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Monday, July 27, 2009

The Summer Is Flying right by.

I've had the pleasure of spending the last few weeks with my husband. He's been taking a few days off here and there and it's been great having him home. Of course Jim had a list of things he was trying to get done, and I had a list of things I needed him to get done for me. I think all the things he wanted to get done got done, and almost all my things got done. Still waiting for the display stuff:(

The bees are doing really great. I took the first box of cut honey comb to market and it was gone by the end of my first trip. Yikeroo. We still have cut comb boxes out in the bee yard, and I thought Jim was going to bring me one back to the house yesterday but he said it had a couple of frames that just were not drawn out yet.

On Tuesday Jim called me to tell me he was on his way to pick up a swarm. Well most of us don't really look forward to picking up a swarm in July because it means it won't give us any honey this year and we will end up feeding it, but Jim explained that it wasn't a swarm, it was a hive that had taken over a shed. Great. . . . . so Jim and his buddy Steve headed out and came back with two boxes full of bees brood and wrecked comb. They took them out to the same yard, against my better wishes, and set them up placing a empty box on top of each box. They didn't put them back together as one hive. I ordered a couple of queens because I couldn't believe she would have survived and didn't want to take the chance that they didn't. (They went to our "special" yard, that's where all the mean bees live.) I told him I thought they would go back to one hive but I think because both boxes are full of brood they didn't. Jim checked on them yesterday and they are doing just fine. I think he is going to move one hive over here later on this week, he just didn't feel like moving them any more.

We watched a great special on Colony Collapse disorder and bees last night, it was great, they mentioned that they had a virus they were looking at specifically but it still sounds like it's only one part of the puzzle. Jim is worried that although we have bees our production of honey is down from last year. Usually we do two extractions but I'm not sure if that's going to happen this year.

Got lots of stuff to do today, see you all at the market later on!!!!