A fun fact about our team we learned today –
Our birthdays are within 5 days of each other! Jamie’s birthday is March 13th, Patrick’s is the 14th, and Donald’s is the 18th of March!
And now, the news.
Today, Jamie and Don went down to the bamboo patch to cut some bamboo for our EACAP project! We went down to see John Rost at the greenhouse around 3, where he gave us some tools and lent us the Gator so we could drive down to the bamboo patch out in back of the sheep barn. As you can see from the picture, Jamie drove and I called shotgun!
Once there, we took a pair of loping shears and started seeking out any bamboo ¾ inch in diameter, since anything bigger would be too big for bees to comfortably nest in. The bamboo will shrink a little as it dries out, so we had a little leeway, but to be safe we shot for that number.
The bamboo was easy enough to cut, however being live bamboo, each stalk had numerous small shoots out of it that we had to trim. For every stalk we cut, we had to take the time to trim them down carefully. In addition, we trimmed both ends, so the diameter of the bamboo would be within our specifications.
In the end, we collected a fair amount of bamboo, and cut it down to size in order to transport it back to the greenhouse. We will have to cut it down further in the future, but that’s a story for another day. After loading up, we headed back to the greenhouse and parked it, going our separate ways.
We may need more in the future, but for now we can come back and trim this lot down to let it dry. It was a good time; muddy, but fun. Now that Patrick has gotten us some plywood, we can start thinking about how we want to design our bee habitats!
Until next time, have a great week!
[Author’s note: We had more pictures, but were unable to upload them at the moment due to the upload limit being exceeded]