Bees, Cats, Geese, Ducks and More Bees! And Home Again!

As soon as Sherry got off work Wednesday afternoon, we suited up and, wearing our mud boots. met down at the hives! We were not expecting what we found there. From what most of the beekeepers were saying at the meeting, this was not going to be the best year for honey. However, the back acreage of the ranch was and has been covered with black eyed Susans and Mexican hats among other wild flowers. The front of the property has also been well represented.

We were delighted to find the frames were loaded with pure sweet honey.

We know this because we some how managed to get a taste to our mouths even though we were completely suited up!

See all the capped honey???

You can see the busy bees working to cap those small golden cells of honey with wax.

When we took the lid off of all three hives, we could see lots of activity.

Apparently our one hive from last year sucessfully re-queened itself.

We lost the other hive in late winter.

Then we bought two more hivesnthis spring and one of them had bees all over the front indicating it was becoming over crowded. 

Sherry had squares of Bounty paper towels and we placed one on the top of every super.

The boxes that hold the 10 frames of wax and honey are called supers.

The purpose of the towels is to treat mites.

I forget how she said it works but it does.

Mites, wax moths and robbers.....so much to learn in beekeeping.

The hives were all so full of honey - 6 supers FULL - that we knew we needed to add another super to each hive. So I took my suit off and walked down to Sherry's with my paintbrush and we painted the new boxes.

This is Tiger - one of the mama cats.

Cats are so interested in anything that's going on!

Sherry has the hives color coded......we have pink, blue and purple.

Next week we are going to label the boxes by hive number and super number.

The geease thought we needed supervising.

After we finished and I was about to walk up to our camper/cabin,

Sherry called the ducks and they followed her to the duck house for the night.

They love the corn she gives them.....

 I have been doing at least some writing every day.

I can now tell my story without crying.

But I am at the point in the book where my children are involved and I am not completely healed from that just yet and I know Summer isn't either.

I do hope she will be as we talk together about our life back then.

I don't believe we can heal from the past until we take it out and look at it and grieve.

There is healing in seeing things the way they really were. Taking the memories and events and situations out of the shadows and darkness and into the light.

And I do not think we are alone.

I may be wrong but I truly believe we all have things we have to work through.

If there were no dark times in our lives, how could we know how precious the bright times are.

In my case, my happiest years God saved for last. 

I am so grateful for happiness.

It is a gift not all people experience.

I went to bed early last night.

Writing can be hard work and I was tired to the bone.

We are out of medicine and really needed to get home.

I checked the weather and was shocked to see it showed rain for Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

When I checked the radar and then the hourly forecast,

it showed rain at 80% chance from 4:00 on through the evening.

I talked to Sherry and we agreed to do the bee work at 1:00 on her lunch hour.

So I flew into action packing up, closing up and getting ready to go home.

I changed the sheets and gathered up the laundry.

Went through the fridge and packed up perishables.

Then I put my bee suit on and Louis Dean drove the truck down to Sherry's to load up the supers.

Praise God it was dry enough!!

We really do have fun together taking care of our bees.

In this pic you can see the camper back there.

It was not really hot today but anytime you are suited up in a bee suit - it is hot!

You can see the clouds behind me.

It was such a pretty day.

Blue skies when you look this way.

This is the big tank halway between the bees and the hen houses.

Looking back up to where our hives are located.

While the roads are not totally finished yet - Dean and Sherry have made so much progress!

That tractor made a huge difference!

This is up from where the kayaks are and you can see the bucket feeders Sherry uses to feed the bees sugar water when the flow isn't running.

The flow refers to nectar.

Our bee work was done and we are so excited about the honey we plan to harvest towards the end of July. The way I figure it - we will get 12 gallons of GOOD honey!

Last year we got 2 gallons! Plus 2 gallons of bitterweed honey....which Dean used to make mead.

Time to go home!

Mr. Jackson's dog comes over to get a treat so we keep dog biscuits in the truck for him.

We got home about 5:00 and set about doing laundry and gathering freah tomatoes from our garden here. I made up a big Chef's salad with chicken.

Summer stayed here at the house while we were gone but she didn't need to water the plants because it rained so much!

With Covid numbers rising so fast and furious, we are back to staying home as much as possible.

No dinner party and no musicians playing here on Saturday night.