My original 3 are almost full size. I keep expecting to see them gone but they are eating away like crazy…wont be long. I hope I can find a chrysalis.
I’ve been watching and today was the first time I saw something that looked like a newly hatched caterpillar. There are 3 in this picture…2 in the next.
I love watching the changes in them as they shed and grow.
This is my first experience with these so it’s going to be fun watching them.
I saw a Black Swallowtail flying around the yard one day so I bought a couple Parsley Plants for it to lay on. Only had one caterpillar so there must have been an egg on the plant when I bought them. They were small plants and it ate one almost completely up.
The second one had time to grow.
We got back from our boat trip (www.alwayslingerawhile.blogspot.com) and I spotted 3 caterpillars on it. Here are two.
We also found several eggs…looks like I may have to buy more caterpillar food. I counted 10 just on this part of the plant.
I have some sprouting in my milkweed bed but they are tiny.
I took this 2 days later….they are growing up.
I have 2 Passion Flower plants for the Zebra Longwings and Gulf Fritillary's. This is a Longwing.
She lays her eggs on the tips of the vine. …in large clusters. There are 4 0r 5 that have already hatched.
This is what it looks like when they all hatch. I think there are at least 20.
Even at this stage they are in a group.
This one is almost ready to find a place to become a chrysalis.
Not a very good photo but this is what it will become.
This is the Gulf Fritillary.
This is the underside…it’s beautiful…painted kind of like a clown face.
She lays one egg on a leaf…sometimes 2 but never in a cluster like the Zebra Longwing. This one is almost grown.
4 small ones.
They hang in a “J” …then shed their skin and end up a Chrysalis.
and this is their Chrysalis…similar to the Longwing’s
I like having all the butterflies…but I love the caterpillars more.
I grow Tropical milkweed and Giant milkweed for the Monarchs and Queens….Passion Flower Vine for the Zebra Longwings and Gulf Fritillaries…and now I’ve added Parsley for the Black Swallowtails.
We spent some time on the Arkansas River, OK. When we got home it was early evening and I noticed something on the bat house.
Thought it was a bat waiting for us to get the boat out of the way so it could come out.
It was there the next day and the next…couldn’t see what it was with the binoculars so I took a picture and cropped it.
It definitely looks like a bat. Figured it must be dead since it had been in the same spot for a week.
Today we took the 14’ step ladder and an extendable limb trimmer…I climbed up and caught it with the tip and knocked it down.
It was definitely a bat and it has a hole in it’s throat.
I took a couple pictures by a tape measure. It looks like it is about 3” long or 3 1/8”. I don’t know if this would be a Big Brown or a Little Brown Bat. It was outside the 7/8” chamber…Jim made the outside for the Big Browns and the inside chamber is 1/2” for Little Browns….maybe this is a young one?
I had on a pair of latex gloves..the ones I wear when working with the Honey Bees…
It’s a bit fuzzy since I cropped it more but here is a close up of the hole.
No idea what happened to it…could have been a fight or maybe ants got to it after it died.
We had a bat move into this 2 weeks after we put it up…we knew a bat soared around this area…it used to fly over the roof when Mom was alive…she called him “Billy” so Billy it has been….he’s been there all year…before we went boating I counted 2 bats..I sure hope this isn’t Billy. If it is then he most likely died of old age. I think they can live up to 20 years…Mom has been gone 10 years and her Billy kept her company for several years. She enjoyed sitting outside in the evening and watching him zip back and forth.
The bat house looks pretty tall but that palm behind it is about twice as tall. I’m just standing near the bat house.
If you can tell which kind of bat it is or what may have killed it..let me know.
Jim and I rode our bikes down the road and the Pepper bush was just humming with bees. It looks nice and fluffy..but wait till you see how small the flowers are.
Several of the girls were gathering pollen.
Many of these bees are natural size…I don’t use foundation so they build their cells the size they want. I’ve read that small bees do better with keeping mites off because the body is smaller.
Look how small the flowers are compared to the bees…they are hard to photograph because they are continually on the move from one to another.
I wonder how many flowers they have to visit to fill their pollen sacs.
This is Skunk Vine… the vine will travel to the tops of the trees and take them over. Once they are done blooming Jim will cut the vine and it will die…but comes back the next year.
It has beautiful little flowers…
I think the Pepper Bush is our last big bloom until Dec when the Red Maples start.
My Bottle Brush will put out several blooms and the Spanish Needle keeps blooming until we get a frost.
This is another weed….it travels by putting out little “stick tights” when it’s done blooming…looks like she is getting nectar…
Just about everything that blooms here is a weed or invasive species…but I’m always glad to see it bloom for the bees and the butterflies. The Zebra Longwings and the Queens seem to really like the Spanish Needle.
I put another super on the hives…they now have 3…after the Pepper Bush I will pull a little honey and leave them plenty for the winter.
I looked in the windows today and the blue hive is already festooning and building new comb…I didn’t see that in the pink hive but they have always been a little behind the blue. Don’t know why…
The girls were really quiet today…
I took 6 frames from the top super then Jim lifted it off and set it on the stand. I am getting ready to take a couple from this one.
We only pulled 8 frames…this hive still had frames that were partially drawn out and empty comb.
Today we just put the frames in the rack then moved to the shade and brushed the bees off and covered it.
I don’t have a “honey house” so I do it in my kitchen.
I cut the comb from the frames into this big stainless bowl then mash it up …..
then spoon it into a jar.
I put cloth strainers on the top with a rubber band and sit them in the funnels I made from milk jugs.
This corner of the screen porch gets late..hot afternoon sun…it helps the honey run better. Once the sun hits them the heat in the top of the jar overcomes the vacuum that is created when the honey flows into the bottom jar.I still have to pick them up and hold them sideways to break that vacuum then it starts running good again.
Once it is all strained I’ll combine the jars so they are full.
I spray the floor with Avian Insect Liquidator to stop the ants that might be interested.
The jar in the foreground is almost done but I’ll let it sit until the sun has a chance at it….then the wax from all these jars will be put in the stainless bowl for the bees to clean up….then I’ll melt the wax down and use it for candles.
The candles are for our own use…lots of power outages here. My Mother had 4 of these hurricane candles so I took the wax out ..will use it to make fire starters for the wood stove…then filled it with bees wax. I read that bees wax burns cleaner than paraffin wax.
One more to fill.
The Pepper Bushes will start blooming shortly and then I’ll check the hives and pull a few more frames…I will leave them at least 1 1/2 supers of honey…I had to feed back some of their honey last year.
