Tomatoes, Bees and Such

Well we were hit with the late blight on our tomatoes. We had 30 tomato plants we started from seed and with this cool wet summer they were big beautiful and very green. We had just begun to get some red tomatoes when the blight hit. I wanted to hold off pulling them as so many were huge and just a few days of sunshine would have stopped the blight and saved my tomatoes or at least slowed the progress of the blight. With this weekends rain we were done for. We saved as many of the big tomatoes as possible and are trying to ripen them picking through ones that show blight. We were able to can a few jars and things are looking positive with the tomatoes we saved. On another note at Shari's old house that she rents, had a feral beehive, which took up residence in the wall. It is late in the season to try an extraction as it is highly unlikely that the hive will be able to marshall their resources and gather enough to survive the winter but I'm hoping they might have a chance. I made a bee vacuum from my shop vac and two hive bodies and it worked unbelievably well. If 100 bees died in the process that would be a lot. This morning I opened the hive to place it on the hive stand and it was a humming with activity. I was able to take a frame of honey from my other hive and place it in the new hive to give them something to start with. Will try and check on them later this week and see how it goes.