Because of our cold winters, my winter beekeeping activities usually entail building beehive components for the following spring and summer, but this winter the weather has been unusual. We’re jumping back and forth from very cold to surprisingly warm. It’s confusing to me, some plants, and I imagine the bees, too.
Right now, we are in the middle of a week-long period of warm weather. While not quite spring-like (days are 45 to 58 degrees), it is warm enough that we can use only one of our two wood burners. We let the fire die out overnight and relight it the next evening. We’re burning only 10 hours instead of 24, which saves on firewood.
The bees are also burning their midnight oil. All ten beehives have bees flying in and out. While it is a good sign that the hives are alive, my fear is that one of two things will happen: one, they will burn more calories flying in the cold than they consume, meaning they will use more of their stored honey reserves than they can replenish; or, two, the queen will lay so many eggs they cannot keep them all warm when the weather turns cold again and much of the brood will die. Hopefully, the queen will know by when the sun rises and sets that it is still winter and won’t get carried away.
The weather is not yet warm enough for long enough to feed them in the hive, but I have continued to take advantage of sunny days above 50°F to open feed the honeybees. Besides the sugar water, I put out pollen substitute. To my surprise, more bees were interested in my freshly cut oak logs than in the feed.
Why Bees Are Attracted to Logs and Sawdust
I asked my beekeeping AI why, and it had three suggestions: to find fungal spores, which have a high protein content. “Bees will treat these spores as a legitimate protein substitute to keep brood fed,” it said. I have to admit, this is news to me. Besides, the sawdust was only a day or two old, so I doubt there is mold in there yet.
The second suggestion was to find residual sap and wood sugars, which are accessible in the sawdust. That one, I believe. While nectar is their first choice, bees will find other sources of “sweets” they can harvest to obtain carbohydrates.
The third reason was to collect the resins and gums, which the bees use to make propolis, often referred to as “bee glue.” Propolis is a sticky substance bees use to “caulk” the cracks in their hive and plug small holes. When I saw them attracted to the wood, this was my immediate assumption. Some people expound on the supposed health benefits of propolis and eat the stuff. I’ve tried it once and equate it to what I imagine eating gum stuck under a desk for the entire school year would be like. Yech!
Why We Practice Dry January
Some people stop drinking for “Dry January.” We take it further by scheduling no appointments, planning no trips, and stopping all social activities for the month. This isn’t to recover from Christmas, although that is a side benefit; it is because the first six weeks of the year tend to be the coldest and snowiest. We have learned from experience not to schedule doctor appointments, dinner parties, or other events when there is a good chance we won’t be able to get down the mountain.
Last winter, this served us well. Not only were there frequent snows, the road was still in terrible shape after Hurricane Helene. Instead of being impassable just when it was snowy, it was impassable whenever it was muddy, and snow gave way to ice, and then mud.
This year, the road is much improved, and while we have had four snows, we are also having these periods of nice weather. Those are the days I work outside or go shooting. Outside work in the winter usually involves firewood, but this winter it has involved beekeeping as well.
Another advantage of staying home is that we aren’t getting exposed to the flu. It seems like every family with children has been hit with the new version of the flu that is going around, which is sometimes referred to as “flu K.” By avoiding crowded places, we are minimizing our exposure to the flu germs and have remained healthy.
Useful Ruger 10/22 Upgrades
Over the holidays, I bought auto bolt releases and new recoil bolt buffer pins for all three of my Ruger 10/22s. I replaced everything in one and added a new charging handle I had on hand from way back and tested it out. After finding the results more than satisfactory, I did the work on the other two, including my takedown model.
My hope was that the auto bolt release would make it easier to release the bolt single-handedly, and that was indeed the case. This is far easier than the normal bolt release, which is annoying. I don’t know why Ruger doesn’t sell the gun this way. If you own a 10/22, I recommend this upgrade, which costs less than $20 per gun.
With the new buffer pins, which featured a thin metal pin for rigidity within a heavy elastomeric sleeve to cushion the bolt when it slams into the stop, I hoped to quiet the sound of the action for when I was shooting the gun suppressed. This may be the case, but if so, my ears could not tell.
