live, love, travel, dream

It’s been a month now for the bees to get used to their new digs.  They have adapted well.  The move from the NUC box to the hive body went well.  I gave them a week to get used to their new home and their environment before messing with them.  At that time, I fed them using the gallon zip-loc method.  I had a couple of shallow bodies that I stacked on top of the lower.  This gave me room to put the bag full of feed on top of the frames.  Having an engineering background, I understand the concept of surface tension of liquids.  It still doesn’t feel right to reach in and cut a slit in the top of the bag that is full of 5 pounds of sugar-water.   But, it does work, and it works well.

A couple of weeks ago, I shuffled the frames.  I took one of the empty outer frames and shifted it to the center of the frames.  This also worked well.  They had been slowly working their way from the middle frames toward the two ends.  This seemed to have kicked in some kind of instinct telling them jump on that frame and fill it.

Hive number 2 is still much stronger than number 1.  Number 1 hive might not catch up until next spring.  We’ll see.  It is almost time to put a second hive body on hive number 2.  It’s about 70% full.  I have a couple of mid depth bodies that I will put on as soon as I put together the frames.

The honey bees of course. After much anticipation, preparation, waiting, etc. I finally got THE call. “Your bees are ready for you to pick up”. I went down this evening and picked up two NUCS from Mike Sorensen. He runs a website at beeyondwonderful.com.

We (the bees and I) made the hour long trip back home arriving around midnight. Mike had warned me that the bees would be upset about the move from their old home to the new one here at the house. I was a little concerned that I would have a few thousand bees dancing around my head when I opened the box. I got fully suited up in the new Brazilian bee suit, that I got from Mike (Awesome suit, by the way), gloves, etc. I carried them down to the corner of the yard that I had prepared and sat them on top of the empty bottom board. Being that it was midnight, it was rather dark so I had the flashlight in my teeth, inside of the veil. Yes, I’m sure that it would have looked a bit ridiculous but, nobody was around to see. Then, the moment had come to cut the tape holding the opening shut. My apprehension seems a bit ridiculous looking back now but, Mike had warned me that they would be upset about the move and as nice as the new bee suit is, I’m 6′4″ tall and the legs didn’t quite make it down to meet my short boots that I was wearing. Anyway, I cut the tape on the first box and fold down the flap………. nothing. OK, didn’t expect that. I move over to the second box, cut the tape and fold down the flap. A dozen bees came crawling out and started walking around on the outside of the box. Nobody flying, still no bees coming out of the first box. This is where I start feeling a bit foolish about the anxiety of opening the boxes. I’m sure it would have been much different if it had not been midnight and/or been warmer outside. A couple of bees eventually started crawling around on the first box and if I shone the flashlight inside, I could see several of the girls walking around on the bottoms of the frames.

Tomorrow (actually, later today as it’s almost 1:00am), they get to move from their cardboard box to the real hive.

Richard

Man! What a mess. I don’t ever remember being this confused about who represents my ideals the best. It seems as though, I find myself trying to choose the candidate that I dislike the least. Admittedly, I am not an easy constituent to please. If you like the environment, believe in taking care of yourself, are displeased with the war in Iraq, and don’t want to be taxed to death, there doesn’t seem to be a direction to turn. I came across this selector at Selectsmart.com. It at least gave me an idea. I know that the candidate that it chose for me isn’t perfect for me. Maybe it will help you. Here it is. Hint: When you click to submit, look for the link for the results at the top of the page, otherwise it appears that it keeps throwing ads at you.



More Free SelectSmart.com Widgets

Wow! Another year has come and gone. In some ways it seems like this year has flown by. In other ways, 2007 was interminable. We are all entering into the year with good health and great intentions of eating healthier and trying to get our lives back. As part of “The Bells 2.0″, we (I) decided to change our website. It’s almost entirely driven by WordPress. I didn’t like the fact that the website was ugly and didn’t have a consistent look and feel. Having designed several websites for companies and organizations, I had not spent any time on ours. I hope that everyone has a great 2008 and look forward to spending more time with friends.

Richard, Judy and Rachael