- Hi, thanks for joining us for The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

I'm Chris Cooper.

Rabbits can wreak havoc on a vegetable garden.

Today, we're going to talk about how to control them.

Also, we're getting a tour of a beehive.

That's just ahead of The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

- (female announcer) Production funding for The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South is provided by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

[upbeat country music] - Welcome to The Family Plot.

I'm Chris Cooper.

Joining me today is Mr. D. Mr. D's a retired UT Extension agent, and David Glover will be joining me later.

Oh, it's good to see you Mr. D. - Good to see you.

- Yeah, so are you ready to talk about rabbits?

I think you know a little something about- - I do.

- Trying to control those rabbits, right?

- I do.

I do.

And you know, I can't go without saying, the best way to control 1 is a 12-year-old with a 20-gauge shotgun.

[Chris laughs] I gotta mention that.

- Oh, he's back.

- Yeah, yeah.

12-year-old with a 20-gauge, a 22 rifle or something like that.

But with all that being said, they are an interesting critter.

They reproduce very quickly and they are a very important food source, not only for, you know, folks like me.

- Right.

[chuckles] - But coyotes and feral cats and birds of prey.

- Yeah.

- Hawks, owls, and everything, they're almost, almost as good as chicken, you know?

Everything, you know, they're very, very tasty and a lot of animals depend upon rabbits in the ecosystem.

And unfortunately, if you have a garden, many of those predators aren't able to, you know, get out in your yard and control those rabbits.

- Yeah.

- And they can be a problem in a garden.

But the biology of rabbits are a little different.

They are... Now, I picked this up in graduate school in biology class.

Crepuscular in nature.

- Crepuscular.

Okay.

- Crepuscular.

That means- - And you still remember that?

How about that?

- I remember.

That's one of the few words I remember - Okay.

[chuckles] - From graduate school.

But it means that the animals are active in twilight.

- Okay.

- So, they're not active in the middle of the day, very active in the middle of the day or in the middle of the night.

But early in the morning, very early in the morning, and very late in the evening, they're very active.

And a deer hunter, a lot of deer hunters see rabbits.

And they're familiar with a little bit about, you know, rabbit behavior.

- Right, right.

- But the female rabbit is called a doe.

And the male is called a buck.

The young one is called a kit.

On the average, rabbits live for 12 to 15 months.

They can produce as many as six litters per year.

They produce more litters in the north than, no, no.

I got that backwards.

They produce larger litters in the north.

- Gotcha.

- But fewer litters in the north, because they don't start breeding until around frost.

Well, they'll breed before the average frost-free date, but they probably don't deliver until after the last frost-free date.

But they can produce as many as six litters per year down south, down in Texas and southern part of the United States.

And as probably three litters per year up north.

And then, the southern litters are smaller.

Only two or three rabbits per litter.

And in the northern litters they are larger.

They have up to six.

And I don't know whether, I guess that's just a warmth thing.

You know, maybe keep the little fellas warm.

- Yeah.

How about that?

- But the gestation period of a rabbit is about four weeks.

You know, 28 to 30 days.

The rabbit, mama rabbit, the doe can rebreed within hours after delivering a litter.

- Right.

And it's amazing to me.

- It is and you know, they can reproduce very quickly.

Baby rabbits, you'll see 'em out in your yard, if you've got a lot of rabbits, their eyes open in only seven to eight days, so they won't be out.

If you find a nest of 'em, I call it a nest.

It's a...

They don't deliver in a hole in the ground.

They just have kind of an area that's protected with vegetation over the top of it.

And it's kind of a depressed area in the ground is where they will deliver their litter.

But they will stay there and their eyes will be closed for seven or eight days.

Of course, they're a mammal.

So, she nurses the young.

- Right.

- But they leave the nest in two to three weeks and a week later, mama delivers another litter.

- Another litter.

How about that?

- So, that's the way they go.

- Wow.

- Under ideal conditions, a pair of rabbits could produce 18 young per year.

But you know, again, most of those probably are taken by predation or don't survive due to weather or things like that, a lot of 'em don't make it.

But, unless it's in your yard.

- Unless it's in your yard.

- Or your garden, and then they all survive and they will-- - Well, let's talk about how to control them if they're in our yard or in our garden.

- The best way is, well, other than the 12-year-old with a 20-gauge shotgun.

- Yeah, other than that.

Right.

- In my opinion is an electric fence.

Now, you can use other types of fences.

You can use chain link fences, but a small rabbit can get through a chain link fence.

