Sitting at the kid's table

Checking on the hives at Foxbriar.

We went to our first bee keeper's meeting tonight. We joined the Ozark Foothills Beekeepers Association.

I was amazed at how many people were there. The community center in Damascus was full and my mentor, Lynn and I had to find chairs to have a place to sit. We pulled them into the corner, where several people were visiting and one woman had pretty seed catalogs on the table.

There were several couples in the room. The long tables were mostly filled with distinguished- looking gentlemen. As people talked about trouble with hive beetles and a new spray that is being used on blossoms and kills bees, I looked around the room.

Everyone in the room was fit-looking, and healthy. And, our corner table had the only heads in the room that were not gray. In fact, I started feeling like I was at a community social and sitting at the kid's table.

We were mostly being good kids - we were listening as our elders talked about sugar dusting the bees for mites and how the bees just aren't capping their honey this year. We didn't sneak too many peeks at the pretty flower catalogs and we only had to be told to "either speak up and share or pipe down" once.

Tom Theobald, a columnist who I have read for years and whose work I admire, is also a beekeeper. He owns Niwot Honey Farm in Colorado. He wrote, (many years ago, so if I mis-remember this my apologies to Tom) that one of the biggest threats to the honey bee was that the beekeepers are dying out - and no one is replacing them.

Well, tonight Shawn and I took our seats at the kid's table. Hopefully we'll be able to listen and learn and follow in the footsteps of the wonderful community of beekeepers here in the Ozarks.

The beesies are busy and they have so much for us to learn.

Bees behind

As part of getting ready to go to Colorado, we got new hive bodies for the beesies. We figured they'd need new condo's before we got back, so we thought we'd just add them now. We queried beekeepers and they said it should be fine once the exsisting hive was 80% full, before that it would be too hard on the bees, giving them too much territory to guard.
So Shawn loaded the wax sheets into the new frames, suited up, got the smoker going and we carried the new sections of hive out to the bee yard.
Maybe we should have checked the bees before going to all that work. The hives were only about half full. I guess the late freeze has the bees set back, too.
So we carried everything back to the truck - and told the beesies we'd be back in August! Maybe then we'll have honey comb...

Wet drops

The sheep don't get out too often, they tend to drift out to the neighbors pasture looking for grass. They are very much grazers. When I am out working at the farm I let them loose for an hour or two. The pic above is the sheeps in the meadow.
The goats on the other hand, rarely get locked up. They are happy to browse right around the barn and help clean out the underbrush that is close to home. They seem to fit better on Foxbriar as it is now.

I've been waiting for a bright sunny morning to take a picture of the bee houses. (And then I was going to photoshop a ribbon on them for Summer!) but it hasn't happened yet. So here is a quick preview pic of the bee hives in their little clearing. They are in the spot where we will eventually like to put our house. The hive door face east and they have a nice wind break from the ridge behind them.
The bees are loving the black berry blossoms. They are out thick right now. blackberries survived the frost and are only a few weeks late. The grape came back, too and is growing new leaves.


They say the Eskimos have 50 some odd words to describe snow - I think our vocabulary should have more words for rain.
Rain covers the basics - drops of water falling from the sky.
But then we have to add all kinds of adjectives - soft, gentle, driving, hard, heavy, cold, warm, blustery... and the list goes on. It would be nice to be able to let people know if it was a good rain or a bad rain with just one word.


Right now it is raining a good rain - soft, gentle warm rain, just the thing for the new baby plants in the garden, perfect for healing the last of the frost damage on the trees and delightful to curl up in a chair with a cuppa tea and read to... so I'm not going to kick myself too hard for not being out digging sheep pasture postholes at the moment. Besides, with the new Postal rate change coming on Monday, I have enough computer work to do to keep me in my chair until then. The rain is nice to walk in, though...

Shawn's current fascination is mushrooms. Oddly enough it is one that I don't really understand or share. Morels are delicious when you find them, and pretty distinctive - but I have no intention of experimenting with eating fungi! We do have lots of them though and are finding new varieties every day. These are probably Inky Caps... maybe.