no matter what some people might wish . . . but I have had a nasty cold, and not felt like doing anything other than the absolutely necessary. Which mostly involved taking long hot showers and lying about trying to read. . .
But now I seem to be recovering (at any rate, I can breathe again), so here is the latest on the bees:
First off, do not believe everything you read in a "beekeeping for dummies" book. John has had bees before, but it's been a while, so we decided to go by the book . . . When your bees come, there's a can of sugar water in the box with them. You put the queen and her daughters into the hive and put the sugar water in with them so they'll have something to eat right away. In order to do this, you have to leave out three of the frames containing the comb foundation (I'm not sure how many there are, but they fill the hive, with just enough space in between for the bees to get through and deposit was to build up honeycomb).
Well, the book said to wait three or four days, or maybe a week, before taking the sugar water out and putting the other frames in. John said he used to do that the next day, but perhaps things had changed . . . So we did . . . we were waiting, anyway, for the top feeders to come. (These are built just like another story in the hive, and filled with sugar syrup, but each one has a little entryway sort of thing covered with screen for the bees to crawl in, but they can't get into the syrup and drown.)
They came, and we (John; I just get to watch and fetch things . . . and wear my helmet) opened the hives, and lo and behold! They had gone and built comb anyway, and guess where?
Why, in the open space, of course!
So we had to scrape the bees and comb off, very very carefully, into a box, then make sure the queen was actually in the hive where she belonged, put the feeder on (being careful not to squash any bees in the process) . . . repeat for all three hives. It took a couple of hours, but all was well in the end, apparently, for this was last weekend, and the hives are all active this week.
Here is a closeup of the freeform honeycomb . . . impressive, isn't it? All that work . . . we really hated to tear it up.
There are bees in everything that's blooming. It's so nice to have them again. The lamb's ear is beginning to bloom, and they ought to be all over that.
As a bonus, here is are cat photos. (Remember that story in Winnie the Pooh, where Pooh gets a balloon and floats up to steal the bees' honey, attempting to look like a small cloud? Well, here is Widget, the small black thundercloud . . . )
And here is Mr. Schmoodge, sometimes known as The Mighty Earl, stalking a ferocious pokeweed under the big fir tree . . .