Both youth groups have been instrumental in maintaining the farm. Some of these projects include:

cobbing the strawbale, cleaning the chicken coop, harvesting vegetables, water crops and trees, weeding all beds, painting posts for our educational signs, and removing invasive species.

Issue 5 bw

What? Farm Fest 2010 at Beardsley Community Farm, 1719 Reynolds St, off of Western Avenue in Mechanicsville

Who? YOU, the community
When? Saturday, June 12th, 10 AM til 2 PM
Food? Local BBQ and vegetarian petros from the Parlor, Organicism Slaw, cobblers and cakes from our community
Music? Jennifer Nicely, String Theroist, Shawna Cyphers and Daniel Scott
What else? exhibitors, craft vendors, farm tours, free cake walk, plant give-a-way, and children’s activities

Free Event, Donations appreciated!
Park at our lot, Boys and Girls Club parking lot, near the community gardens, or mobile meals.

be there or be square, we want you there!!

Contact us if you have any questions or would like to participate as an exhibitor or a volunteer.

Email: beardsleyfarm@gmail.com

Khann Chov, Farm Manager: 556-2299

Farm phone : 546-8446

Spring is in full swing here at Beardsley Farm…the wildflower meadow is blooming, the greens are bulging, peas are curling their way around the trellis, and honeybees energetically flit from flower to flower.  But what about those honeybees?  What exactly are they doing?

Everyone knows that bees make honey.  But there’s so much more to bees than just being honey-making machines.  Spring is an especially exciting time for the bees, because not only do they gear up their honey production, they also begin to expand their brood rapidly after a tough winter.  A honeybee colony’s numbers drastically reduce during the winter months, and they are fairly inactive, simply focusing on keeping the hive warm!  So when spring finally resurfaces, the bees become busier than ever.

But it is a delicate balance between reproduction and honey making, as we are learning here at Beardsley Farm.  As beekeepers, it is our job to manage the hive.  We mostly care about the honey production – we make sure the bees have enough empty frames to store more and more honey as the weather gets warmer.  But we also need to be aware of the space necessary for reproduction.  In the spring, bees’ natural instinct is to swarm.  Swarming is a way for the bees to create more colonies – there isn’t enough space for more reproduction in their own hive, and so they prepare for a segment of the population to leave the hive and start over.  You may have seen those crazy pictures of thousands of bees crawling over a person’s arms or even face!  Well, as scary as that looks, the truth is that bees engorge themselves in honey in preparation for the swarm.  This means that their thoraxes are so full that they literally cannot sting you – their body just won’t bend that way anymore!  This is true for the majority of the bees in the swarm, though several keep their ability to sting just in case they run into any trouble.

So, as beekeepers, we want to prevent swarming from happening, because we like to keep as many bees as possible to yield that maximum amount of honey.  There are several methods we can use to prevent a swarm from forming.  What we will do in the future (whoops, we messed it up this year, which has lead to some fun adventures…see below) is something called “checkerboarding.”  This means that in the brood supers (brood meaning baby bees), we will alternate an already-in-use frame with a new, empty frame.  This naturally prevents swarming because the bees look around and think “Oh look, we’ve got enough room for reproduction and honey.  Great.  We don’t need to leave.”

If you don’t get to the bees early enough in the spring, though, they will begin swarm preparation.  Scout bees will be sent out to find a new location for a hive.  They report back to the colony, specifically the queen.  The queen judges whether or not it will be sufficient and if it’s not, she sends the scout bees back out.  In the meantime, the queen begins laying new queen eggs.  A bee larvae becomes a queen when the nurse bees feed her “royal jelly.”  This substance is another secretion of bees, and makes the queen grow larger than your average bee.  It also gives her special reproductive properties.  A beekeeper can tell that the colony is getting ready to swarm if he/she finds large peanut-like cells, or queen cells, on the bottom of the frames.

When a new, virgin queen is born during swarming time her first instinct is to kill all of the rival queens ready to be born.  However, the colony will prevent this from happening.  Subsequently, if several virgin queens are present in the hive, they will fight to the death to head the colony.  Frequently the older queen will be the one leading a swarm to their new home.  Which brings us to another method of controlling swarms – “old school” beekeepers used to crush the new queen cells.  Without multiple queens, it is impossible for the colony to leave the hive.

However, with several queens present, one queen will rush through the hive for 5 or 10 minutes beating her wings rapidly to signal that it is time to swarm.  The bees will line up and begin flying in a 30 to 40 foot circles above the hive.  This is when inexperienced beekeepers know they are in trouble.  The bees will gradually settle on an intermediate spot before continuing onto their new home.

Couldn’t we just catch them and put them back in their hive?  No.  Not unless you wait an entire life cycle of the bee (8 weeks) for the old brood of bees to die, and new ones to emerge.  Only then could you reintroduce them into their former colony.  A new colony will only be established outside of a 5 mile radius from the old one (bees collect honey in a 5 mile radius from their hive).

Hopefully, the bees will decide to settle on a branch low to the ground which makes it fairly easy to catch them.  If not, you can always attempt to knock down the branch they are on, wait for them to settle down, and do what we did in the photos below.

Check out the swarm of bees!

Joe Anderson prepares a box to catch the bees.

We cleared out the area beneath the swarm by pruning back the branches. We then set the temporary bee hive beneath the swarm, and gave the branch a firm smack, resulting in the entire swarm of bees dropping into the hive.

Saturday, April 17th

10 am -5 pm

Admission is FREE!

EarthFest will be held Pellissippi State’s main campus off of Hardin Valley Road in Knoxville, TN . Join Beardsley at EarthFest for a day of food, fun, entertainment, and lots of environmental education opportunities.

Check it out here –> issue 3

• Just start! Sometimes, starting is the most difficult step for me…especially when it is something that I’ve never done before. Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty and experiment. Gardening is trial and error, so go ahead and try it out!
• Stick with it. If you’re anything like me, sometimes when you experiment, you fail. Well, it happens. But, don’t give up!
• Think small. The more you experiment with smaller quantities, the more you’ll learn about what works best for you. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try to grow lots of veggies. Just pace yourself.
• Plan ahead. Are you going to container gardening? Do you have space for a small plot in your backyard? Do you get enough sunlight? What kinds of veggies will grow best in the sunlight you’ll have?
• Spend a day watching the sunlight at your house. Where do the shadows fall? Which spot stays the sunniest? Not only will this help you know your land better, but it gives you an excuse to relax outside.
• What kind of soil do you have? Do you need to build a raised bed? Will you start your seeds indoors or plant directly into ground?
• Once you’ve checked the soil, the sunlight— you’ve got to get the seeds! A few places that you can buy seeds: Three Rivers Market, Earth Fare, Stanley’s Greenhouse, Mayo Garden Center & Knoxville Farmer’s Coop.

What are you waiting for? Get started gardening!

A little update about what we’re doing. Last weekend our container gardening workshop was a huge success and volunteers came out to make things happen at the farm. And we’ve been planting at the farm too! What am I most excited about? Cosmic Purple Carrots! Ahhh yeauh.  — lb

“So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute…Give your approval to all you cannot understand…Ask the questions that have no answers. Put your faith in two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years…Laugh. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts….Practice resurrection.”—Wendell Berry

Check out the pics– workshops, work days and our wonderful volunteers!