it doesn’t come into effect until January of 2027, so I either have to live that long, or become subject to a forensic research program…
Actually there is another option. Some states already allow composting, so I could just be shipped there first. The problem is that the carbon footprint of the shipping may be greater just settling on cremation
. No toads for me either last night, but I’m still on guard.
.
