Pete Lundy

welcome Leo,

I love honey bees. What is your favorite type of lid? I’m needing to replace some falling apart loss on my langstroth hives. Always like hearing about other crazy natural beekeepers. I’ve had bees for about 20 years here in indiana. Haven’t used chemical for about 10 years. With our cold spring they got off to a slow start. But I had two large swarms on a semi warm day.

Looking for help to ID this plant.
Zone 5, Indiana,
It's short (at the moment). Seems to have a whorled leaf pattern. Reminds me of those tropical plants they sell but it gets too cold here.

Looks like some type of Hickory or related tree.

The pawpaw is a simple leaf (i.e. one leaf per leaf so to speak) while this looks like a rachis with 5 leaflets.

Are there nut shells on the ground? A good indicator of a nut tree.

Pete

I agree.. looks like horsetail.. equisetum.. high in silica I believe.. potentially useful for cleaning pots and pans.. I think some use out in natural dentistry.. seems like I saw a post at the grow network..

I think my botany professor called it scouring rushes..

Hello,

 I have a pear tree that has fire blight. Would it be wise to cut it and graft a blight resistant variety onto the root stock?
Or should I cut it down completely and plant a resistant tree?

I bought two pear trees at the end of the session a couple of years ago from a farm store. They grew well. Two years
ago one tree had it, so I cut it back pretty hard. Seemed to help until this year. The other tree is clapps favorite which has
fire blight. I cut a by of it off earlier this year but it continued to spread through the tree. Not sure if either are grafted onto
root stock or not. I assume most trees are these days. Are root stock susceptible to fire blight? I live in Indiana. Wet springs.

Any thoughts or advice about this would be helpful.

Thanks
Pete

You could try some attractants. They sell queen pheromone, or lemon grass or lemon balm are said to help.
I caught one out of two that I collected this year. I pretty much did the same thing. One stayed the other
left. The one that stayed I put in a nook (5 frame) the one that left was in a ten frame brood box.
I was thinking about this very question. One solution I came up with is a cage for the queen.
If you have a drawn frame, you could make a hardware cloth box to trap the queen and press into the wax.
This would keep her in the super for a few days and fill it with her pheromone. Haven't tried it, but
I heard the some people use this method to introduce a new queen. Might work.

Pete

I planted some hazels this year. My companion plants were aronia bushes and hardy pecan trees.
I live in Indiana. Our DNR has a program were you can buy some nursery stock of native trees and
shrubs on the cheep. They have all grown nicely. Did I mention they were about $50 for 100
specimens. I didn't get every one plants this spring. I'm trying to reforest about 2 acres around my
house. The hazels are c. americana I think. No blight, but small nuts. Plan to get some european
hybrid at some point to see how they do.

Some call it spiderwort. It's in the Tradescantia genus.
It growing around my house too. East central Indiana.

Pete

It's an eleagnus sp. Autumn olive and goumi are in this family.
At one time I think they planted them along roadsides for the birds but they don't
seem interested. They fix nitrogen. Some claim they are invasive. I planted four plants a
number of years ago and I have found a few volunteers. Mine were sweet scarlett goumi.

Pete

I've read about ten feet off the ground is best. It keeps them away from some predators.
Use a lemony scented lure.