J Nuss

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since May 29, 2018
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Recent posts by J Nuss

I added a copper plate that doesn’t span the whole opening, and a bucket of biochar nearby that is heaped above the water line (see other posts I made two years ago about curious behavior of bees coming to my buckets of biochar).

They aren’t avoiding the copper plate nor does their behavior seem different than when it wasn’t there
1 year ago
I am in traverse city, Michigan. The hive is located so they get good sun from dawn to noon and then shade after that.  Here’s a read only link, same guy. https://www.electrocultureandmagnetoculture.com/bee-hive-saving.html

I have accidentally populated my worm bins with pseudoscorpions too, and have read they may be helpful against varroa and hive beetles, so I may try to introduce them in and around the hive
1 year ago
Hello all, I’m a novice that’s done a lot of reading but has no experience.  I bought some used beehives and set them up over a year ago.  This year, a swarm moved into one.  They seem pretty robust, are cleaning it out.  I just want to leave them alone, but also will not “help” them in any way, besides the following.

I am curious if anyone on this site has tried these things (copper on the entrance, magnets on the hive), and whether they think it helps.  To me the copper makes a lot of sense, the magnets are a little out there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCNBsi8HehY

I’m waiting for copper flashing to arrive to try that, but in the mean time I put magnets on the hive in the proper orientation (after some study, it appears you just want a north-south facing hive ideally, but you put a magnet on each side of the hive with the same polarity orientation as the poles).  The bees, at the very least, don’t seem to have changed their behavior with the magnets attached to the hive.

I don’t really want to “keep bees”, I just want to provide homes for them to thrive and survive, so the goal is to have bees that are capable of doing their thing without interventions
1 year ago
Here’s a couple videos I took of them.  I’ll be interested to see if they come back in the Spring here!

https://youtube.com/shorts/bIgJKT8P9pw


I’m super curious what they are “gathering”!
2 years ago
I added some big chunky biochar to my worm bins.  Just to sort of break it up.  I don’t harvest it enough and it’s sort of the ultimate lazy project. I figured the charcoal would help keep it from becoming too compacted.  I dig through one of the bins recently, probably 6 months after adding and mixing in a mound of charcoal.  I found a worm had actually gone inside a piece of charcoal, like I often notice they do with husks of avocado or half of an eggshell.  Anyhow, my conclusion is that biochar added to a worm bin can only be a good thing.i don’t think I would finely crush it though, I think the chunkiness of it helps break up compaction and aerate.
3 years ago
I have a Chinese yam plant growing on my land despite the most neglectful method of trying… I’m pretty sure I just found these seeds I must have bought but it was beyond the time to try to grow them from seed and flung the packet in a bed of tree mulch I had full of weeds and strawberries and some coneflowers.  Lo and behold late in the summer I noticed a weird vine I hadn’t planted, and it had those red edged leaves like someone in this thread has posted.  So, I think I have a Chinese yam vine that grew up from the most neglectful method of sowing I could manage.  I’m in zone 5b, and I’m excited to see what it does next season.  I love any edible plants that can thrive on their own despite neglect and non ideal circumstances.  Let me rummage around and see if I can find one of those pics I took for indentification of the leaves …. Found it!  It wasn’t exactly thriving, but I wondered what the heck this small vining plant in my weed infested strawberry bed near a coneflower was
3 years ago
That’s a great common sense plan Elendra!

Just an update - one of the plants had dried up browned pods and the others were still green, so I picked both and collected the seeds.  I’m actually dubious that the dried up pod seeds will be viable, they were tiny and didn’t have any kind of bean shape.  The green pods had 3 seeds that were much larger than the others.  I planted all the seeds in fabric containers I buried in the ground, 4 in all, and labeled two of them “dried seed” and two “fresh seed”, pic is the seed I collected from both types of pod. Will update this thread with any success or failure next Spring!
3 years ago
Hello all, I have two Apios Americana plants near each other that each set seed this year.  They are from Oikos and the only two that I think made it when I planted 4 or 6 tubers.  I tried some searching around and didn’t have any luck, so was hoping some kind knowledgeable person would know the best way for me to go about trying to plant the seeds. I am in zone 5b.  Some basic questions -

- Should I let the green beans dry on the plant before I harvest the seeds, or would the seeds be viable now?
- should I save the seed to plant in the Spring, or should I plant them now?

My basic strategy was going to be to try both and see what works, but there’s not a *ton* of seed, maybe a half dozen pods between the two plants, so I’d like to “make the most of it”.  Thanks!
3 years ago
Whew okay, guess that one was just finicky.  They are still coming.  Not a swarm at a time but one to two bees at a time almost continuously
3 years ago
Oh no … now that I changed it, I just saw a bee come and inspect it, not land, and leave… man! I hope I didn’t ruin it!
3 years ago