more drama in the hive

If the chickens are picking on another chicken, you can remove the injured one from the coop. If the cats or kids are fighting, you can separate them.

If the bees are fighting, you can just stand there helplessly and wish for a can of bug spray. Not because the bug spray would solve anything, but because you're so ticked off at those stupid bees that just spraying them all suddenly seems like the best option.

To bring you up to date --

Husband relocated a hive from a co-worker's pump housing.

The new bees swarmed from their hive and attempted to invade our established hive.

Husband got the swarm back into their own box and moved them to the opposite end of our property.

I got a bee in my hair.

Tuesday, my husband discovered that the new bees had swarmed from their box again. Yellow jackets had moved into that hive and cleared out the little honey that was there. And the swarm was on the move, headed back in the direction of our established hive.

We thought we were going to have to wrap the hive in wet sheets to keep out the invaders. So of course I took sheets from the linen closet. Those are the ones I know I can replace! I wasn't sacrificing a vintage sheet, or one of my white ones, for the bugs.

Turned out, we didn't need the sheet after all, so it'll get washed and go back inside. But my oldest son is still telling anyone who will listen that I took his sheets for the bees. I'm learning from the experience and going to track down a set that isn't bed or quilt worthy to keep around just in case.

We tried putting swarm lure in the new hive, mainly to steer the swarm away from the established hive. Only a small handful of bees turned up there. I don't know where the rest went.

Now we're just hoping that they didn't weaken the big hive too much. With winter coming, this was the last thing the bugs needed.

I've saved the beeswax from the abandoned hive. There's no much, but I figure I can melt it down into a little lump to use for hand stitching.

I'll be linking this post to the Farmgirl Friday Blog Hop

Drama in the Hive

As if we didn't have enough stress around here lately already, our queen died this weekend. We found her during a hive inspection, breathing (do bees breathe?) her last. And without a queen to lay eggs, the clock is ticking as far as the rest of the hive is concerned. They hadn't made another queen of their own, and of course if something like this is going to happen it's going to happen on the holiday weekend because that's how life works...

We got lucky and found a new queen to buy yesterday and while we were installing her, I learned something new about our expensive bugs.

They will warn you before stinging.

While I was holding things for my husband, a bee whacked into my arm, hard. It felt deliberate, so I asked him about it later since he's the one who's read all of the bee books. That thwack was a warning to back off.

I haven't been stung by one of our own bees yet, but now that we've got a hive in the yard I'm expecting it to happen sooner or later. There are worse things in life than a bee sting.

What do you do for bee stings?

The last time I got stung, which was a couple of years ago, I couldn't find the baking soda, we don't use meat tenderizer, and I didn't want to go to the car for the bee sting stuff in the first aid kit. So I tried pressing a penny against it. Everything I can find about pennies and bee stings on the web today says it's an urban legend, but it made me feel better at the time.

The bee books say to take a couple of Benadryl.

Honestly, I'm hoping that I don't have an opportunity to test any of these suggestions anytime soon.

Mom, I need to borrow the camera!

I'm always nervous about sending my camera out to the yard with the boys. I worry that they'll drop it, and then how will I show off picture of my quilts?

The last time my eleven-year-old raced in and wanted it so he could take a picture of the deer that was standing out behind the bee hive, I almost said no. It was in the bottom of my tote bag. There are lots deer in our yard. We've got more pictures of deer than anyone could possibly need.

I'm so glad I said yes, because it turned out the deer he wanted to take a picture of was the three legged doe my husband had seen a few weeks earlier. He was so excited to realize what he had pictures of, and I finally got to see for myself that she existed. (I missed seeing her for real. That's what I get for just glancing out the kitchen window and not paying enough attention to his excitement. But he would have been that thrilled about any big wild mammal in the yard.)

Today he wanted the camera so he could get a picture of a snake. I followed him out, mainly to make sure that no one was going to get bitten trying to catch the thing. It was still on the lawn, squeaking loudly.

Snakes don't squeak. Even though I don't watch nearly as many reptile shows on Animal Planet and the Discovery Channel as my boys, I'm very very sure that snakes don't squeak.

Mice do squeak. And as I was trying to quietly convince the boys to back off so that the snake didn't lose his mouse, the noise drew the attention of my daughter's cat.

Have I mentioned that I don't like snakes? I love that we have them in the yard and that they eat the outside mice before they can try to become inside mice. But I'd rather not get too close to them.

I wasn't sure if the cat was after the snake or the mouse, or if the snake would fight back. How's a mother supposed to handle these things?

My daughter is mad at me for throwing an empty plastic bottle at her cat (I missed, but it was the only way I could figure out to get the cat away from the snake without getting close to it myslef), and the poor snake seems to have lost his mouse. And I'm staying inside for the rest of the afternoon, just in case there's any more drama out there.

No pictures were taken of the snake or the mouse, but they did find a big spider on the basketball hoop and take pictures of him.

the bugs are fighting again

Remember last year's drama in the hive? Well, it's happening again. This time two of the new hives -- including the one I have a grudge against because they made my face swell up like I was wearing alien makeup -- are robbing the third of the new hives.

Hubby went to the hive that was being robbed and sprinkled flour onto the bees leaving the hive while he had me, wearing my new bee suit, crouch down near the entrances of the other hives and watched to see if anyone was coming back with flour on her butt. It works kind of like those dye-packs the banks use...

So now we know who's robbing who, but that doesn't mean we can stop them. All they're stealing is sugar water, and all of the hives have feeders full of the stuff. I swear, they're like little kids.

I'm using my Go! cutter and one of my newer dies to cut scraps into itty bitty triangles, because I've got an idea that's going to take a lot of them. These are the 1" finished half square triangles. I love this die, and see a whole ton of little doll-type quilts in my immediate future.

Bee Day

Remember how we spent our week scrambling to get the hives ready and then I found out the night before I was supposed to pick them up that the bees themselves wren't ready? I got lucky. 

These are nucs. We've always bought our bees in packages, which are a completely different thing. You can see those in this post. I've ridden with four kids and five hives worth of bees in the back of the minivan with no problem...and I told the guy we were going to drive the van and he said that there wouldn't be a problem.

See those little cardboard holes? The bees were already chewing their way out when we loaded them into the truck. Twenty or so bees in the covered bed of a pickup isn't a crisis. Twenty or so bees in the van would have been a lot more dramatic.

We got both nucs installed into the hives without any trouble or stings, even though I was standing way too close and not wearing a bee suit, but bee day can never go easily. One hive has two queens and two definitely aren't better than one. They'll fight to the death (that's how bees work) and hopefully they don't both die.

Maybe there's no such thing as a drama free hive?