multipurposegoddess

Well, Vernon and his son came and got the bees. It only took them half an hour to get the hive all packed up and strapped into the truck - I am impressed and glad I didn't have to do it myself because it would not have been that smooth of an operation for me! So, my beekeeping days are over. It was a nice interlude while it lasted. 

I did actually accomplish something myself, today, too. I figured out which valves were the problem in my drip irrigation + swamp cooler water supply pipe tangle AND successfully replaced them (and the ancient copper tubing that was visibly twisted and clearly about to break). Everything works and doesn't drip near as bad. Quite pleased with myself.

I got both the cars smogged, hooray! And I don't feel too bad about not just taking a half hour and getting it done earlier because it took all frikkin' day - I headed out right after breakfast and just got home in time for tea. But it's done and I believe they are technically legal now and I should have the stickers to prove it pretty soon. So, yay for that.

And the guy who is taking my bees called before I had to call him and ask what was up, he's going to come by on Friday and see how much of a project moving the hive is going to be. I might be nice and try clearing off the patio so he can get his truck in closer, that all needs rearranging anyway. We'll see how ambitious I feel tomorrow. Right now I'm super tired. I don't know if I even have the energy to catalog my Farm Box, which was delivered while I was out.

I got stung, finally. On my face, which is embarassing. Got the stinger out right away and it doesn't hurt too badly so far.

Will this stop me from impulsively doin little maintenance things aound the hive without a veil (I decided to clear a little of the tall grass from in front of the hive and one of the early rising bees got caught in my hair)? Time will tell, I suppose. 

No eggs today, which is just as well as I still have most of last week's dozen from Soul Food. I did get

• 1 pound apricots
• 1 pound baby bok choy
• a bunch of beets, including greens
• a bunch of carrots
• 1 cucumber (I might try refrigerator pickles. I don't like the taste of cucumber but I do like pickles)
• a bunch of flame seedless grapes
• a head of green leaf lettuce
• 3 pounds of peaches (I opted out of melons, so I get extra peaches)
• 1 pound sweet gypsy peppers
• 6 heirloom tomatoes (beefsteak sized)

Glad my fridge was basically empty.

Went and picked up a queen excluder and a honey super. Actually harvesting honey seems much closer all of a sudden! Have applied the first coat of paint, it should dry pretty fast in this heat.

The bees now have a fancy two-story condo. Installation was no problem at all.

I also retrieved the definitely empty queen cage and inspected the frames for brood. There are about 7 frames actively being worked on. I wasn't able to absolutely confirm the presence of brood, as I was looking for the tan, cardboard-looking surface that the books describe and everything was actually coated in bright yellow pollen, but there were the tall cells that should be drone brood, all clumped together like they are supposed to be, so they were probably surrounded by worker brood. I forgot about holding the frames up to the sun to look through the wax for eggs and larva, but it was pretty overcast to be trying that anyway. I think we're probably in good shape. And I have to assume that all that pollen is a good thing.

The feeder was empty, so I refilled it - as long as they are eating the syrup, I will supply it, I guess. I tossed the gallon bag of syrup that was on top of the hive. It wasn't empty, but it had been out in the sun for longer than seems safe for anything to eat.

Tried out the smoker, so now I know I can work it with the gloves on, but I didn't need it. These bees are pretty docile. They were understandably disturbed by me moving frames around and reaching into the heart of the hive to get the queen cage, but were never really aggressive and calmed down quickly. Which is nice for me.

Wednesday was fascinated by the whole thing. I don't know if she is actually interested in the bees or suspects that any out of the ordinary thing I do might result in the appearance of tuna, but she stuck close and watched carefully. But she didn't pounce on anything or stick her nose close enough to get stung, so that's all right I guess.

Pictures( Behind the cut )

 As more or less expected, re-entry into normal routing after Vegas is taking some adjustment. It's kind of silly - 3 days and two nights vacation shouldn't take more than 3 days to come back to normal from, but my routine, such as it is, is more week-based than day-based, so it was easier to just kind of take the rest of the week off than shift everything. And actual daily stuff like feeding the critters and getting the mail and like that did happen on schedule.

Anyway, the point is, Vegas was a whole lot of fun. perkins is totally awesome to travel with. We ended up with a nice suite at THEhotel (or is it theHOTEL? one of those), my award-miles flight on JetBlue was longish but fine and essentially free, so most of my vacation budget was available for fabulous dining and a fantastic spa day.

( Somewhat blurry on the details account within... )

Vegas is always so surreal - the lights everywhere and the endless interiors and small details like the patterns of the carpets and the lack of clocks somehow all conspire to make the whole experience outside of normal life. Makes for an intensely vacationy vacation, even when it's short. Maybe especially when it's short.

I haven't done much since I got home - baked bread, made chopped liver, made a bit of a dent on the freezer. The bees look good but I still need to get the queen cage out of the hive, I hope it is not entirely encased in wax already. Picking up the second hive body on Wednesday, I am so excited to expand!

It's a sequel, in case anyone doesn't know, because I had that wild colony last year that died off or got absorbed by another hive or whatever, which is why I have the hivebody to put these bees in. Anyway.

Picked up the bees on Saturday. Got lost on the way because the GPS aspect of my phone is for shit and tanked out right when I needed it to tell me whether to stay on the 80 or take 80-business and I guessed wrong. Oh well, my bees were still there when I finally found my way.

