It's a little after 1:00 a.m. and I'm tired. There is no way to explain what the last week has been like. It was so bad that Jim was thrilled that he got to go back to work on Monday.
We were pretty busy making sure that everything was going well in the bee yard, and Jim is still trying to work with his dog Bailey to try to get her ready for the fall test. We also have a house to kind of take care of and a basement that is suppose to be finished for a graduation party in about 4 weeks. On our way over to Grand Rapids Friday I was reading the American Bee Journal looking in the ad section when I noticed an ad from someone not to far from where I lived. I called while we were in the car and told him I'd call him again Saturday when I got home. We didn't get home till around 1:00 on Saturday to find a message on the answering machine telling us that his Grandma had a stroke.
(Now I have to share something with you about this woman, she's 90 something and is totally amazing. She just had a hip replace either last year or the year before that. Nothing is going to keep her down. She's the kind of woman that you read about and smile when you hear about her. Yes, she is a bit hard headed, yes and maybe set in her ways, but most of all pretty darn independent. I love hearing the stories about her children and her life. I enjoy her a great deal, and I know that she will be back on the road to recovery quickly.)
Jim called his mom to make sure that Grandma was doing ok and when we heard that she had lots of company we decided not to go up. I wanted to get down to the Toledo Farmers Market to check it out since I'd decided to kind of open up shop there. I also wanted to get a feel for how long it was going to take for me to get down there, and figure out how to get around all the detours.
We finally found it and the space looks really a whole lot better than I thought. They are covered spaces with lots of parking; the Libby Glass Outlet is there as well as the Erie Street Market. The downer is that the Erie Street Market is currently closed and I'm not really sure when it will open. We got down there around 2:00 p.m. and it was pretty dead.
But I don't know, something about it sure appeals to me. . .
We ended up home around 3:30 or 4:00, yes we stopped for lunch, and after a quick trip in the house we headed out to the yard to see whose feeders needed feed and to check on the 5 hives that we had split as well as the splits from those hives.
Now we were real meticulous about our note taking and we had two hives that we could not see any brood or babies in #4 & #17. 17 actually looked like it was dying a slow death.
I had a pad of paper and each hive we went into I wrote down what we found. I found a queen that wasn't marked and was very impressed with the fact that I actually was able to do it. (Ok, it didn't hurt the fact that she was huge, and I mean huge) And no it wasn't a drone it really was a queen.
By the time we got in the house it was after 7:00 p.m. I made a phone call to the person who had an Ad in the magazine and made arrangements to meet him on Sunday. We quickly had a bite to eat and then headed downstairs to liquefy and bottle honey.
Liquefy honey you ask. . .well when it gets cold it starts to crystallize. You can make it liquid again if you gently heat it. If you have a bottle at home that seems like it's getting solid, just set it in a jar of warm water. I read in one of the magazines that you could put the jar through the dishwasher and that would liquefy it as well. Just make sure it's sealed real tight.
We got the last bottle bottled at around 11:30 and we passed out cold.
Sunday, I started an inventory of all the bottling supplies that I had as well as an actual product inventory. I can't believe all the things I had bought and couldn't find and bought again. I'm really glad I did it, but when I was counting all the seals and caps I wasn't very happy then. I finished up around 3:00 and Jim headed out to train Bailey and I headed over to the beekeeper that lives pretty close to me. He was a really nice guy. It made me so happy to find someone so close and he was so helpful. He had a few extra queens and I bought four from him. Two Italians and two carnolians. He showed me a battery box, which means that the queens were shipped in individual cages with the attendants loose in the box. He packages up my four new girls and told me that I should make sure that I got them in their new homes by today.
Just about then I started to feel the pressure.
I was home around 6:30 and worked on some stuff until Jim came home at 9:00 p.m.
Today it's Monday, no yesterday it was Monday and I got up early with every intention of installing the queens. But it rained. At first I thought the sprinkles wouldn't bother them until I opened up the first hive . . . Let's just say it wasn't raindrops falling on my head, it was more like bees bombing my bee suit. They were not happy to be bothered at all. I also just didn't seem to be able to get it together. I knew that I only really needed two queens but I had to brand new nuke boxes waiting for someone to live in them. I really did try early on in the day but had to put everything away and waited a few more hours. Around 1:00 p.m. I thought I saw a glimmer of sunshine and I headed back out to the yard. As usual the best-laid plans went astray. I thought I had everything I needed but I didn’t. I always manage to lose my hive tool and can’t ever find it. I couldn’t get the smoker to stay lit, and burned my finger pretty bad in the process. I went into two hives looking for a frame of brood and bees to put in each of the two hives I had set up earlier in the day thinking that I would put the two queens in that I knew I’d have left. That went pretty good actually, I didn’t ruffle two many feathers in the process and had a queen sighting while I was looking at frames.
I got the bee yard work done and then headed into town for groceries, came home raced like mad to get the kitchen done so that Jim would not think I’d been sitting on my but all day. . .And he keeps telling me I’m retired.
He sure has that wrong, not retired, just plain out tired.
When he walked in the door he looked pretty worn out and after we ate, we headed outside to mow the yard and work with the dogs.
At 8:00 p.m. I started to print out labels for all the jars that we bottled yesterday, what a real pain in the rear. But I know it’s something that has to get done.
So you are pretty much up to speed right now. I know there were not any photos but I’m slacking in the photo department right now.
Hopefully I’ll get better soon.
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