Mark Wyborny

I have kept bees in bear habitat over 50 years. Technology has advanced into something that actually works perfectly. All that need be done is purchase a solar energizer.  Some fiberglass push in stakes. A push in T shaped ground rod and a roll of highly visable polywire. I use a S 100 gallagher solar energizer, it will powerfully  shock miles of fence and since I'm in the northern side of the equator I face it south for all day sun. I often turn it off in daytime too and never have had to buy a 20 dollar replacement battery yet either. Bear hibernate in winter so I put it away then. I only need one strand at knee high and that is 100% effective! When its early Spring and I have not put the fence back up yet a bear might push one or more of the approximately 50 hives over and eat some combs, start feeling stings and run away bawling in pain. It usually takes a week or two until they get craving sweets enough to try again but they dont like painful stings. They are all sensitive to pain and cry loud even when shocked. One strand at knee high scares them and they dont come back ever again, especially since they remember the time they were painfully driven away bawling with bees all over them. I figure it hurts them a few days just like it does me when I get badly stung. If you are where bears still exist then you will need a fence but the entire investment costs less than one fully mature beehive does and if you buy a quality energizer it will last decades as mine has. It requires that you make certain to keep all things from touching the wire. If grass grows up to your knee high wire it will shock the grass instead of the bear. I also keep cattle horses and deer from knocking over my hives with that knee high strand. The animals only need shocking once to fear the fence wire but they must see it. That's why you need a colorful polywire not bare metal wire. White yellow or orange is perfect.  Metal wire is invisible and they dont know where or why the barrier is there. I have bought other energizer brands and was sorry because there are no regulations on the accuracy of the jouels power in USA nor the quality of the components. Gallagher invented the electric fence to keep his horse from destroying his fancy car. He does make the best. Also make sure there is no plastic under the wire because I've seen one video of a lazy guy who had plastic sheets under the wire to keep the grass from growing. If you step on plastic and touch the wire you won't even get a shock.  He made a youtube video showing his fence didnt work but he turned off comments so nobody was allowed to tell him the victim's feet must touch the ground to get shocked by the wire instead of plastic. There is no reason to make something that is made to injure with tetanus rusty nails because you or someone else will surely step on them and might lose a foot like one of my friends did.

I love crossing things too, but you will get an adapted landrace without any crossing whatsoever just by saving seeds from your best surviving and most productive plants. Subspecies happen without crossing. I've grown Jamaican sorrel in zone 7 for example. 15 years ago the plants barely had time to even make pods before freezes and I'd only get one plant to even make a few mature seeds. Now this year and last all of mine make mature pods and seeds by june. My leaves are completely different from the original also. Beans are hard to naturally cross. I've grown beans side by side for decades and still have the original kinds. I hold fast to the fact that my beans have adapted to my region better each generation of seeds saved. If you only save seeds from the mother stallard pods with the most beans per pod you will have more beans per pod the very next year. I've done wonders in 26 years with a tomato variety I have. I just save the best tomato and from the best plant. Each year it becomes noticeablely better in every way. My tomato and my Jamaican sorrel are landrace to my region now. With crossing you get a hybrid, with time you get a landrace.  Most important of all is simply selection of the mother plants. You will also find bizarre mutations you might wish to select for that just happen even in pure stock. I am 59 and grew my first beans at 4. I think rancho gordo has the best deals on beans but alot of them won't even produce beans at all in my area due to photoperiod I suppose. The only lima to produce in Alabama black eyed lima. You gotta find what grows in your area and tastes best and stick to saving seeds to get your landrace. If you cross your landrace then the next year it is very possible you will lower resistant traits and they will suddenly become prone to pests and sensitive the harshness of your climate. This happened in India when a large chemical corporation talked local farmers into investing in so called improved cotton. Thousands of local farmers committed suicide because of debt from crop failure.

I have percheron horses and raise yards of honeybees.  I use electric fence and barb wire to contain horses. One  beehive will cost around 500 dollars and need maintenance every 10 days at least until wintertime. A good Gallagher solar charger good enough for elephant costs less than one beehive and requires no beekeepers. You'd need dozens and dozens of beehives an honeybees don't leave their hives on cold days rainy days or at night. That leaves alot of escape time for the horses. Beside that when stung who knows which direction they will run. Probably they will continue running forwards.  

