How I spent last summer's weekends and evenings ...
My decision to start beekeeping last year led into way more work than I had originally planned, but since I didn't end up with any bees, I had the time.
I bought my equipment for two hives last winter and built a hive stand with 2 x 4's. A friend of mine has been beekeeping for a couple of years and has "rescued" quite a few people from swarms in their yards. I had planned to go with him and take one or two swarms to keep in my yard, but last year was apparently slow for swarms, so I didn't end up with any bees at all. I've got two packages on order this spring.
While preparing for the swarms that didn't materialize, I checked the regulations regarding Fairfax County. I have a six foot privacy fence around my entire backyard, so I was covered there. The fence, or obstruction, is required to alter the early flight path of the bees so they won't bother the neighbors. They generally fly quite a distance and won't drop down lower once they get over the fence into the neighbors'yards.
The next requirement is a water source for the bees, and this is where I found ways to spend the time I had planned to spend figuring out the bees. My friend uses a 5 gallon bucket with some wood floating in it so the bees can land and drink without drowning. My wife had always talked about having a small pond in the backyard, so somewhere along the line I talked myself into creating a backyard pond.
While planning the pond, I decided I wanted to make sure we weren't also breeding mosquitos. I looked at various ways to reduce the mosquito larvae population in the pond, and a waterfall to keep the surface moving sounded nice for the future, but I don't have the money or confidence level to run electricity out to where I wanted the pond. I then came across something called mosquito fish. They're very much like minnows, but are supposed to be voracious larvae eaters. They're also extremely hearty and will live through extreme temperatures and conditions. I didn't see anywhere locally to buy them, but found a couple of ebay sellers with plenty in stock. This was probably late winter or early spring and unfortunately I was interested in these fish I'd never heard of, and bored, so I bought some. Still very cold outside and no pond even started, so I found a used 33 gallon aquarium on Craigslist for cheap.
I did some research on aquariums and set it up just in time for my mosquito fish arrival. Of course during my research I found out that you should start with two or three hearty fish and let the water naturally cycle for three weeks or more until its healthy and can support more fish. I added my 20 new hearty mosquito fish since they had no where else to go, and bought the test kits and chemicals to hopefully get the water cycled faster. I monitored the levels of various toxins through the cycling process and in about a week and a half had a healthy aquarium with no loss of fish.
Pleasant surprise, my wife really liked the aquarium. Unfortunately mosquito fish are very plain and boring, and 20 mosquito fish plus a few cory catfish were as much as that tank would hold, so I found a 30 gallon tank on Craigslist for cheap.
This time I set it up the correct way and I checked online to find what tropical fish were compatible with mosquito fish. We got some colorful fish when they went on sale for $1 each, added them to both tanks and I moved half of the mosquito fish to the new tank as well.
As it got a bit warmer, I started working out the pond details, size, depth, location, what materials I'd need. As I said, mosquito fish apparently survive all kinds of extreme conditions, so I didn't really need to worry about filtration or aeration, just a big deep hole with a liner. Three feet deep is the apparently the magic number for making sure the fish have some liquid to live in, even in the most extreme cold we could have here.
Once the weather was warm enough I built my pond, let the water cycle, and moved most of the mosquito fish out there. My wife and I went out and found various plants that would work in the pond and added them as well. It was nice going out and sitting next to the pond, trying to watch the mosquito fish, very quiet and relaxing.
We had three old park benches with slats that had rotted out years ago. I bought cedar planks, cut them into slats, sanded and finished the wood and we had benches for the pond.
With more reading about ponds, I found that the trapdoor snail is a great snail to have in a pond to take care of the algae, and they're cool looking. I found those on ebay also and added a few to the pond. They stayed near the surface, which meant they needed more oxygen in the water, so I got an aerator and, short term, ran an outdoor extension cord out to the pond.
The bubbles made the pond even more relaxing. Very easy to just veg out staring at the never ending bubbles. We just had a hard time seeing the mosquito fish. They're gray and average around two inches long and the pond liner is black.
I checked online and found that my pond could support some goldfish also, and goldfish should be able to survive winters in a 3' deep pond, so we got a few 10 cent feeder goldfish for the pond. They were much more visible and made our visits to the pond more enjoyable.
Of course goldfish really do better with filtration. I already had the extension cord running out there now, so I gave in. I also figured that if I was going to set up a filter, I may as well make it a waterfall/filter, since my wife wanted a waterfall anyway. We are talking small scale here by the way, the pond is just six feet by seven feet, and the waterfall isn't much more than a five gallon bucket with a flat edge that the water comes out of.
So we spent the summer watching the tropical fish inside and watching the goldfish triple in size in the pond outside, while the hives sat empty over by the fence.
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