Successes, our picnic

 After combining two hives Thursday over my lunch break, I could not resist the temptation to peek in the hive to see if the integration had been successful. So, Friday evening, I lifted the upper brood box to see how much the bees had chewed through the paper I put in between the hive boxes to separate the colonies. From the limited view I had into the hive, it was clear that the bees had made multiple openings in the paper and were busy working in the upper box. I did not see any indication of fighting. I am not sure what I would have seen to indicate a battle, but I am guessing it would have been somewhat obvious. What I did see was that all the bees were busily working on the honey and the brood. That was encouraging to witness.

Since combining the hives I have begun to feed the bees some heavy syrup to stimulate them to finish and cap the honey stores in the hive for the coming cold months. I will only be able to feed syrup for a couple more weeks since the bees will not take the syrup if the syrup is cold. They do everything they can to keep the hive warm for the sake of the brood growing within the hive. Mama and I will not be able to harvest any of the honey for ourselves. It will all go to the bees. I had to treat the hives for Varroa mites with a treatment that makes the honey unsuitable for human consumption. At least, that is the recommendation of the manufacturer. There are other treatments that do not potentially taint the honey, but I did not have that available. Thought it would be nice to get honey of our own, it would be far better to do all we can to ensure the bees can thrive through the winter. We can buy local homey. All in all, the experiment of combining the hives seems to have gone well.

I was feeling so rotten Saturday morning that I did not go Bus Calling as is my usual custom. Instead, I worked slowly on expanding the shelter we have in a small enclosure next to the bucks. The shelter I put up last year to serve as an isolation area was too small to be practical and I had lots of pallets to double its size. So, I swung one side out to lengthen the back of the shelter and added two pallets to the side that was now needed to enclose the shelter. The rework was fairly quick and although I had to use a patchwork of metal siding the cover the exterior of the shelter. I did manage to get all of the outside covered. It looks awful, but it will keep the rain and wind off the goats we house there. To put a roof on the little building I had to buy some material at Lowe’s. It cost me $80 for two sheets of cheap roofing material and four 2 by 4s, but the shelter is complete now and we can use it this month to separate the two bucks to allow Julian to breed, Honey and Sugar. Midas cannot participate since those are his offspring. Lord willing, their babies will be born next April.

There was limited time to work Saturday because Mama and I had committed to taking our Chinese girls with us to the Church picnic that evening. We have the picnic as near to annually as possible, but we had to skip last year for obvious reasons. At the picnic we roast hot dogs over an open fire. The chili is also warned over the fire, so we start the fire around 4:30 pm to allow it to burn down sufficiently to provide us the bed of coals to cook the hotdogs with the intention of eating by 6 pm. It worked out pretty that evening. Hotdogs had all the trimmings available, and our girls loved the food and the festivities. The area we meet in is an open area under several large oak trees on fifty acres owned by members of our church. Several lights are hung in the trees to allow the picnic to continue well after dark. It was a very pleasant day and as darkness fell most of us put on the light jackets or vests we had brought in anticipation of the cool evening.

Mama drew a group of children to her as she always does. This time she was applying Color Street nails to the tiny fingernails of the girls. All the appliques she used were leftovers from nail strips se had used on herself, but the smaller pieces were enough to do the hands of five or six little ones. It is interesting to watch Mama. Wherever we go, she draws the same crowd to her. It has always been so. A couple of the ladies, mothers of the young ones standing in rapt attention around Mama were remarking to the crowd Mama has constantly about her. It is part of our ministry at the church and everywhere else we can apply that calling.

It is fun to see Mama casually, without considering the impact she is having succeed so easily.