- Oh, wow.

- So, you need, you can use hardware cloth, but with small enough mesh to keep the small rabbits from getting through it.

You can do all that.

But in my opinion, the quickest and probably the cheapest way to control 'em is using an electric fence.

And you can reuse that.

You can build that and reuse it.

Take it down and put it back up.

And I've personally had good luck keeping rabbits out of our research plots here at Agricenter International by using an electric fence and having the wire at about four inches off the ground.

- Wow.

That's pretty neat.

- And, you know, it needs to be hot.

You need to make sure that you're not having anything that grounds out the wire.

So, if you have weeds or anything that grows up, you need to make sure you weed eat under that or control that with a herbicide.

You know, under the electric fence.

- Yeah, that makes sense.

- But- - Can they dig under the fence or can they jump over it?

- They could do either.

But they don't where I'm concerned, because I think when they get close to it and they put that little pink you know, tender nose up against that wire, I think they, it changes their mind.

- Yeah.

- And if the fence is not working, you know, all bets are off.

- Oh, right, right.

- If the power goes off.

- Yeah, that's a good point.

Yeah, that's a good point.

- And if you- - Which happens.

- If the charger goes out on you, then all bets are off.

Then they... - Yeah.

- They're out there and they have a good meal.

It doesn't take 'em long to clean up what you got.

- Right, right.

So, what do they like to eat?

- They like tender, succulent vegetation.

That's the grasses, the herbs, anything, herbs.

Now, there are few vegetables that they don't normally eat.

And it's tomatoes, squash.

- Squash.

Yeah.

- Peppers.

There's a couple more here.

Those are the main ones that I haven't seen them eating.

- Okay.

- Tomato, squash and peppers.

There may be a couple more.

But they love the legumes, the peas and the beans.

And they don't eat corn.

- Corn.

Yeah.

- For some reason, corn's one that they don't seem to bother.

But... you know in, flowers, your ornamentals and things like that.

They like that too.

They love clover, you know?

[Chris laughs] And they like any of the weeds in my yard, you know?

The grasses and the mostly weeds.

- Weeds.

Right, right.

- They eat some of that.

- They like most of that.

But as long as it's green and it's succulent, they're happy with that.

- Okay.

- Lettuce.

Lettuce.

- Oh yeah, of course.

Yeah, they eat lettuce.

- Carrots.

- Yeah.

Of course.

- Silly wabbit.

- Yeah, right.

Bugs Bunny, right?.

- Yeah, yeah.

- So, in order to control them again, so electric fence is- - That's, in my opinion, that's the best.

That's what I've had success with.

- That's what you had success with.

- I have not had luck trapping them.

I've tried trapping them.

And when I was a freshman in high school, one of my ag projects was to build a rabbit trap.

And I built a rabbit trap and I set that thing, and I checked it every day, and I caught possums.

And I caught possums.

- Okay.

[laughs] - You know?

But I never caught a rabbit.

Never caught a rabbit.

And it was my rabbit box.

And I've had... live traps since then in my lawn.

And I've never caught a rabbit in live trap.

- Caught a possum, but not a rabbit.

- I caught possums, I caught raccoons.

I've caught squirrels, I've caught chipmunks.

I've caught a lot of things, but not a rabbit.

- Not a rabbit.

So, electric fence will do the trick for you.

Thank you, Mr. D, we appreciate that.

From experience, we appreciate that.

- Happy hunting.

- Happy hunting.

All right.

[upbeat country music] - My wife hates poison ivy.

This is not poison ivy.

It took me a while to train her on how to tell the difference.

It's really very easy.

If you notice the leaves, it has five leaflets.

Poison ivy has three.

We only have five leaflets here.

This is Virginia creeper.

And it is easily confused with poison ivy because of the growth habit and the color.

And sometimes poison ivy is mixed in with Virginia creeper.

So, be careful when you're dealing with it.

I do not see three leaves in here anywhere.

You can see the fruit.

On here the little berries.

Virginia creeper.

Poison ivy has berries on it too.

So, it has some similarities.

Poison ivy has hairy outgrowths from the stem and Virginia creeper does not.

Pretty easy to control.

It may take more than one application of a herbicide.

Glyphosate is a good product.

If it's running up a tree or your house, you can cut it loose and then when it regrows, as it's actively growing, spray it with the glyphosate.

And glyphosate works better on actively-growing, fast-growing tissue, spray it on the green tissue and you ought to be able to take it out.

[upbeat country music] - All right, Mr. David.

- Hi.

We're back.

