I've got a beehive!

Here is the new hive. Not mine as such, but mine to look after. Its only a small one, as it was a split from another, and the queen might not be too robust, so will need some TLC and checking for a while. When it gets going, there is a box to add to the top, that has frames for honey. In this box there are some honey frames, and mainly brood frames, which means the baby bee factory. 

We've faced the hive to the east, and positioned it so it gets the morning sun, to wake the bees up and get them out and about early. And then it is in afternoon dappled shade, so they won't get too hot. Or that is the theory.

I've got a huge pohutukawa flowering at the moment, and the bees all seem to love it, so that is a good sign. I also spotted a lot of native bees on the flowers too.

Trees for Bees

Check this out! Last weekend I repotted 88 manuka trees into bigger pots - the front 2 rows here, the rest are from previously, but all growing like mad now.

And from those 88 bigger plants, I must have made about 150 smaller pots of all the little stray seedlings that came around them. The outdoor dining table is definitely out of commission for the foreseeable future, covered in plants. I reckon in another month these tiny ones will all be growing vigorously too. I'm hoping.

New Spring Growth in NZ Natives

All those native trees that I planted in autumn are beginning to bud up and produce beautiful glossy new leaves. 

All those cuttings

All those cuttings, manuka, for the bees, and here they are, planted at last (to the right of the stick).

 

 

Might need a microscope, but there are no bears or possums here to chew them, so the only way on is up. 

 

I hope.

More Cuttings for Trees for Bees

Its really the end of the season for making cuttings, as it is getting quite cold now (for here, so not really cold at all), but a couple of plants will strike from cuttings all year round - or so my trusty book says.  So I have tried some Griselinia Littoralis - the big leafed green ones, these were the hedge-du-jour for a few years and I thought they would fill in some of my gaps on the boundary, and maybe even make a small hedge along my back border.  I pinched these cuttings from my lovely neighbours, who have recently planted a few plants, although a walk around the neighbourhood would find plenty of others hanging over the footpaths.

 

Then the little roundy leafed ones are from a couple of little azaleas that I have had in my front yard for 20 years, and I have not managed to kill them yet, so they deserve a go.  Might be too cold for them to strike though, we'll see.  Not bee plants, but pretty.

 

And trust rosemary, also might be too late, but I needed to trim it anyway. This is a prostate form, and I'm hoping it will go beside my retaining wall and dangle over the board that I am going to put up to hold all the dirt in.

 

 

And then I noticed one of the council street plantings just outside my place had a big bushy coprosma, so I pinched some of that too.  These should work I think.  Or they would, except after I took this pic one of the cats saw this and thought it was an excellent dirt box - dirt and cuttings all over the deck.  I've since moved them into the box beside the rosemary, but I'm not sure if any fatal damage has been done, time will tell.  Plenty more where this came from though, the street bush is huge, so I think it will make an excellent gap filler.

 

Trees for bees

 

 

Weekend planting...I managed 6 trees planted today.  They all came from the Oratia Nursery, the most amazing and enormous nursery of native plants.  This top pic is about a quarter the size of the whole nursery.  Mainly they supply wholesale I think, but on Saturdays are open to the public. Just wandering around is an outing in itself, and on such a beautiful day, was splendid.  It does help to have some idea what your plant you are looking for actually looks like, or you could be wandering for hours, although the staff are great.

 

 

So I've got: a Towai - the small stick in the middle front of the pic with a couple of reddish leaves.  Will grow into a biggish tree.

 

A Rewarewa (to left) a forest giant, and native fuscia to the right.

 

A Pittosporum Tenuifolium, to the right with small pale leaves, a medium sized tree, which will fill the gap and protect for wind.  And a Five finger to the left, hard to see with the weeds behind, but has big leaves with 5 leaf bits per stem (surprise!), also a wind break type.  I hope.  This is my biggest, most exposed hole in the boundary.

 

And this, which is hard to see because it has tiny leaves, but it is a Putaputaweta, also a medium sized tree.

 

All these trees have flowers that the birds and bees enjoy.

Boundary Rejuvenation Mk 2 Trees for Bees

 

Further plantings along the boundary.  Many holes to fill, so this will be an on-going tale.  These plants were from a local big chain garden centre, and were expensive, and not quite what I went in to buy.  I'm thinking some of the smaller players that sell on line will offer a better deal for next time.  And supporting small businesses seems just right too.

 

 

Manuka - bushy medium tree, its the typical NZ nursery crop, so will cope well with the windy and open conditions here.  I'm planning quite a few more of these along here.  Good for bees too, manuka honey is a premium, got lots of health benefits, and is a natural antiseptic, as well as delicious.

 

 

Hebe, different kind to the first one.  Hebes have blue, purple, white or pink flowers, and are shrub sized.

 

 

Another hebe, different again.

 

 

A type of pittosporum, not quite the one I wanted, but when you are in the garden centre with money burning a hole in your pocket......

 

 

Hard to see, it is the little lime green plant in the centre of the pic, but this one will grow to be a forest giant.  Its a ngaio, quick growing and will form good shelter.

 

The list of other plants I want is quite long, might have to cull a bit.  Before all the desolation caused by both the digger (from the retaining wall) and the neighbours chopping efforts, my place was a veritable forest of native plants, some forest giants, some smaller, but all just so lovely.  I'm still struggling with the loss.  Good thing gardening is a cyclical thing, and increase and decrease are all part of the package.

Manuka Seedlings

Back in summer we spent a couple of weekends making cuttings of manuka and planting them.  So now we need to pot them up. 

 

 

Most of them rooted it would seem, although lately they have begun dying off.  Definitely time to move them on then. Some of the seedlings were also grown from seeds, but we can't tell which are seed raised and which are cutting raised, so as an experiment, not so helpful.

 

 

We also are experimenting with pot types.  Here we've got plastic bags (cheap), paper mache type pots (expensive), and recycled plastic pots (free, but we've run out).  I've also seen a way of making newspaper pots that I'll try next time.

 

 

Boundary Rejunvenation Mk 1

Plant No. 1 in the 'Boundary Fights Back' wars.  This is a hebe, a lovely NZ native which will have white flowers in spring, and attract the bees.

 

 

When we were transporting it home from the garden centre, it fell over and a biggish branch broke off.  No matter!  Now we also have a whole lot of cuttings.  These might be donated to the bee enterprise for pollen gathering before the manuka starts flowering.