I finally got my bees on April 19. My friend Brian picked them up for me from a supplier in Laytonville. I got 3 lbs of bees and a queen of the Minnesota hygenic breed that Brian has been using and they do well here. I reread the chapter of my book on hiving the bees and made up sugar water before Brian came. I got the hive all set up. You start with only a 'brood box' and add the 'honey supers' later to collect you honey. You also put a feeder inside with sugar water and get a spray bottle full of sugar water to spray them while you hive them. You open up the box and sneak out the queen and put her in the hive. All of the bees want to be with her, but you wait to let them out. You spray them well with sugar water to make them happy and remove 4-5 frames from the brood box. Then you dump them into the hive. Lots of them stay inside and are hard to get in there, so you dump them onto a white towel which leads up to the hive and they slowly make their way up. Many of the bees sit at the entrance and fan out the smell of the hive so the bees can find them. It was cold and wet, so many of my bees didn't make it in and are still outside of the hive. I spent hours trying to move them in by hand and got most of them to the entrance. The bees in the hive will carry out and discard any that die inside. You replace the frames you took out and shut up the hive and then you have to leave it alone for a week. Next weekend I get to go back and open up the hive with my smoker and look for honeycomb, eggs, larvae etc. and overall health. I'll have to break apart any frames they melded together, but I get to keep any 'burr comb' that they make and put it in the fridge for craft projects later. They honey is cool, but I'm excited about the propolis, wax and royal jelly too. My biggest concern is the health of the queen. If the bees are unhappy with her they'll kill her and try to make another, which doesn't always go well. If she is unhappy she could leave and take them with her. Next weekend they will be protective of their hive and I'm more likely to get stung, but no stings so far. It is strange to have them crawling all over your hands and not shake them off or freak out. It's not wise to wear gloves though, because you are more likely to injure the bees and that just makes them more angry. I'll post more photos of my weekend results if I can get anyone to come around while I check on them. Loren and Nolan took these ones.
The chickens are all laying now so we generally get 4 eggs a day unless they get out and lay somewhere else or just have a lazy day. We've been able to give lots of eggs away which is nice.
Loren and I also got to go to the Death Cab for Cutie show at the Van Duzen last week. It was a really great show. I would say I'm biased because I went to school with Ben and Nick and always thought they were amazing people as well as musicians, but in this case I believe the bias is absent and they really did put on a great show. It was also free because Nick got us guest passes! I guess I went to the right college. We got to see them 4-5 years ago in Eureka at a smaller venue. Nick was kind enough to hang back and talk to us for awhile and share a bit of the experiences you get to have as a popular rock band. More exciting than bees and chickens I suppose. Anyway, it was a wonderful experience and great to see lots of friends there as well. Quite a diverse crowd. I doubt they'll make it back this way again anytime soon, but I'd definately pay to see them and we'll buy the new album when it comes out.
