Birds...

Since we filled the pond and the Botones de Oro have grown up around the edge of our garden, it has been amazing how many birds have started to come to our garden.  Some of them just sit in the trees at the edge of the forest but others swoop down to eat tadpoles from the pond or roll themselves around in the puddles.  There are always a few on the lookout for any scraps the chickens (and Ally) over look.

The following photos are not ours but they are photos of the birds we see on a fairly regular basis around out house.  I´m trying to get better at identifying new species but from what I can see so far, there is lots of variety!

 This is a Vermilion Flycatcher and you see them everywhere, even in the centre of town. I dont think it´s especially exotic but it has a lovely bright red colour.

 This is a Flame Rump Tanager and is totally unimpressive until it flies and flashes it´s whole back beneath it´s wings which is bright or sometimes rusty red. We see these from the house and garden often darting in and out of the trees.

 Green Jays. These are my favourites.  They have a fairly horrible voice but always hang out in groups and and are very vocal and playful. They croak and chirp and do a kind of dance where they bob up and down. We see them almost every time we walk the dog because they seem to like a couple of trees round the back.  They also dance around in the trees outside our house often. You always know they are there because of the noise!

 The Andean Motmot is known as a Barranquero because it nests in burrows in the barranco (verge or slope). It´s very beautiful and quite big.  We sometimes see them around the house in the trees after the rain.

The Squirrel Cuckoo is a regular in our garden and really looks like a huge squirrel because it seems to run along the branches - although I imagine it actually hops or flies. It swings its tail from side to side like a pendulum which is why they sometimes call it a relojero here, reloj meaning clock.

Under Attack...

So as I mentioned in the last post about the bees, we had a couple of niggling concerns about ants creeping up onto the hive.  We decided to cast these doubts aside after a conversation about who would win in a fight? A bee or an ant?  We decided that a bee would definitely win having a stinger, the advantage of flight and everything.... wrong.  According to trusty google, an ant colony can destroy a hive in under two hours removing all the honey, wax and brood and generally clearing the whole place out. I cant remeber if they actually eat bees or not or if they just flee the hive. Bees cant sting ants seemingly and ants are very determined (as we know from the leaf-cutter fiasco a couple of years ago now).

Thinking that our analysis of the situation was accurate, we didnt even bother to check on the hive for about a week, until on a boring afternoon in the hostel, I googled it to dicover the bad news.  That night when we got home from work, we went down to check on the hive with a torch in the dark and found what we were most dreading.  The hive was absolutely covered in big black ants!  Some with wings even, voiding our advantage of flight theory. There was no buzing coming from the hive and there were no guard bees patroling the entrance as there usually are - just thousands of ants racing around all over the place.

Thouroughly depressed, we half-heartedly tried out a googled suggestion of covering the hive in powdered cinnamon and brushed off as many ants as we could in the darkness and left it at that. After the considerable investment involved in setting up the hive, getting the kit and studying the system, it was a bit of a blow to think that we had failed as beginner bee-keepers.

As the following day was Saturday, Tony went down to the hen house to get eggs for breakfast and at the same time went to check if the cinammon had had any effect on getting rid of the ants, making it easier to salvage the hive to start again.  It had!  It´s true that ants really dont like cinnamon, I read that it burns their feet. Whatever it does, they left... But better than that!  There were bees everywhere, zipping in and out of the hive, legs covered in pollen! Maybe it was the case that they lock down when under attack and seal up the entrances or maybe they were all asleep and not buzzing the night before.  Whatever the reason, it was a great relief to see them!  We also checked on the progress that day too and they are working very hard and have made a lot of honeycomb on the new panels that we put in only a week earlier. We´re still not sure exactly when we´ll have honey on the go but we´re happy enough for now just knowing that the ants didnt manage to raid our supply!

Tilapia and frogs..

It seems like we have been talking about our pond forever and had never got round to actually getting on with it and and finishing the job. There always seemed to be something else more pressing on the go or maybe after the back breaking job of digging the hole and then the neighbour´s dog destroying it, maybe we just lost enthusiasm.