The use of wire is an excellent method and 100% effective with an electronic fence energizer.  One that is made by Gallagher for keeping livestock contained. Very inexpensive too.
The use of bee colonies instead is a terrible idea because the beehives will not always sting. The elephant will have to knock over the hive first. The people will quickly learn the value of the beehives and consider them just more property to protect from elephant damage. They will shoot the elephant for just getting close to the beehives. Beehives are not cheap. Electric fences are proven effective and are inexpensive.  

You can put your hives on stands on a mat or carpet which makes it necessary for the larvae to crawl across it to reach the soil to pupate. In the Summer when beetles are breeding the mat kills the larvae in seconds if the temperature is over 85 degrees. Otherwise the sweet  larvae rarely make it past the lizards toads birds and assassin bugs who learn to patrol the mat. I put predatory nematodes on the soil at the edge of the mat and they thrive under the mat. I don't use pollen substitute patties in the summer. The beetles lay eggs in it. I remove extra unused comb and make certain the extra honey is harvested so the bees don't waste time guarding it from robbers and ants. Some of my colonies have adapted genetics to chew the hive beetles to death and those hives never have a single one while others ignore the beetles completely and still others build little propolis jails. The problems come once a large honey filled hive dies and the beetles get to breed in it. A dozen beetles becomes a thousand larvae and if all those make it to the soil  you'll get a thousand beetles all at once flying into and overwhelming your hives. This happened to me when I had a neighbor spray poisons on his cattle pasture /hay field. He killed alot of my colonies each time he sprays and if I didn't remove the dead hives in a day or two they will breed the hive beetle to teeming hoards. The most important thing is to never allow the dead hives to produce larvae. Clean them up fast. I use a large solar wax melter. I put the beetle frames in it and they cook in seconds. The solar melter attracts beetles at night who lay eggs inside because of the beeswax smell of pollen and brood. Each day their eggs cook to no avail. It's an excellent beetle trap. I could talk bees all the time so sorry.

I use it all the time fresh and hot but it smells better once its dried a few days.  I've even pushed 2 or 3 dried chicken manure into container plants as if they were fertilizer pellets with very good results. It's really strong because chicken manure is guano. It has the extremely high ammonia nitrogen urine in it because birds go #1& #2 at the same time. . The reason they age manure is actually to allow the possibility of pathogenic life forms to deteriorate. If you put it on the plants keep it away from the trunk or stem or theyll die aged or not, dormant plant or not. Use it very sparingly but often rather than all at once. You will waste it to the rain putting it on this early. Nitrogen is very water soluble and will wash away over the winter on top of that asparagus due to snow melt or rains. I'd put the manure under a tarp in a pile to keep it dry and use it in spring just a little on everything that needs fertilizer. Putting it on fresh or dried it's still potentially going to cause over fertilizer burn. I've killed dormant plants with too heavy winter applications. The roots still burn. It only takes about 2 cups of chicken manure to fertilize about half a dozen asparagus crowns if you scatter it on in spring. There isn't a stronger barnyard manure. Frequent fertilizing with small amounts is the way to success.

If your reason for pruning is because you were weighted down from too many peaches then pruning won't be the answer. You need to thin the fruit early each spring . I know everyone prunes for so many reasons and I used to work on vineyards and orchards doing pruning when i was a kid in the California mountains. Now that I have my own farm I just don't prune much anymore except when I need to keep my vineyards manageable on the trellis or remove dead or dying branches from my orchards. I let my trees grow completely naturally except to remove rootstock suckers on grafted trees. They get huge and bare enormous amounts of fruit and actually have less disease and pests without suffering routine amputations.My advice would be to focus on your donut peach tree and imagine what you want it to look like and decide how to shape it. In the long run it will be your pride and your provider no matter if you let it keep all three leaders or just one.  

Thats the right thing to do. It's called healing them in. As long as you protect those roots from cold dry winter air they'll be fine. They are dormant in the winter anyway. Most people just dig a temporary hole and stuff them all in together and throw some soil over the roots. You can plant them when the weather warms up.  They'll die for sure if you don't do what you did. Good job.