- We got the getups on, huh?

- It's a little different.

- The bee suits.

- In bee suits.

We're actually in bees.

Couple of things real quickly.

before we even start.

One thing that is really hard for new beekeepers is keeping their smoker lit.

- Okay.

- Now, why do you need a smoker?

To alert the bees.

- Alert, not alarm.

- Well, kind of.

You may wanna think that most people think smoke is calming effect on bees.

It doesn't.

It actually confuses their ability to talk to each other.

All the kids know about the waggle dance and how bees tell other bees about where flowers are.

But bees really communicate with pheromones.

Those are smells that mean something.

Well, we generally can't smell what the bees are saying.

So, what we can smell is smoke.

- Okay?

- Smoke is louder than anything the bees can say.

And the first thing that we do when we get into the bees is we smoke 'em a little bit.

That smoke confuses their ability to talk to each other.

The guard bees can't tell the other bees that we're in 'em.

And some of the bees will actually take that smoke and realize there's a fire somewhere.

And they'll go into the hive and suck up as much honey as they can.

It distends their abdomens.

And bees have to extend their stinger to sting.

- Ah-hah!

- When their bellies are full, they can't push out their stingers.

So, they're confused and they can't sting us.

The smoker is very important.

And keeping it lit while you're working is even more important because once the bees are looking at us, that means they know we're here.

- Okay.

- Do a little bit of smoke across the top of 'em and they go back to doing what they were doing.

- Well, let's make sure we keep that smoker on, man.

- So, we've smoked 'em in the front.

We've waited about 60 seconds.

We're gonna lift the back.

- All right.

- Put a little smoke under here.

- Okay.

- And the reason we're opening this hive is because I just got these bees from somebody's house last week.

And we wanna see how they're progressing.

One thing that we look at as the bees come and go from the entrance, you can learn a lot about what's going on with the bees.

If they have pollen on their legs, that means they have babies.

If they have babies, that means they probably have a laying queen.

- Okay.

- Pollen is protein.

Everything needs protein to grow.

- Okay.

- Okay?

So, we watch that, we watch the activity.

Is there any arguing going on in front?

Is anybody fighting?

[Chris laughs] Bees defend their hive.

If there's no hive movement up front, no arguing, then they're not stressed.

Well, there's some bees.

- Wow, how about that?

- And this is a hive tool.

Neat factors on this is you can use this to break apart pieces of wood that the bees have glued together.

- Together.

Okay.

- Hear that popping?

- Yeah, I heard it.

- Okay.

- Now, how would you think the bees are doing?

- Right now?

We've got bees.

So, they're alive.

- So, they're alive.

Okay.

- And see how they're looking up at us?

See the eyes?

- I see that.

- Just a little bit of smoke and down they go.

- Wow!

They went straight down.

- Okay, when we open a hive, we start on the outside and work in.

- Okay.

- Now, this is a new hive.

I'm not expecting much movement in here, but this is what we would do.

Pry the bar apart.

This goes right here.

And jacks up on the side of the frame.

Not expecting anything on this frame because it's brand new.

- Okay.

- Slide this frame over.

And keep sliding over to see what the bees are doing.

- So, as you're sliding those over though, but that's not bothering the bees?

- No, because they're doing their thing.

- Okay.

- Okay.

Lift this up.

See the glistening in there?

- I see it.

- That's nectar.

- Neat.

- That's going to be honey.

- Neat.

- Nectar comes from flowers and it's the liquid source in the flower that draws the bees in.

- Okay.

- And as the bees are digging around getting nectar, the pollen in the flower is actually getting stuck to the little hairs on their bodies.

And when they leave that flower and go to the next flower, that causes pollination.

The pollen transfers.

That causes our fruits and our vegetables to grow.

Now, see this real fat bee right here?

- I see it.

- That's a drone.

That's a boy.

- Okay.

- Okay?

- Pretty good size too.

- If you look at him, see how big his eyes are?

- I see that.

- His whole head is just about all eyes.

He's got one purpose in life and that's to find a new queen and mate with her.

So, he needs all those eyes to see her.

- How about that?

- He sits in the hive all day long until about two o'clock in the afternoon, sucking up honey.

Around two o'clock in the afternoon, all the drones leave the hive and they go to a place called a drone congregation area, a DCA.

- DCA.

[laughs] - It's sort of like a smoking lounge for bees.

And they kinda hang out and wait for a new queen to come.

Now, how does she find them?

There's not a big neon sign up there, but there's pheromones.

