Taro & Ti Home

I was planning on splitting my KTBH hives into Langstroth equipment this coming Spring. I have a pair of them and figured I’d get four hives out of it. I have six Lang hive bodies ready and will get more soon to give me room for next year’s cutouts and swarms. Also out in the bee-yard I had a 10-frame cutout hive based on the JHH hive design. It was empty except for a couple of combs picked clean by ants. Well, it appears that it was cleaned so well that one of my hives decided to do a split for me and swarm into it.

http://bees.taroandti.com/2008/09/28/swarm/

I installed a couple of patches one wet Spring with high hopes that maybe things would be different now. Well, they were for a while. The taro grew great. Then, the rain stopped, as it invariably does. And with the stop in rain came a rise in heat. Even with irrigation, the weeds would suck the soil dry and before long I decided to let the weeds shade the taro just to keep the soil and taro from being cooked right in the soil. Eventually the taro disappeared and that was that for last Summer’s experiment. Here is the tale of a surprising resurrection of these taro after a full year of dormancy in very hot, very dry and in the winter very cold soil.

http://taropatch.taroandti.com/2008/09/21/taro-survivors/

It was a hot day in a full suit out in full sun. And I was occupied with this particular cutout for over 7 hours in the Texas heat - mostly trying to get the queen and final cluster of bees that had sequestered themselves in a void within the tree. It was a lot of work - and ended with success. Until the ants came…

http://bees.taroandti.com/2008/09/04/fire-ant-catastrophy/