Honeybee update that was never posted.

Here is an old post that I ran out of time to finish writing. I'll never get around to it... so enjoy the pictures. A Heaps Canyon post is coming soon!

Oh, and last night I drove out to Cane Beds (over across the Arizona border by Shortcreek) and bought another honeybee hive. So, now I have two again. I felt like my single hive was getting lonely.

One is the Loneliest Number

If you've been following our adventures lately, you know that last Saturday I discovered that the queen in hive #1 has been murdered. (You may also have noticed that I've hijacked Emily's blog. I'm sorry to her readers. She hasn't been writing much lately, but I promise that she'll be back sooner or later.)

Losing the queen has been a serious and devastating loss to the colony, and to me personally it has been much more difficult than losing Jack the cat or Belle the bichon-- but not as sad as losing Roseynosey/Pumpkinposey/Fluffy/Twinklesflower/Kitty.

I read up on the situation with my queen and I found out that it's not a rare problem. The guy who sold us the hives said that about one in five hives will either reject and kill its queen, watch helplessly as she flies off, or-- sometimes-- she just dies on her own (I'll also mention here that there is always the possibility that the beekeeper can inadvertently crush her while doing an inspection, but I'm pretty sure I didn't so I won't mention it again outside of this parenthetical thought.)

I don't really like to think of my queen abandoning her hive, it wasn't my fault, and I can't imagine that such a beautiful young queen could die on her own. Instead, I imagine that the colony rose up and inexplicably and irrationally killed her.

The method of bee regicide is interesting. I always thought that they would just sting her... but they don't. They use a method called "balling"-- in which the bees crowd the queen, piling on until a huge mound of bees forms with her in the center. The combined body heat of the collective suffocates and overheats the queen (along with a few others in the center of the dog-pile) and she dies.

After my discovery on Saturday, I had to do something... fast. Bees only live a few weeks and without a queen the workers would slowly just die off. I'd be left with an empty box and nothing to show for it. My dad and I began doing some research. According to the professionals, websites, and books we consulted we had a few thousand options. Since most of the options weren't suitable for a beginner operation like I've got, we narrowed them to two:

1) Get a new queen. After overnight shipping it would be over $60 for her. With the colony acting the way it is, it could very well ball the new queen, and I'm back where I started--except $60 poorer.

2) Combine my two hives into one bigger hive. This is the option that seemed to make the most sense. Dad and I read up on it, and we thought this was the best of our choices.

So, with my lovely assistant, Gwen, I set out to combine dying hive#1 with healthy hive#2.

We loaded the suits and tools into the Radio Flyer and went to Woody's yard to work with the bees:


We came upon the hives and I noticed something I thought interesting-- hive#1, has been consuming about twice as much sugar-water as the healthy hive. If you enlarge this picture you'll see that the Mason jar on the left is empty, while the other is half full. It was that way on Saturday too, when I replaced them both. I wonder if they drink more when there's no queen. (Guilty conscience, perhaps?)


Before: (Two hives.)

After: (One bigger hive.)
The method for combining the hives is pretty simple. You take one weak hive, and stick it on top of the other (healthy) one. Sandwiched between the two boxes is a single page of the Deseret News. (The Salt Lake Tribune would also work, but I don't think my bees like the St. George Spectrum because of the ghastly editing.)

The sheet of paper keeps the hives separated for a while so that they don't just charge in and begin warring. There are a few holes poked in the paper to allow the scent from one hive to mingle with the other. After about a week, the two hives will be one and they will have completely chewed away and eaten the paper that separated them. They will then begin to function as one happy hive with one queen.

Let's keep our fingers crossed that there will be no more killings this summer.

Mandatory close-up shot. This time it is of the entryway with a bee standing guard.

Gwen, studying the bees up close. If she was feeling anything like me, she was mourning the loss of hive #1 as well.

I don't even like cats

At least, I didn't think I did, but I apparently have a soft spot in my heart for these animals that keep showing up on my doorstep meowing & looking cute and helpless and hungry. When a second kitten came looking for a home, Matthew said absolutely not. We do not want two cats. I had to keep telling myself, "Kittens grow up to be cats, kittens grow up to be cats..." because this little thing was the cutest kitten I have ever seen. She looked just like Princess Fluffy Rosy Nosy (my girls' name for our Siamese) but smaller, whiter and even fluffier. I broke down and fed her (didn't tell my husband), and was a little disappointed that I didn't see her again.

A week later, she showed up in our garage. I had left it open by accident during the day and she came out when we were loading up to go to the cabin. I was secretly happy to see her, but sad that we wouldn't be keeping her. "What are we going to do with her?" I asked Matthew. A friend of mine happened to be at our house and said that she'd love to take the kitty home. Yay! The cutest kitten in the world gets a loving home & I don't have guilt! So we said good-bye to Little Fluffy and sent her to live at Renee's house.

