Bees, plants, trees and Mother's Day.

I checked on my bees today and they had really expanded the bur comb by the feeder so I had to take it out and remove the comb. I guess if you don't do this it gets really messy. I added back the two frames that had been removed for the queen box and feeder.

I was really happy to see lots of tiny eggs. One in each cell means the queen laid them recently. These were inside some of the bur comb I had to remove. Sad causalty =(

Even more sad was losing these larvae that were developing in the cells. You can see pollen and nectar on the right.

I was a bit less nervous this time. LC and the boys even came to watch me and got to check everything out. I was able to take some photos and also found Stella!! Can you spot her? She is near the bottom right. She has a big abodomen with no stripes and very short wings. The comb is covered in "capped" brood which means the first eggs are pupating! New girls coming soon. (Which is good because I smashed a few today)

The boys liked looking at the comb I had to remove. I'll keep it all in the freezer and use it to make lip balm and candles and furniture polish etc.

These little guys are in the Hemipteran order. Also called "true bugs". The order has a lot of pests like sapsuckers, leafhoppers and toe biters (aquatic). They look like beetles but they have a cross shape on their back because their wings (hemelytra)are only half hard and half clear (hemipteran=half wing). Beetles have full elytra (wings) that are folder over their entire thorax and abdomen (generally). Also beetles are homometabolous and they develop from larvae and pupate like bees. Bugs are hemimetabolous and the babies look like the adults only smaller. They are called 'nymphs'. Most biologists believe that homometabolous insects are more highly developed and younger on an evolutionary scale. Anyway....they're mating right now and it looks pretty funny the way they walk around. Nolan thinks it's hilarious that they have to walk with their butts stuck together.

For Mother's Day I asked for the same thing I did on my birthday. I wanted to clean house and do yard work. I know it's silly, but I love getting the house all clean and working in the yard. Things pile up so quickly (literally and figuratively) and it'll feel great next week to have knocked off the major things. I got to wipe some fingerprints off the wall and vacuum cabinets and stuff. Whohoo! Nolan took this photo of me moving mulch. I did that all weekend really. My lower back is killing me. I'm getting old! The boys mostly climbed around on big piles of mulch and played on this eyesore of a swing set LC brought home when he went to help our neighbor Peter move a piano from an elderly couples place. Their grandkids were over it. As homely as it is, it's been great. The kids call it "the park" and have played on it every day since we got it. We did go out to dinner at Mazzoti's too and Nolan colored some things for me. The boys didn't even complain that I dressed them up to take a couple of pictures. All of the scratches on Nolan's face are from Caleb and Caleb has some bruises to match. Someone will be calling CPS soon I'm sure.

There is even more going on around the yard now. The lilacs are blooming. It makes me miss Spokane a little. I bet the lilac parade is going on soon. My mom always loved lilacs. I always thought the smell was a bit cloying, but I really like them now that I've left the Lilac City. Our grapes are budding out and so are the kiwi. I just bought some hops as well, but didn't get pics yet. The latin name for hops is Humulus lupulus and they are in the family Cannabaceae. All of our neighbors grow another plant in this family and I swear one of them is throwing it in the fireplace and it reeks! The boys garden is sprouting. The blueberries are blooming and so is the bleeding heart in the front. All the deciduos trees-maples, alder etc. are leafy.

We had to cut down 3 pine trees in the back yard. We made a huge mess and killed a large number of plants and shrubs, but we had to do it before they fell on their own down the road.

Ozzy, Happy and Presley surveying the damage. The dogs have their springtime puppy cuts. I took them to the groomers and had them shaved down. Everyone thinks Oz is a puppy when he's shaved. He's an old man though and having some health issue now too. I just took him in for lots of bloodwork and he'll go in next week to get some tumors removed and his teeth cleaned. They trimmed up the redwood clump by the treehouse and it looks nice, but it's a little strange. I've got a lot of cleanup to do over there now. Nolan loved playing on the logs when they were down and made a little fort behind them. LC and EJ rented a chipper and chipped up all the limbs for me.

The boy's attention span is still pretty short, but they love to help when it involves cutting and/or sharp objects. I got them to prune with me a bit and they did an OK job except for cutting my artichoke down to the roots. The beds looked nicer after they were pruned and mulched, especially my herb garden.

