Bad bee news, Victoria, storage space

Sunday afternoon, between services a couple from our bee club came to the farm to work through the hives with me. We got started about 2:15 and worked until a little after 4 pm. I have three hives right now and as we went through them frame by frame, we found two of the hives to be strong enough to make it through the winter. Plenty of honey. Plenty of brood. Plenty of bees in the current population. On the hive that was a split from one of my stronger hives, there was almost no brood in the hive. Plenty of honey but no bee larvae to take up the slack as the current bees die off before winter. That is a scenario for complete failure of the hive. Since I do not want to lose the work the bees have put into that hive, I am going to combine it with one of my stronger hives to ensure the bees have a chance to make it through the winter and that the stores of honey in that weak hive will be available for a hive that will survive.

To make the combination, I will put the single brood box of the weak hive on top of the brood box of the stronger hive with a single sheet of newspaper isolating the two. As the bee’s chew through the newspaper, it will give the two colonies time to get acquainted with the different pheromones of their respective colonies. That acclimation will allow the bees tending to honey and a small amount of brood in the weak hive to integrate into the stronger hive without a mass kill off of the bees that would have typically been considered invaders in the colony they will become a part of. Simple in concept. We are praying that it will work in practice. I will do that during my lunch break today. That will put me back to two hives. Sad but necessary. I will have to do better the coming spring to grow my apiary into more strong colonies. On the bright side, in one of my two strong hives, the bees have already consumed over half of the five pounds of sugar I put into the candy board. That is a good sign. I can easily prepare another sugar board for them.

Victoria has missed the last couple days of work due to a persistent cough. She has been suffering for several weeks from some digestive ailment that has not allowed her to eat anything without suffering painful digestive consequences after any meal. To date, she has muddled through and suffered in silence, however, the current cough is unwelcomed at the pharmacy in our current fear oppressed society. The requirement of being constantly masked at work in spite of being fully vaccinated only adds to the discomfort of the cough as well as prolonging the infection because of the limitations masking produces against attaining clean breathable air. We will have to wait and see how long this persists, but so far, we are going on ten weeks or longer with the digestive issues.

I can sympathize as I continue to live with the continuous discomfort from the gallbladder issues I am having. In spite of the discomfort, insurance is convinced that no medical treatment is necessary at this time. Nor is any testing to be approved. So, I am left only with the option of continuing as I am until forced at some point to go to the Emergency Room. I am nowhere close to that yet, but at least I have a plan of action when the time comes. I am closing in on the point of being severely nauseated every time I eat, but an hour of feeling like I am going to throw up passes and the nausea eases, lessening to the uncomfortable but not urgent level. So, I am managing so far and will continue to do so.

The upright freezer that failed on us last week will potentially be looked at tomorrow to determine what repairs are needed. The expense and timeframe of those repairs will be determined at that point. We are anxious to get that freezer back in service because we have bought some beef from the Wycoff’s and have nowhere to store that purchase. Fortunately, they are not in any hurry to deliver the beef to us. They have plenty of freezer space at the moment. That works out well for us since we are momentarily hamstrung in storage capacity. As far as repairs are concerned, I will not be surprised if rodents are the root cause of the freezer failure, but that is only a guess.

Class yesterday was an okay class. Limited participation but everyone was willing to engage when called upon to do so. I have classes tomorrow and Friday. That makes for a long week, but we will get through it.