Hives, Bee Order, Chicks, Grilling

There was a tiny bit of rain in the gauge yesterday morning from a few passing cells overnight but it wasn't enough the wet the path to the tub, just enough to wet the deck. It was not quite cold enough to freeze as I think the rains happened not long before I got up.

I was looking at ordering bees but needed to dive into the hives to see if I had any bees left after Winter. I did not. So I pried them al open and dug through the frames cleaning some as I went. A number of frames have to be scrubbed and cleaned before reuse. As I was prying some of the wax from the frame it popped off and left the perfect hexagons.

A couple frames the bees had made their own free hanging combs which I broke free from the frames to save. You can see the cells on the bottom that look like queen cells.

It told me that I needed to order 2 packages of bees seeing the hives which I got submitted with North 40 since I was too late ordering nucs from the normal place I get. I setup 2 hives with clean frames, bases, and tops and let them sit. The rest of the boxes that were on the hives still have frames with pollen in them and I stacked the 3 with a loose lid to allow the bees to scavenge from the old boxes.

The chicks are doing great after their first day. We lost one bantam and nearly lost a second during the day. R came running over to the house saying one chick was dead and getting eaten by the turkeys but when I got to the brooder the little bantam was in some distress not able to stand and acting super weak. I held it for a while and got it drinking water and tried to get it to eat a bit but it didn't seem to want to. I set it in the heat of the lamp and left it kind of figuring it was a goner but when I came back a couple hours later it was managing okay. It was walking around and eating and looking far better than when I left it.

The turkeys are rather funny how excited they get when I have my phone in amongst them taking pictures. They posture up and start pecking at the lens. The chickens are pretty oblivious to the phone, but not he turkeys.

I got a fire going in the pit as I needed to have dinner ready earlier since we had to go pickup the Azure order. I got ground beef out to thaw in the sink.

The burgers went on and didn't take long to grill which was good so we could be to the truck on time.

The drop went well and we just had to run a couple things to one family, which was likely for a reason since their son in law is likely well qualified for a position at Hive account@stryeyz work that has a position open now.

At home the boys were to bed early since they have wrestling tournament today in the valley. WE had our soak and again I was out by 9pm.

The freeze dryer finished a few minutes ago and I will get it emptied, we have the wrestling tournament this morning, then a stop on the way home mid day, then this afternoon we go and pickup our order of beef and bison from the ranch up North.