The girls have been taking a lot of dirt baths. I love watching them. I got some video too that I'll post later. While moving stuff around the yard and prepping for the septic mound to go in next week, we found where they've been laying all their eggs when they don't go in the coop!

Spiderwick has returned with a friend. Nolan is very sad because Spiderwick doesn't follow us around anymore. I don't think they handled the ducks as much as we did, and he doesn't need us now that he's got a girlfriend I guess . She's a Cayuga duck and will be dark iridescent green/black I think. No bats have come to live in my bat house yet. I see them around, but maybe I need to put it up higher. I was thinking about putting out some wood duck boxes as well to see if I can get more birds. I hear a barred owl every few nights, but I would like to get some smaller owls and I guess they like wood duck boxes.

I'll add a few more photos and some text later, but here are pictures from a benefit for our friends adopting from Ethiopia. We got to paint and Caleb was covered as usual. We won a playstation and I'm totally nervous to start playing it. I was a major addict in junior high and high school and was hoping to postpone the video games with the boys. We'll see how it goes.

The bees are doing well. I put a sheet on the hive and reduced the entrance to stop the robbing I had started with the sugar water. I checked on Saturday and there were hundreds of eggs so I still have my queen! The workers are super busy. We also had a swarm in our yard which was cool. We got some of it on footage and I'll upload it later. I am too nervouse when I'm out there to take lots of pics yet, but I downloaded a couple that show you what I see of eggs, broodframe and larvae. I did take the one that shows the hive open with some bur comb coming off the feeder and all the frames in.

Nolan started tball and it's been really fun to practice. His best buddy Cole is on his team.

Caleb loves to put this lady bug and bee were made from stuff at Michael's all over the yard. Everyday they are in a different spot.

The boys got some new costumes from a discount store. They love dressing up. I got the grappling hook and batarangs for Nolan. Caleb finally got his Venom and Red Power Rangers costume. I let them watch their first Power Rangers movie last week. The boys also got some head and wrist bands from cousin Kailey and Caleb sports his daily. One day he was wearing the headband as a skirt and nothing else. He looked like a sumo wrestler. It wasn't G rated enough to post, but you can imagine.

I put these two videos on here because they are funny. The Caleb one is old, from last summer, but I just found it and posted it the other day.

BEES!! and other exciting news....

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.

Fish and Ducks,

We've got a new member of our flock. Spiderwick joined us this week. He's named after the Spiderwick Chronicles. We haven't seen the movie and don't know anything about it, but Nolan heard the name and liked it. Spiderwick is an Indian Runner duck. I got him when I stopped in the feed store for straw and some dog treats. He was there with two Mallards and although I couldn't take the Mallards because we don't have a pond, I was excited to get him. I'd wanted a pair of ducks and to have my neighbor raise them while there were raising baby chicks, but the stores didn't order them this year. These ones were a special order that didn't get picked up. So Spiderwick was in the house with us for a few days. We tried to put him with some bigger chicks/chickens for company but they picked on him and didn't really let him snuggle like he wanted to. He stayed in a large tupperware container with us and got to come out for special occasions. The first couple of days he got to be in the living room, but was later restricted to tiled areas. He followed Nolan everywhere and loved to sit on his lap. He's now with our friend that picked up the earlier part of the order on Saturday at the feed store. When we get him back we might get a girl along with him and have a pair like I wanted. He's so sweet he really deserves a girlfriend.

Anyway, another exciting event was Nolan's first fishing trip with dad and our nice friend Mitch (they've got Indian runner ducks too!) Nolan got to reel in about 4 little rainbow trout. He even identified them off of a poster he saw today in the Pacific Watersheds satellite office. We're excited to have some more fun fishing days!

No photos please!

We love fish!

But not that much!

We've also been working really hard on the yard. Dad has been clearing blackberries and the secret garden area for the upcoming septic mound (whohoo!) and fence. I've been working on planting, pruning, weeding, mulching, fertiling etc. The apple trees and rhodis are blooming and the grass is getting green. I made Loren help me set up a garden bed just for the boys and we've been working on the tree house a lot. I'm also prepping for the bees I get tomorrow.

Planting seeds in the children's garden.

Nolan roasting a marshmellow.