When Tony´s parents were here however, they got straight into the garden, planting and tidying and so riding that wave of enthusiasm, Tony and his dad finished the pond. They made the slopes more gradual, evened it all out, put a liner and waited for the rain to fill it up - which it did over the course of a month or so. We have a great little solar water pump with it´s own battery and mini solar panel which switches on and off throughout the day and night discouraging the mosquitos and the plan is to order a truck load of rocks to cover the liner round the edge and make it look nice.

With the pond made and filled, the next logical step seemed to be fish. Luckily we have a keen fish breeding friend, Diego, who quickly sourced us some baby tilapias and although most of them unfortunately didn´t survive the journey from the Patia Valley where they were born, we were happy to recieve the remaining 5 plus a handful of river snails and 3 cleaner fish, the name of which I cant remember - looks a bit like a cat fish.

About the same time as the fish arrived, so did two big and very noisy frogs who proceeded to lay about a billion tadpoles in the pond while singing very loudly everynight from dusk until dawn. From what I can find out, tadpoles wont harm the fish but they do seem to be eating most of their food and although the parents are not keeping us awake at night, we do have to turn up the tv sometimes to block them out!  We´ll have to wait and see what happens to them, hopefully they wont take over the garden and nature will somehow control the population and not let them starve out our fish!

Bees...

The bees were delivered a while ago now and as we were caught a bit unprepared having no kit (mask, suit, smoker etc), we were glad to have Jose the bee man on hand come and install our new pets. Having brought a box with 4 frames and about 20,000 bees down from the mountain village of Coconuco, Tony picked him up in the car and brought him and his buzzing travel companions up to the house to show us how it´s done. Unfortunately I missed all the action as I was at a meeting with the neighbours about all sorts of petty and administrative niggles within our neighbourhood. Tony however, got right in there, eager to learn how it all works.

First Jose set up the smoker with some leaves, sawdust and bits of wood and lit it, using the bellow-like part to keep the fire smoldering. He also got kitted up in his astronaut-like suit, special bee tool in hand and after inspecting our hive and considering it appropriate, opened the box of angry and disorientated bees. All 4 frames got placed into top section of the hive along side the other 4 or so frames that we had already kitted out with wax sheets with the idea that over time the bees will extend their building work onto the new sheets. 

 All the while, Tony was taking photos and watching closely - maybe a little bit too closely.  In the chaos, one of the bees stung him right on the eyelid which although painful, didn´t seem to deter him much.  It was only 3 days later when he still had a protruding eye and was provoking fairly horrified reactions from people in the street that he decided to take the general advice and get some medical attention. Turns out it was nothing too serious, that´s just what happens when a bee stings you in the eye - you react.

A few weeks later Jose told us that it was time to add in some extra frames to get the bees expanding the hive and increase productivity. More prepared this time I set off, smoker and bee tool in hand and astronauted up... fairly terrified if I´m honest... to open up the hive and basically invade and destroy their perfect and intricate work. It was totally fine!  It was cloudy and drizzling slightly which might have had something to do with it but the bees were very relaxed about me poking around in there, they didnt try to sting me at all and although many of them did come out to see what was happening, a lot of them just keep on with what they were doing.  Which actually didn´t seem like very much!  Since they were installed a month before, they hadn´t touched any of the new frames and didnt even seem to have created much more honeycomb than I could see in the original photos. Either way, I considered the excersise a success and like the bees even more now as they really dont seem to be that agressive at all considering the fairly dramatic nature of honey harvesting.

Lat weekend, only a week after I suited up, Tony set off to check on the bees and the productivity did seems to be considerably better with the new frames.  The bees have built the wax structure over half of each of the new frames we put in the week before. Again they seemed very relaxed and there were no stinging attempts and I could watch from about 3 meters away with no mask or jacket without them even seeming to care.  Unfortunately though, the lid was covered in large black ants!  From all the internet info I have found, that seems to be fairly bad news as it seems that ants can totally destroy a hive and steal all the honey, brood and wax in a very short time. Tony gave them a good blast with the smoker and scraped them off the lid and as far as he could see, there were none inside the hive but we´ll have to wait and see what the verdict is this weekend. Hopefully it wont be too serious. Hopefully the bees are not as easy going with the ants as they have been with us so far.