Phil and I went to pull soil samples today. In past years, I've dug down six inches with a spade in about five spots per sample. It is hot, hard work, trying to get an accurate cross section of soil. Add to that a bowl to mix the samples, the bags and sharpie for holding and marking samples, and the spade itself: it has been a juggling act.
This year: so much better. We have a soil probe now, with lines marked at 6". Better still, the massive rains made the soils quite damp. Rather than chopping through pottery (as it felt when I attempted soil sampling a few weeks back), the probe sank easily into the soil, except where blocked by a pebble. Best of all: Phil did the probing, and I held the bowl, bag, and sharpie. That made soil collecting easy!
We still have spots of extreme clay. But there is crumbly soil, too, and the color is no longer shocking orange, but is mellowing, darkening a bit.
In the apple orchard, we went to the bald-faced hornet nest, grown larger than a basketball, and, apparently, deserted. Phil prodded it (after being fairly sure it was empty), and, finding no one home, he began to smash it. The hives from the hornet stings must have been on his mind.
I rescued some bits of the paper hive, made from chewed wood. The hornets built several thin, smooth layers for insulation and protection around the edges. The variegated grays: subtle and beautiful.
Their brood nest, I was interested to see, had the same six-sided hexagonal pattern as the honeybees.
But while the honeybee hexagonals are horizontal in the hive, the hornets built their hexagonals vertically, and stacked them in the hive.
The last casualty of the honeybee comb enchanted the boys and I. Completely emptied of babies and honey, it lay at the bottom of the hive's second level, so incredibly constructed. The center bottom has a triangular section of slightly larger comb, where the male drones were placed. The worker comb surrounding it is the same shape, but smaller.
The pattern repeated on the far side: small worker comb on the edges, and larger drone comb in the center.
The bees do not chew wood to make paper; they excrete wax cells out of their abdomens, up to eight per day if conditions are perfect.
And it takes almost a million wax cells to make one deep frame.
A full size hive will have twenty deep frames, and twenty super frames. The industry of the little honey bees boggles the mind.
That is so beautiful and mesmerizing! Thank you for sharing. :)
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