A trail of pheromones where the boys have flown and she follows straight to them.

And when she shows up, game is on.

- Wow.

- They will chase her.

And the first 12 to 20 drones that catch up with her will mate with her.

And she stores up all of that genetic material inside her body in a very special organ called a spermatheca.

And coming from her intestines is a tube that feeds sugar to them.

And it keeps those sperm viable for up to five years.

- Wow.

Whoa!

- Crazy?

- Man, that is wild.

- One mating and that's it for her.

- Wow!

That's it?

- That's it for, we're gonna go one more box down.

That's it for her.

She never leaves the hive again unless the hive feels constricted or congested.

And she will leave with half the colony and go find a new home.

- Okay.

- That's what happens in the spring and summer.

It's called swarming.

- Okay.

- They're looking for a new home.

So, it'll be a big cluster of bees hanging on a tree or a mailbox or somebody's car.

They don't have anything to defend, so they're not gonna get, they're not gonna sting you unless you go mess with 'em.

In fact, even here, bees are defensive.

They're only gonna defend their hive and their honey.

They're not gonna come look at you like wasps or yellow jackets will.

- Yes.

- Okay?

- I've been a witness to that one.

- We're gonna go down one more box.

This box is the box of frames and a comb that we got from the house.

A lot more action in here.

When we take comb out of a house, we gotta do something with it.

Rubber bands hold it in place.

So, everyone that has the X on it, is a rubber banded comb.

- Okay.

- These on the outside or just fillers that we put in so that they have everything they need to grow.

Plastic foundation.

Bees build wax on top of this.

They build it out.

- How neat is that?

- They'll do it on both sides.

We'll set that right here.

Go over one more.

And then, that looks good.

- That's a lot of bees down in there.

- That's also a lot of honey.

- Wow.

Huh.

- See the white caps?

- I do.

- That white is honey.

- Okay.

- Earlier we had liquid.

Once it gets to about 17% moisture, once the bees have dried it out, they cap it over with wax and that's their honey.

And again- - That's impressive.

- Two fat drones.

- I see 'em.

- A lot of workers.

In a hive of 40,000 bees, you may have 1,000 boys.

- A thousand.

How long before the bees can make honey though?

- Well, almost immediately.

- Okay.

- When they set up a new hive, there are bees that are building wax and bees that are going to the field, and they're bringing food in as fast as they can.

So this is comb that was in somebody's house.

- Wow.

- See the tan pockets?

- Uh-huh.

- Those are babies.

Those are brood.

- Okay.

- That are just about to hatch.

They go through the same four metamorphic stages that butterflies go through.

Egg, larva, pupa, adult.

- Pupa, adult.

All right.

- They actually spin a cocoon inside the wax and that's the cap over the cocoon.

- Wow.

- But this was in somebody's house last week.

- How about that?

- And they'll eventually fill this whole area out with wax.

And once they do, then we won't have to worry about these spare pieces sticking off the side.

I'll set that there.

- That is so impressive.

Now David, before we have to leave, I noticed there are a few dead bees laying on the ground.

- Yes.

New beekeepers may look at that and go, "Oh my gosh, somebody sprayed my bees."

Or they've gotten into a pesticide.

Bees work theirselves to death.

- Okay.

- And sometimes they'll die inside the hive.

And when they do, another bee will carry that dead bee outside the hive and drop it on the ground.

Well, the entrance is right here.

So, there are a few dead bees on the ground.

- Okay.

- What I'm looking for right now is evidence that the queen is laying.

We're looking for eggs and larva.

Right here is the queen.

- Ha!

- Right here.

Going down.

- Going down.

I see her.

- Doesn't take long for her to lay an egg.

The queen lays about 1,500 to 2,000 eggs a day.

Literally her body weight every day in eggs.

- How impressive is that?

Mr. David, we appreciate this.

This has been outstanding.

In fact, it's been- - Out standing in the field?

- Un-bee-lievable.

How about that?

Thank you much.

- Yes, you're very welcome.

Thank y'all.

[upbeat country music] - Here in Memphis last year we had a real hard winter.

A lot of the plant material in our landscape did not survive that winter.

We have a rosebush here, and as you can tell, it actually got killed back by the winter.

Not only do we have to freeze in the winter, we had to freeze a couple of months back as well.

So what we're gonna do here is we're gonna actually prune out a lot of the dead wood that you see here.

So we're approaching summer.

We want to let it grow just to see if it will come back, but as you can tell, most of it did not.