Next day, I was talking to my neighbor across the street and she asked if I'd seen a kitten. "Uh, does it look a lot like our cat?" "Yes, but younger. She's been missing and my kids are worried about their new kitten." "That was your kitten? I'm sorry, but we gave her away." Good thing everyone involved is friends and a phone call later, Little Fluffy was back at her original home with her original owners. When she wanders through our yard occasionally, Cate and I pet her and love her and are so glad she's our neighbor. Then I send her on home because I don't even like cats.

We've been adopted

...by a cat.

This sweet thing (I don't know wether it's a male or female - we're waiting to name it until Ed gets back from the cabin.) showed up on our porch Sunday evening. I think our neighbors that just moved "forgot" it. It meowed & purred and let the girls pet it and what could we do? We had to feed it! We had some leftover dog food after all. Of course s/he was back the next morning, purring against our sliding glass door. And so it's been all week. Matthew told the girls if they liked it, they could feed it, he wasn't going to. They've been very attentive so far. Unlike our last cat, this one really likes people. S/he sits on the girls' laps, lets Catherine pick it up and follows Bethany around the backyard. I have to admit, it's pretty sweet...

...for a cat.

(I hope Lowe pet #4 has better luck than the last two.)

Baby Please Come Home

Staring at that cat is making me have guilt. "Great! Now I have guilt!" Name the movie, win a $50 gift card to The Home Depot. Just kidding, but not about the guilt. The cold hard truth is that I only felt real concern for that cat during the last 15 minutes of his life. Rest in peace.

Here's a little Christmas cheer to get our minds off of the dead cat. (Which we haven't buried yet because there's a foot of snow on the frozen ground.) This song makes me happy, even though Bono's a little creepy. He sure can sing.

Jack: In Loving Memory

Jack died last night. We hadn't seen him since Sunday, which isn't unusual-- but it has been so cold the last few days that we were concerned. Emily set out blankets and food, but we just didn't see him. He finally came home yesterday afternoon, cold and sick. We brought him inside, put him on blanket and a heating pad and tried to love him back to health. The three girls were worried, but Cate was most concerned. She kept sneaking out to the laundry room and patting him on the head (which isn't good for a dying cat) and telling him to get better. He wasn't. At bedtime, Emily picked him up and held him for a few minutes while he died. We had a good cry and went to bed.

In the last few hours I've been trying to remember everything there is to remember about the little black cat. And-- with the aid of a heightened and finely-tuned selective memory-- I have. So, from now on, I'll only share the good parts version of Jack's story. (And in my memory, we were pretty good cat-owners too.)

I woke the Three Birds this morning to let them know what happened last night. The girls stumbled into our room, got cozy in the covers, and we told them. They cried hard-- especially Catherine. (Cate has always had an adversarial relationship with Jack; from her time as a bald toddler when he would stalk her, crawling with his belly low in the grass in order to pounce on top of her shiny head and scratch. Even when he got older, and stopped lunging and scratching, he was never soft with her... but she still loved him. Cate wasn't sad about Jack's death only because of a selective memory, she loved him because she is loving.)

They cried. We told them of our plan to have a funeral later in the day. They cried some more. We talked about Heaven. We hugged. We reminisced. We cried again.

Here are some quotes from the morning talk:

Dad: "Do you remember how Jack would attack his back legs?"

Mom: "Do you remember when Jack would catch birds? ...lizards? ...mice?"

Bethany: "Do you remember how Jack would jump up and grab a sock if I waved it at him?"

Gwen: "Do you remember how Jack would chase a string if I pulled it?"

Cate: "Do you remember how I would throw a stick to Jack... and he would just look at it?"

Charlie

We're dogsitting Matthew's parents' mighty Rottweiler, Charlie. Doesn't she look intimidating? Poor dog got a little too close to a skunk the other night. She didn't get a direct spray, but she stunk enough to warrant a tomato juice bath. Yum! I love this dog. She is the sweetest pet I have ever met. I don't ever want to get our own dog because it wouldn't be as lovable as Charlie. I also don't ever want our own dog because they shed in your house and poop in your yard, but that reason makes me sound like a jerk to my veterinarian raised in-laws. I really do love dogs. Love them. Really. Other people's dogs. And I want to continue to love dogs, and I think that can be best accomplished by not having one live with me.

We do have a pet cat named Jack. He lives outside and catches mice, lizards and the occasional bird. We feed and water him once a day and that's pretty much it. He doesn't need to be walked, brushed, loved, etc. Why do we have a cat that is neither loved by nor loves us? Don't ask me, but that's about all the pet responsibility I can handle.