And the splits just keep on coming

"By prevailing over all obstacles and distractions, one may unfailingly arrive at his chosen goal or destination," Christopher Columbus ... Big talk for a man who thought he was in India.

If the following blog goes off the rails, forgive me. I woke up at 3:00am with my "Night Dreads." If you're not familiar with my "Night Dreads", it is the phenomenon where I wake up in the middle of the night and begin worrying about the most ridiculous things. Last nights night dread topic: How I would change my life if I somehow traveled through time and was 17 again. At 5:20am I concluded that I would have to go back to age 16 to make any real change but that I would have started building bee hives the moment I arrived in 1990! "There is a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased that line." - Oscar Levant.

THE PLAN:
This past Wednesday I had planned to build 10 lids & 10 bottoms and Saturday I would make my 10 splits.

THE OBSTACLES:
When Wednesday came, I allowed myself to be lazy. If failure was a sickness, laziness would be the symptom. I instead told myself, I would build them Saturday and make my splits Sunday.

Well Thursday, on my way to work in Vicksburg, the water pump on my truck began leaking - like a sieve. There was a lot stress and drama involved in getting home but by 6:00pm Saturday, I made it back.

Sunday I bought the new seals for the water pump and while I waited for the truck to cool down, I made the lids and bottoms for the splits. I then spent the rest of the day taking the whole truck apart to put in the seals. Thanks to YouTube, the job went smoothly but it took all day.

So yesterday, Monday 4/30/18 at 5:00pm (after I got home from work) Noah and I went out to Dr. D's to make splits.

THE SPLITS:
We only had time to make 4 splits - A,B,C,D. We started with D and found 5 frames of swarm cells. So we removed them from the box and divided them amongst the other splits.

On split C we found that the box was full of honey but no brood, so we decided to put a frame of queen cells in both boxes. Figuring that it might be missing a queen or just need a better one. However, when we retrieved the the frame with a queen cell, the cell was open and empty. Noah checked the other frames we had set to the side and there she was - the virgin queen. So we grabbed her (gently) and popped her in the hive. So as you can see the splits were just in the nick of time.

I worry that there might be other hives on the verge of swarming but I just don't have time to do anything about it. If all goes well, then Saturday, I will build boxes and wax the old plastic frames. Then Sunday, I will continue with the rest of my splits.

For now, HIVE COUNT: 18 Hives.

What if my alpacas get flees and other insane thoughts

“It is always darkest just before the day dawneth.” Thomas Fuller, circa 1650

I woke up at 3:30am and my first thought was, “What if my alpacas get flees?” It would be a reasonable question… If I had alpacas!

It all started partly because my wife is afraid that opossums will eat our beloved chickens. In turn, for the past 2 or 3 months, every morning I am forced to hump the chickens out to their pen and every night I have to drag them back in to the brooder. Mind you, the chickens are fully grown.

So I researched chickens and that led me to Justin Rhodes’s farm video tour, who did a video about a family that raised sheep, to get the wool, to spin the yarn, to knit the hats… In The House That Jack Built.

That sounded really interesting, so on a whim I looked up wool and that led me to alpacas who turn out to be great guard animals for… wait for it… chickens!

We won’t be getting alpacas. I live in town and the bees and the chickens are already pushing the limits of the city ordinances. I give the neighbors honey (and eggs when they start laying) but not a lot of people would be swayed with the gift of an alpaca fleece. However, one day when we buy a place in the country… well… who knows.

Here in the real world:

Noah and I visited both of the apiaries Saturday and all the bees are doing well. I also added an empty super of freshly waxed frames to Hive-B.1.1 - that gives all the hives two deep supers at Dr. D's.

I harvested a deep super of honey from the old farm. The odd thing was that there were supersedure queen cells in that hive – though they seemed a little old and there was still plenty of brood. I think it's okay.

I’ll still need to winterize the hives this month but for now, it is still in the 80’s and the goldenrod is in bloom.

Final Count – 8 hives.

Schrödinger's Cat and My Bees

"Now he found himself lying in his rumpled bed and wondering if this was how you came untethered from the real, rational world. If this was how it started when you lost your mind." Stephen King - Four Past Midnight.

I held my breath while I searched the hive but it was for nothing - the queen was dead.  Perhaps I should write all of my blogs like I am writing a horror novel - it would be fitting.

I pulled the infested frames from the freezer on Friday in preparation for the weekend. I had planned to make a couple of splits and to gather honey but after I checked Hive-D.VSH at my house, I couldn't bring myself to keep going. The queen was dead. I did find two queen cells but one was very small and the other seemed damaged on the end.