So, let's give it a hand and see if we can start pruning out again a lot of the dead wood.

Let the rose breathe a little bit and we'll see what happens later this summer, okay?

[twig snapping] Yeah, and I'm just gonna be cutting where I see a lot of dead wood.

Down on this cane there's actually some new growth.

So, I'm just gonna cut back till I get to green tissue.

Let's see.

I can tell I'm getting close.

[pruners cutting] Ah.

See if I can do one more cut here.

[pruners cutting] Ah, yeah.

So, I'm actually starting to see a little green tissue there, right?

And again, if you look at this cane, there's your growth.

So, this growth is actually coming back from this cane, so, we'll leave it.

And now we'll see what happens to the rest of the rosebush as we move into summer.

[upbeat country music] All right, Mr. D. Here's our Q&A segment.

You ready?

- Let's do it.

- Hey, let's do it, he says.

All right, here's our first viewer email.

"Can a muscadine vine be transplanted "by breaking off a twig "and planting it somewhere different?

How long would it take to produce?"

And this is Craig from Middleton, Tennessee.

Oh, he's pulling out the publication.

[laughs] - Yeah.

NC State.

- NC State.

- North Carolina State, yeah.

- Extension there, right?

- How about that?

- Uh-huh.

- It's a pretty good looking muscadine there.

- Oh, that looks good.

- I guess the answer Craig's question is simply no.

- Okay.

- Yeah, you can't just break off a twig and plant it somewhere different.

- Right.

- Now, the way, the best way and the way that most muscadines are propagated are with softwood cuttings.

And you can take the softwood cuttings and you take a long whip off of a muscadine vine and you cut the tip off of it and you cut it into shorter segments that have three or four nodes in it, and you stick 'em in potting soil and you keep it moist.

- Yep.

[laughs] - You leave a leaf on each one of them and all that.

It's very, very, you know, if you're gonna do that, do a lot of 'em.

- Okay.

- Because your survival rate may not be that good.

Some of 'em will survive, but probably not 90% of them.

- Right.

- Maybe more like 25% or something like that.

It's been my experience.

- Okay.

- But now if you don't wanna, you've gotta keep it moist.

They don't like wet feet, they don't like standing water.

So if it's too wet, they will die.

If it dries out, they will die.

I had a guy that built, there was the guy down in Alabama that made him a system that would mist his muscadine plants.

And it was based on a commode flusher that had some kind of screen on it.

And he would spray water on that commode flusher and it'd cut the water off.

- What?

- And then when it dried, it would come back up.

And the water would come back on again.

You could probably do the same thing with a timer or something like that.

But another, a simple way to do it, a really simple way to do it is to layer.

You can take one of the vines down and you dig a little hole and put it down kind of in that hole, put the dirt on top of it, put a brick on top of it.

- Right, I've heard that.

- And do that.

And then, you know, let it grow throughout the summer, and in the wintertime you cut it loose from the mother plant and you transplant it.

That's a simple way to do it.

You can use a bottle, you can air layer.

- I've seen that too.

- Take a drink bottle, cut the bottom of it off.

You know, run one of the vines down or the runners, or limbs.

I can't think of what I'm saying.

And fill it with pot- Fill the cup or the bottle you just cut the bottom out of it with potting soil and you know, you just kinda secure that to the plant and leave it alone for the growing season and roots will start to appear in that bottle.

And then you cut it loose from the mother plant and plant it.

You know, that's a simpler way to do it.

But no, you can't just take a- - No!

Right, right.

[laughs] - You can't just take one, stick it in the ground and grow.

Some plants you can do that with.

- Yeah, but not- - Not muscadines.

- Nah.

No.

That is good.

That is good.

Dr. Lockwood will be proud of you.

- Dave Lockwood.

- I've been to a couple of his trainings and you sounded just like him.

Yeah, so he would definitely be proud.

All right, so there you have it, Craig.

There you have it.

The answer is no, all right.

All right, Mr. D. That was fun.

- Thank you much.

- Good show.

- All right.

Remember, we love to hear from you.

Send us an email or letter.

The email address is familyplot@wkno.org, and the mailing address is Family Plot 7151 Cherry Farms Road, Cordova, Tennessee 38016.

Or you can go online to FamilyPlotGarden.com.

That's all we have time for today.

Thanks for watching.

Today, we talked about rabbits and bees.

But at familyplotgarden.com, we have information about hundreds of different gardening topics.

It's there to help you grow the best garden ever.

Be sure to join us next week for The Family Plot Gardening in the Mid-South.

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]