Not so much happening in the crafting department, and this is why... We've gone from a family of four, to a family of 20,006. That's four humans, two puppies and approximately 20,000 bees.
The bees are doing quite well. Xander picked a lively package! We've found our queen, marked her, and the bees are gathering pollen, nectar and raising brood. We've been feeding them sugar syrup to help them as they draw out the comb and build their foraging patterns. We'll be bringing them home soon, which will be... interesting. So far, Xander's favorite thing is lighting the smoker, which he does with a little skill and a lot of enthusiasm!
We also got puppies. Oh yes, puppies. Brother and sister. Biggest and runt of their litter. Named Appa and Momo, after the animal companions on our family's favorite cartoon, Avatar the Last Airbender. (not to be confused with the movie, which, though visually striking, stunk. Big time.)
Pictures! (some of these were taken by me, and some I got from the Cooperative Extension Service's Flikr.
You can click here to see their whole set.)
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| Looking at the bee packages. Each package contains about 10,000 worker bees, one queen in a queen cage, and a can of sugar syrup. |
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| Bees in the package! That's RJ, Xander and Mara in the background. |
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| Xander and his buddies. |
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| Xander
installing his bees. The queen is placed, in her cage, between two
frames, and the workers are shaken into the hive. The workers will eat
through some candy to free the queen, and by the time they've done that,
they have accepted her as their queen. |
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| Our hive after installation. Most of the bees have been shaken into the hive, and the rest are left to find their way. By the time we left that day, the workers were already carrying out dead bees (it happens!) and marking the hive with their pheromones. |
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| The Beekeeping for Beeginners Beeyard. |
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| Beekeeper. |
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| Xander and his friend, working on a hive. |
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| Marking the queen. Once you spot her, you can grab her by the wings and then hold her by the hind legs to mark her abdomen, or you can put her into this nifty thing that holds her gently while you mark her. |
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| We were in the paper! |
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| Xander is officially a beekeeper! |
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| More puppies! They look so small in this picture! |
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| Puppies! Appa is the small, spotted one, and Momo is the big, solid colored one. |
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