Watched a three-minute video on how to install the package into the hive. Bought some seeds for bee-friendly plants because, really, I can't pass up seed packets. Was told that the bees had just been packaged that morning, which is not usual, and that I should wait until at least Sunday evening, maybe Monday to do anything at all, just put them in the garage until then. And just so you know there's really a queen in there, here are your marshmallows.

So they went into the garage. I moved them a couple of times because I do keep a car in there and I was nervous about CO, but otherwise left them alone. Went to Jepson Prairie yesterday with my folks, which was actually kind of Easterish - walked around looking at the ground hunting wildflowers instead of Easter eggs, but one of those is called Butter and Eggs (and there was a lot of that one). And on the way home spotted three rabbits. And many lambs, but that's what happens when you drive past sheep ranches in the Spring, the rabbits were a surprise. Also got a nice little lecture with exhibits on the endangered fauna of the vernal pools (one of them is actually an ephemeral lake, it's big enough to have fairly serious waves now and in a few months it will be entirely gone!): fairy shrimp, tadpole shrimp (freaky looking), cricket frogs, etc. Also learned that the native bees are mostly single-species pollinators, even more than that, slightly different strains of, say, Goldfields will have different species of bees that pollinate them. Craziness. But it was too windy for the bees to be out, so we didn't see any.

So that was neat.

After all that I decided I was too tired to bee wrangle and they'd have to wait until today.

And then today was rainy and I wasn't sure I'd be able to do it, but it cleared up by evening. I donned my full beekeeping costume - veiled hat, long gloves, windbreaker, jeans tucked into rainboots. I thought I had seen the full video, but I must have missed the beginning (it was on a loop) because I didn't really know how to get the feeder can out of the package, and the design was different than my books described, so that took a little ingenuity. And everything is harder in gloves. But I managed, and got the  the queen cage safely out, so now I've seen a queen and she does clearly have a longer torso and is painted with a white dot, as promised. With some trepidation, I took the cage away from the colony so I could take my gloves off and poked the marshmallow into the corked end of the cage (pushing the hard candy cork into the cage so there is just marshmallow blocking the hole, which should be easier for the worker bees to chew through) successfully. The mass of bees stayed over by the feeding can, hive, and packaging. Regloved and put the cage on the floor of the hive between two frames as instructed by the video. Then put the whole package of bees into the space left by removing 5 frames, as instructed by one of the books, which seemed much easier than pouring the bees into the hive as instructed by the video (I've seen that done, but haven't tried it myself, so I took the easy way). Sugar syrup into the feeder outside the colony, lid on top, Bob's your uncle. No stings.

Tomorrow I will remove the packaging and probably feed them some more. Good thing I have a couple of gallons of syrup made up. I may need to wield the smoker, exciting!

The orange trees and mystery citrus have started blooming, also the sticky monkey flower and azalea, so hopefully they will get well established with nectar soon. I've relocated the hive so it isn't immediately visible from my backdoor, which will probably reduce the cloud of bees filling the backyard effect somewhat (I enjoyed that, but I don't know how comfortable I would be having guests on the patio with that going on), but I also put in a pathway of stepping stones over to where they are so it's easy enough to go check them out.

Ran up to Sacramento with Mom to order my bees. Chatted with one of the owners about the state of my curent hive body - she thinks it'll be fine and I might even attract another wild swarm before the packaged bees are available, in which case I can cancel the order or get two hives going. They expect the bee packages to be ready for pick-up the second week in April. IIRC I'll probably want a second hive body 6 weeks after that, end of May. I'll probably go for a little earlier or later than that, come to think of it.

Picked up some beeswax Hannukah candles, since I had such trouble finding candles this last year and they were there, and a Hibernation Diet book, because I am all for hibernation in general. Also, honey chocolate mints because yum.

Then we had lunch at a Vietnamese-Chinese Restaurant that the GPS found for us. Roast Duck Pho (not the real name, but that's how I think of it) = nom. And leftovers, so future nom.

Tomorrow is Tu B'Shvat, I think I will observe by planting my sprouted avocado pit and assorted other gardening. I don't think I'm up for putting another tree in he ground just yet, but in a pot I can do.

 My sister and her family came out, and I took them to the new Aquatics Complex that I've been meaning to get to since it opened in February, and it was really cool. I swam a length and half, we all collectively remembered/figured out how to swim the side stroke and breast stroke, some of us (not me) dove and tried the water slides (nephew's verdict, not enough time sliding to be worth the waiting in line). My sister and I got in trouble for walking against the current in the "lazy river", but now I know that I can go do that in the mornings when it's allowed (and cheaper than the "recreational swim" time that we were there today), so that's good. Then we got the Mexican food that we couldn't get yesterday because the restaurant was closed and got to go browse around my local comic shop, which is always a good time. Came home and there were bees visibly flying around in the backyard and going in and out of the hive, but when I lifted the lid I still could only see one or two. Possibly they are deeper in the hive and harder to see? I don't know. It occurred to me that if the swarm was an older queen who left a previous hive, it might be time for a new queen already and that would make for changes that I'm not all that clear on. I'll keep feeding them and hope for the best, I guess.

The bees are in the hive, in the backyard, and have a feeder jar full of sugar water.  My neighbors across the street are all into it and ready to be given honey - the dad came and watched the bees being moved and asked a bunch of questions. Of course, they are not within that 50 ft, but still. My neighbors either side of me I can talk to, and my neighbor behind me might actually be 50 feet away from the hive. Haven't decided how to proceed yet.