Frozen Beetle Larva

On the upside, the two beetle blaster traps were filled with about (50) dead beetles in each. I still saw (3) or (4) beetles on the frames but that seemed manageable.

There are (6) hives at Dr. D's place and (2) at the old farm. However, all but (3) of them seem to be in some sort of struggle.

Hive-A may have swarmed since I didn't give them much room to grow when last I was there.
Hive-C seems weaker than I've seen it in the past though it is still doing fair.
Hive-A.1.VSH has (3) boxes on it and, though I witnessed a fair amount of bees in them, I fear that the beetles may have taken them over like they did to my nucs.
Hive-D.3.VSH was struggling against the beetles when last I looked. I did remove frames and put in a beetle blaster and (5) drier sheets but the beetles are formidable.
Then there is the hives at the old farm that fell over last winter. I secured it but it might have absconded anyway.

Schrödinger's cat was meant to explain quantum mechanics (if you are like me, you leaned that on The Big Bang Theory) but it is also a brilliant way to describe why people freeze and fail to move forward - paralyzed by fear.

I think that is what happened to me this weekend. As long as I don't go to Dr. D's place, all of my hives are still alive. I completely get the insanity of this - however, realizing you have irrational fears doesn't make them go away.

I used ever excuse I could think of. It wasn't hard, since this was the first anniversary of Dale's death and my wife needed my attention more than the bees did. Then Sunday morning after working in the yard all day Saturday, my back went out. Of course the price of oil is down and the planets aren't in alignment either.

Believe it or not, I am actually thankful for all that has gone wrong this year - I have leaned more about bees this year than I have in the past decade. However, I am almost to the point of no return. That point where this year is lost and I have to begin thinking of next year. I am almost looking forward to that point in time. I will become a professional beekeeper eventually, of that I am positive. The only question is when.

So last night I put the frames back in the freezer and vowed to try again Wednesday. Who knows, maybe that's the day it will all start to turn around.

Supersedure - Queen Cell

Very little knowledge is ever gained through success - it is through failure that we truly learn.  

I'm sure I am not the first one to say that but nonetheless, it's absolutely true.  So it is with beekeeping.  As Andrew Davis said in, The Wonders of Beekeeping, "Bees survive, not because of the beekeepers but in spite of them." - (I paraphrased).

In my last blog I told how my bees were failing to thrive.  Well it seems that I am not the only one who noticed - the bees themselves seem to be taking steps to fix the problem.  Here's how I find out:

In the picture below that I took the other day, you can see there is a queen cell (mine is the picture on the left).  So my question was, "Why do I have a queen cell in a hive with a laying queen that is not crowded?"

Up until now I only thought there were two reasons to find queen cells; either the queen was missing or the hive was too crowded and the bees were about to swarm.  I had completely overlooked the idea of Supersedure.  However in a brilliant European article from www.cymru.gov.uk I found that each queen cell actually has different characteristics.

It is at times like this that I am in awe of bees.  It seems that nothing they do is accidental.

By comparing the characteristics of the queen cell in my hive to the ones on the article, I found that the bees are actually preparing to supersede the existing queen - not preparing to swarm as I originally thought might be the case.  How great is that?  Hopefully this will strengthen my hives and get them ready for winter.

On a more personal note:

I'm still unemployed for now.  I applied for my first unemployment check today.  I tried sooner but there was some bullshit about the fact that I made more than double my salary in the 4th quarter of last year than I did in the 3rd quarter... and they don't take the quarter you are in (2nd quarter of this year) into account... OR the quarter before that until you are in the Next quarter (3rd quarter of this year)... It's all a f***ing shell game.  

Well now I should be approved but you just know they are going to find some other way of f***ing me out of the poultry $247 a week they are offering.  Yep, I make six figures but the max unemployment benefits are less than $1,000 per month.  It is failed Socialism at its finest but I won't go into my rant about that now.

Luckily - or more by God's grace - my wife (the RN) has been picking up some extra shifts and keeping us in the black.  I am so thankful for her.  I feel really guilty that she is supporting us right now - PROUD - but guilty.  On the days she works I make sure to get out of bed with her.  I do the laundry and make the bed and cook supper.  I also try to get some beekeeping done and do a little writing - as well as looking for jobs on the internet.  After supper I wash the dishes and then rub her feet before bed.

I wish I could say I'm always Super Husband but when I am working I don't help nearly as much - though I still try to share the load around the house.  That's not true - I don't share the load.  My wife is awesome.  On the days she works I cook but that's about it.  On the days she's off, she washes clothes and does most of the cooking.  When I get back to work, I'll try to continue to do my share of the housework.

This started off sounding like I was a great husband... now I feel like I need to kiss my wife's ass a little more when she gets home tonight.