I also did some judicious sanding of the bolt to smooth out edges and (supposedly) reduce feeding errors. If you are interested in tuning your 10/22 in this manner, there are plenty of videos on YouTube with instructions. I recommend you watch three to five on each upgrade and then use your own judgment as to what changes you want to make and how you do them. My guns still work fine, but if you get carried away, that might not always be the case.
Survival Gun Maintenance: Stocking Spare Parts
More than five years ago, well before most of my current readers were around, I wrote a blog post for Survival Blog about keeping spare parts for guns as part of your preps. I reprinted it here.
In it, I discuss keeping spare parts to repair Glocks, ARs, and 1911s. While I have only a few spare parts for the Ruger 10/22 (that’s where I got the extended bolt handle), all the parts I removed are now in my 10/22 spare parts kits.
While I was buying these parts, I also bought a set of replacement pins for the trigger assembly. If you have ever taken the action out of your stock, you may have learned that these pins are sometimes loose and can fall out. I felt that having a spare set was a good idea.
In hindsight, I wish I had bought an extra takedown screw. While they rarely fall out of the stock, two of mine are slotted for a flat-head screwdriver while one has a hex head and requires an Allen wrench. For expediency and consistency, I wish they were all slotted screws. Not only do the multi-tools in my EDC bag and other survival gear have a flathead screwdriver, it’s much easier to improvise one in the field than it is to improvise an Allen wrench.
Upgrading my Vehicle Ammo Storage
In addition to a loaded magazine or two for my current carry gun, I have kept spare ammo in the contractor box on the back of my truck since I first got a contractor box back in the 1990s. (I’m on my third box.) Since the ammo is subjected to a wide range of heat and cold, and the ammo boxes slide around and look crappy. Worried about ammo degradation, I shoot this ammo every year or two and replace it with new.
My plan is to have extra ammo for every gun I or someone else in the vehicle might carry. (You know, just in case.) Right now, I have the following calibers in there:
- .22LR
- .38Spl +P
- 9mm
- .40 S&W
- .410 Shotgun shells
- .45ACP
- 12 gauge buckshot
- 5.56
Since I don’t shoot all these guns at one time, I cycle through using the ammo slowly. That means some boxes are like new, and some are kind of old and worn. Some are in Ziploc baggies to keep them dry; some, like the 5.56, are in magazines, but others are just in boxes. I ran the ammo in the latter category through my vacuum bagger to help keep them dry and protected.
As you can see in the picture, it sealed the boxes up well. The jury is still out on how long these plastic bags will hold up. They are meant to sit on a shelf in your refrigerator or freezer, not bang around in the back of a truck that bounces up and down dirt roads and around tight mountain curves. I’ll check back in 90 days and see if the bags are still holding a vacuum. Even if they don’t, they should provide moisture resistance.
The Barter Economy: Trading Ammo and Trading Up
A friend told me a relative who works in law enforcement gave him an older H&K USP in .40 caliber after the hurricane because he didn’t want him up here unarmed. A year later, he had never shot the gun. Since I am moving away from .40 and carrying 9mm, I gave him 200 rounds of Winchester WinClean ammo that had been sitting on my shelf since 1997.
He and his family had a ball shooting it, and he is now scheduled to take his concealed carry handgun course. I had warned him that the lead-free primers didn’t have the shelf life of conventional primers, and that he might run into a round or two that didn’t shoot. I also explained what to do if they had a misfire or a hangfire. He said that every round fired and asked me if I had some more ammo he could buy from me.
Well sure! I brought him another two boxes of 100 rounds of Winchester white box. The best price we could find online was $24 a box, so we settled on a compromise price that was less than that but may have been more than I paid for them back in 2010 when I bought them. On my way home, I went to my local store and bought 200 rounds of brand new 9mm range ammo at $10.99 a box of 50. I call that a win-win.
Looking at my inventory, I can sell him at least another 400 rounds if he asks again. That will boost my 9mm stores enough to do some serious practicing.
