It seems that you have sorghum head smut; a seed-borne fungal disease. The “soot capsules” contain spores that spread the disease. Much of the rainfed sorghum grown in the farms in neighbouring East Sudan is infested with this fungus, so the farmers treat the seed before sowing with a thiram- based seed dressing. (such as Fernasan D). Such chemicals are hazardous and should be handled with care and mixers should wear protective clothing. No seed dressing chemicals are presently on sale in Eritrea but they may be imported from Sudan with the requisite permission. (MoA, Asmara: list of approved chemicals).

Alternative action-

• If infection light, isolate infected heads, do not break spore capsules or burn heads; put the heads in a pit and bury them.
• If infection heavy and the grains must be eaten not buried, carefully wash heads and bury washings, dry heads.
  • Do not use seed from the infected field next year,
  • Do not use seeds from same source next year
• Next season, rinse seed from new source before sowing with mixture of cow urine and garlic, it might help, dry off, then sow.

What a fortunate discovery. The presence of bees will enhance all the crops and fruit on your holding with their pollination activity. Since the hives appear to be old and rather neglected, I suggest you check which ones are occupied and move the colonies into new and more modern hives that will allow you to maximise your returns from the honey crop. Langstroth hives are the most suitable for this. As long as it is done with care, it is a relatively simple operation to cut the combs out of the basket hives and insert them into the Langstroth frames.

The operation is as follows;

1. Move the basket hive carefully to one side and put the Langstroth hive in its place. The flying bees will go back to the new hive.
2. Very carefully, turn the basket hive over (or remove the lid if it has one) to gain access to the colony inside. Very great care must be taken not to damage or kill the queen during this operation.
3. Starting from the edge, cut out the first comb using a sharp knife.
4. Tie the comb into an empty Langstroth frame using string to hold the comb in place. You may find you have to cut the comb to fit the space defined by the frame. Have a container with you to harvest spare honey and wax. (You should also note that the string used should not be made of plastic. This means the bees will be able to remove it once they have attached the comb into the frame).
5. Once the comb is tied into the frame put it into the new beehive.
6. Continue cutting each comb, tying them into the frames and placing them in the new hive until all the combs are removed from the basket. The combs should be set into the new hive in the same order they came out of the basket.
7. Once all the combs have been moved into the frames any bees remaining in the basket should be shaken into the new hive. Hold the basket over the new hive and dislodge them with a sharp knock to the basket. Do this several times until all the bees have been removed.
8. Close down the new hive making sure it has a complete complement of 11 frames in the box. Add a queen excluder under the crown board, as this will make it easier when you come to add honey supers.
9. Remove the basket hive completely. You may like to keep the best ones for their historic interest.

Don’t forget to use plenty of smoke to subdue the bees and invest in good beekeeping overalls to keep you safe from bee stings. If you can find a helper, a second pair of hands will be invaluable.

All equines are designed to graze and eat grass or grass derivatives (hay/haylage - NOT silage or fresh cut grass). Whether you need to supplement this diet depends on the condition of your animal at the beginning of the winter and, subsequently, throughout the winter. Begin by checking the body condition at the start of the winter by running your hand from neck to stomach over the rib cage. If you can see ribs or if you can feel ribs as if they were corrugated iron - your fingers going up and down between each rib, your pony needs extra rations. If you can just feel regular hard bone and softer tissue, then they are OK on their grass/hay. DO THIS EVERY WEEK and adjust the ration accordingly as noted below.

Supplement their grass feed with a complete feed. There are two types, cubes and coarse mix. The amount to feed will be on the bag and will depend on the height of the pony.

Feed little and often, at least twice per day in small amounts. Do not give a day’s ration in one go, or your pony will get colic. Remember to continue to check on the body condition ( hand over ribs) on a weekly basis to gauge if you need to increase or decrease the ration. Make all changes slowly.

If your pony is in poor condition and is either a youngster or quite old, then you should add a high protein pellet to the complete feed.

When moving into the springtime, your pony, especially if it’s a native breed, should NOT be fat. Your aim in winter feeding is to help you pony survive, not fatten them up unless the pony was in very poor condition at the beginning and you need to improve its state through the winter; or your pony is young and growing.

Remember that work needs food so if your pony is working, it will need more food to maintain the good body condition, another reason to check the body condition carefully and regularly

Modern, efficient, wood heating systems can be operated using pellets, chips or logs.

Wood pellets are the most convenient fuel and are suitable for use in domestic central heating boilers and room heaters. However, converting your own wood into pellets is not practical at a single farm-scale. Manufacturing wood pellets is a specialised process requiring expensive equipment. If you want to use your own wood, this option is not practical.

Wood chip boilers are also convenient but wood chip heating systems tend to be designed for larger heat loads of 30kw and above. This might be a very large single house or a collection of farm buildings or a house with a swimming pool. The advantage of using chips is that you can chip your own wood. A specialist chipping machine is required to produce consistent, high quality chips so for most individual farms it is probably advisable to contract out the chipping operation once or twice a year. You would need adequate dry covered space to store the chips. You also need to ensure the logs are well seasoned before chipping. Wood dries out better as logs than it does as chips.

I would expect that the best option for most single farms would be to use logs. Logs can be burned either in traditional wood burning stoves (with or without back-boilers) or in modern efficient central heating boilers. The efficiency of stoves is improving all the time but they do still require a fairly high amount of attention to keep them going over the day and may not be the most practical solution for a busy farmer.

What I would think would be a very good option for you would be to install a high efficiency batch-burning log boiler. These boilers need to be filled with logs once per day (or less often in the summer) and lit. The logs are burned over a period of a few hours and the heat output is stored in a hot water accumulator tank. Your heating and hot water controls take heat from this tank and when the temperature drops to a certain level you know it is time to relight it. Thus, this system is fairly low maintenance and reasonably cost-effective.

For more information on grants and installers in your area contact the Biomass Energy Centre www.biomassenergycentre.org.uk

I suggest that you divide the bees.

1. Move the colony chosen for dividing to a new permanent position about 3 m away from the original place
2. Put an empty hive onto the original place. (The result of this is that the flying bees will go back to the new hive in the original place while the young bees will stay with the old hive in the new place)
3. (a) If you can find the queen gently move her to the new hive by moving the comb she is on. If there are any queen cells on this comb these must be destroyed (otherwise there will be two queens in one hive and this leads to trouble).
   
   (b)Add one or two more combs of brood AND one or two combs with honey stores to the new hive. (You must be sure that any queen cells on these are also destroyed).
4. (a) If you cannot find the queen choose two or three frames of brood containing eggs and sealed brood and very carefully brush every single bee from the comb. (This is to be sure you do not move the queen by mistake).
   (b) ONLY add one or two combs with honey stores to the new hive.
5. Make sure there is pollen in both hives.
6. Be sure to leave at least one unsealed queen cell in the old colony. (Choose one or two really nice ones as these will make the new queen. If no queen cells are available then be sure eggs are present in the queenless colony so they can rear another queen).
7. Fill up both hives with frames or top-bars in order that they are both complete.
8. If possible, feed both colonies until they are fully established.
9. The colony that has to rear the new queen will take longer to recover and needs watching very carefully.

Remember: The colony without the queen must have eggs so they can make a new queen if no queen cell is available. This is slightly riskier with African bees as they are quicker to make laying workers than temperate bees.