Hello from Shiga

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ifd66
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Hello from Shiga

Post by ifd66 »

Hello,
I'm Iain. We life on the shore of Lake Biwa in an Eco (low impact) house we build about 3 years ago. I guess our property could be called a smallholding/homestead. We keep chickens, goats and grow as much food as we can on about 370 tsubo. My special field is sustainable development so I'm very happy to be joining this group with so many like-minded and knowedgable people to share ideas with and learn.
I've already gained the movitvation from this site to go ahead and order a Flow Hive in an attempt to start bee keeping here. In this respect, I have a question which I may repost later. Q: will being located next to the lake significantly restrict the amaount of foraging the bees on my property can do?
The other main thing we do which may of intesret to this group is that for the last 10 or more years we have run our old Toyota Hilux Surf on WVO (waste vegetble Oil).
So I'm very happy to join this group and if anyone is interestd in our house building process and the eco-features it has, please feel welcome to vist my blog https://wordpress.com/stats/day/ecohous ... dpress.com and contact me on this group.
Cheers!

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gonbechan
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Re: Hello from Shiga

Post by gonbechan »

Hi Iain, welcome to JSL, it's great to have you here.

Bees, I wouldn't worry as they forage on average around 3km but can go 2 or even 3 times the distance if they need to.
Please keep us posted on your flow hive. Are you going to be doing European or Japanese bees?

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Zasso Nouka
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Re: Hello from Shiga

Post by Zasso Nouka »

Welcome to the forum Ian,

Appreciate you taking the time to sign up and it's great to have someone in your field of knowledge. You've got a wonderful house in a really beautiful location and as Gonbechan says it shouldn't affect your bees ability to forage. One thing you may want to consider with the flow frame hive is excluding Suzumebachi from it, my bee keeping teacher came up with a novel idea to protect European bees. He suggested a netted framework around the hive with a mesh size that would allow passage of bees but be too small for suzumebachi to enter. For Japanese bees you would probably only have to restrict the entrance.

Feel free to put a link to your blog in your signature if you like, I'm already subscribed to it and will continue to follow your postings there.

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Eric in Japan
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Re: Hello from Shiga

Post by Eric in Japan »

Just looked around your blog- Wow, half-build house. That takes me back!
In 2004 we did the same thing here in Ibaraki! My kids were 1 1/2 and the second was a bump in the wife's belly. We moved in when the interior walls were still just bare studs and the floor was the plywood base, but we managed to get the interior done with the help of friends, my parents, and Mr. Aoki our half-build architect.

The youtube video was really fun to watch! Passive solar, woodstove, chickens, goats, tons of fruit trees and permaculture- It is a lot like my property! And a composting toilet too! Add in a dog and two cats and that would just be eerie lol.
The little drabs of plaster on the beams- I could take the same picture in my house!

I really like the blackboard wall idea. Might copy that one. :)

Welcome to the forum- I'm sure you will fit in well here!
"... so, the cucumbers said to the cabbage, `Lettuce Go.`"

ifd66
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Re: Hello from Shiga

Post by ifd66 »

Thanks for al lthe replies. I've just received the flow hive - much quicker than expected, so now have to start studying. I will track down the beekeeper member I noticed when reading posts from here a few weeks back.

My main focus now is location of the hive and getting some bees.

And Zazzo's comment about keeping out Suzumebachi is useful - thanks!.

ifd66
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Re: Hello from Shiga

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Would be happy for this post to be merged with another bee post but no idea how it can happen.
Update: I was persuaded by a local beekeeper/NGO founder to get traditional boxes to try and attract native bees. He seemed very skeptical that the flowhive would accomodate native bees so I will try at a later stage to get a european colony for that hive.
Anyway, no luck yet. We now have two traditional style Japanese hives out in the back garden in some undergrowth and under trees and one up at the edge of a nearby forest. To attract them he gave us 3 blocks of wood with melted wax on.
Anyway, I have learned enough over the last few weeks to realise that keeping goats is a lot easier than it will be keeping bees, but looking forward to the challenge. Now waiting.

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Zasso Nouka
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Re: Hello from Shiga

Post by Zasso Nouka »

Thanks Iain,

Posts have been merged and the old thread renamed to make it more obvious it's a topic on bee keeping. Looking forward to hearing how you get on with attracting and caring for your colonies as it's something we really want to do but don't have any bee keepers locally that keep A. Cerana to learn from.

A question on goats. I'm guessing that for a continuous flow of milk they would need to give birth regularly, is that correct ? Then what do you do with the baby goats or do you just expand the flock ?

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Re: Hello from Shiga

Post by gonbechan »

Baby goats are quite tasty.

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Re: Hello from Shiga

Post by Zasso Nouka »

I think I'd have some issues turning baby goats from running around to dinner and not quite sure what the legal situation might be there.

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gonbechan
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Re: Hello from Shiga

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