We interrupt the regularly scheduled bee-programing to tell you that we released 16 pheasants on the prairie tonight. Why? Because.
Mark’s Dad has raised pheasants the last few years, and this year a cage-full came home with us.
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Okay, back to the bees. Last week it became apparent that Lena swarmed. Yah, we thought we were soooo smart when we removed a few frames of brood and queen cells a couple months ago and used them to start up once-deceased Ole. Looks like that did not appease Lena and she still flew the coop (bird humor, get it?). The good news is that the remaining bees requeened themselves and since we found a few eggs, it looks like normalcy is returning. However, this little shenanigan set her back a few weeks. So much for a bumper crop of honey from Lena.
In more good news, all three of the new hives (Ole, Lars and and Lili Von Shtupp) have increased in number so we put the second hive body (where they live) on the stack. Once they get that mostly filled up, if the summer/honey flow is still going, we will put a super (the honey we harvest) on them. Of course we say that we’ll just be happy if they grow up big and strong and go into winter at full power. But, the reality is that we’d doubly-love to harvest a wee bit of honey too. 😉
Idiots Keeping Bees 