Alert Sinners: The Rapture is NOT here.

So, the Scariest Plan On Earth wasn't so much Scary as it was Tedious As Fuck.

Also, as I've grown to expect with all things beekeeping, the SPOE was different when described by Beekeeping For Dummies or Awesome Steve or any other beekeeper. Why can't we all get on the same page when it comes to these things, bee people?

I must make it so. Eventually.

For now though, let us first recall the Scariest Plan On Earth:
Step 1 - Place entire hive of bees (which is BTW very heavy with honey and pollen) on my wheel barrow and haul it to the front of the yard.

Yep. This isn't necessary. When told by Awesome Steve, you just need to take one frame at a time out of the hive, haul it across the yard, shake it out into the grass and then walk it back to the hive and set it aside.

This frame was COVERED with bees. When I brushed them off, I found out why - ALL HONEY.

Beekeeping For Dummies is the one suggesting the wheel barrow. I went with Awesome Steve on this one, and I'm glad I did. For lots of wheel barrow-y, what the hell am I doing with a whole hive of bees over here at the same time reasons.

Step 2 - Remove each frame from both hive bodies and SHAKE ALL THE BEES OFF OF THEM ONTO THE GROUND.

Awesome Steve and Beekeeping for Dummies were in agreement here, though Steve wasn't as GET THEM ALL OUT AND NEVER LET THEM BACK IN like Beekeeping for Dummies was. See, the deal is that you want the laying workers out of the hive FOREVER because they're fucking the hive up, but since they never leave the hive and therefore don't know how to get back TO the hive once they're removed, you really only have to worry about getting those gals out and NEVER COMING BACK, whereas the forager bees, who come off the frames and fly right back to the hive are OK.

This is something I didn't fully realize until I'd done the whole evicting thing (with 20 frames and two hive bodies which TEDIOUS AS FUCK) and then *almost* panicked when I had bees rushing back into the now empty hive bodies.

ACK! 7 bees! BRUSH LIKE A MADWOMAN! Oh wait. Never mind. Also, honey!

Beekeeping For Dummies had me thinking that if I didn't get every single last bee out of the hive that I would be superfucked whereas Awesome Steve was all, "Oh, that's totally fine. The foragers come back and that's what we want. Go on with your bad self."

Or something similarly encouraging and sense-making.

Step 3 - Return all frames to the hive bodies and wheel barrow the hive back to the back of the property.

Since there wasn't any wheel barrowing, this was just me walking from the back to the front of the property one hundred times with frames of buzzing bees all crazy like. My neighbors were taking photos and not shrieking because they are awesome and I am lucky as hell.

Every color of pollen on the planet. This is what we call a head start.

Step 4 - Install a new package of bees and their queen in the hive.

So, after I went through the whole evicting process and then the freaking out because BEES ARE GOING TO FIGHT TO THE DEATH OUT HERE IF I OPEN THE NEW PACKAGE RIGHT HERE IN FRONT OF THE EVICTED ONES, I actually closed up the hive (taped it shut, yes I did) and said aloud to Bubba and all of creation, that I'd install the new hive the next day.
 
Then, feeling like that wasn't the exact right thing to do but going for it anyway, I called Awesome Steve to log my check-in call as promised, only to get a stern mandate: "Go install the new package now. It's the perfect time (sun was just setting, it was cooling off, the bees were mellow) and they'll be fine with the other bees around the hive."

Which, I'll be honest, had me nearly shitting myself with OH NO BUT I WAS GOING TO DRINK NOW. I mean, I'd just gotten through almost two hours of the most tedious (as fuck) bee chores I'd ever encountered and all I wanted in the whole wide world was a cocktail and Sitting Down With Bubba For Pizza Night time.

But, I listen to Awesome Steve when he says things, so I got the smoker going once again, hauled the package bees from the garage and opened up the hive to do the thing that, last year around this time, had me hunting around in the garage for matches to right the rapture I'd brought upon our home.

Step 5 - Hope to hell that I don't bring about Rapture #2 in my yard.
Ha ha! No Rapture!

Seriously, after shuttling 20 frames of bees from one end of the yard to the other, installing a package of very mellow Italian bees and their very healthy trapped-in-a-cage queen was about the simplest thing I could have done aside from just sitting down on the stoop with the bottle of Hendrick's and a straw.

Which, incidentally, I would have totally done instead if given the choice.

So, hooray then.

The old colony's laying workers have been evicted. The new colony has been installed SUCCESSFULLY with a queen who DID NOT escape during the Great Marshmallow Switch of 2012 and the old colony's foragers are making their way back slowly but surely.

We're working it out over here.

The hive is relocated a scant 3" or so to the right, leaving me enough comfy space to maybe install a 5th raised vegetable bed and WOW do I have vegetables I could be growing (though we'll save that or another post).

So, what's my beef with the situation then?

Well, but of course, these ladies finally did craft a queen between the last hive check a week ago and Friday.

Which I did not realize until AFTER I'd brushed nearly the entire colony out in the yard which was only AFTER I'd purchased another package of bees and a queen.

*Sigh* Hello, bitch.

These are swarm cells. Once the new queen hatched, they'd likely swarm and take off with her. Rude.

But, I just pried the queen cell off the hive to show around to my very interested (thankfully not *very annoyed*) neighbors and reinstalled the frames.

What am I going to do anyway? Reinstall the bees by plucking them from the lawn individually? Hope that the laying worker knocks that shit off when a new boss lady is born? Give back my package of bees and ask for a refund?

No to all of that. In other words, fuck that.

I kicked all the other bees out, who are - yet still two days later sitting in a mostly live pile in my yard - and installed the new colony who is behaving beautifully and peacefully.

Tomorrow I'll check the hive to make sure that the queen has been released and go about not stroking out for hopefully a few weeks in between bee chores.

One can hope anyway.

Don't be expecting coherence in this post is all I'm saying.

We skied. OH DID WE FUCKING SKI.
Or rather, Bubba skied and I snowboarded. I can't do the skiing. And I haven't figured out an easy way to say that we went to snow and he skied and I snowboarded without making it sound all over-specific and forever-taking, so I just always say that we're going skiing or we went skiing or, well, you get it.

I'm over-thinking this semantics thing as always and you're used to it.

NOT THE POINT - we saw snow.

And we rode it using our preferred shape of board(s).

AND IT WAS GLORIOUS.

I don't know whether it's the extreme dire horrible depressing alarming sad lack of snow in Tahoe or my own newly developed endurance and pain tolerance thanks to the leg-eating mountain biking, but I didn't take a rest day for the first time in EVER.

Like, usually when we go on these week-long ski trips, I ride for a day or two, take a day off and then ride a day or two more before we blow town. And those final days are usually halvsies because I can't summon the physical strength or stuff my body with enough Advil to keep myself upright on the board long enough to enjoy myself.

Not this year though!

I mean, yes, I was still slow as fuck and not doing anything that a pro rider (or any decent rider) would consider ambitious or strenuous, but I did go out five days in a row, ride nearly the entire mountain in the "Biggest Skiing in America" (and they aren't kidding - Big Sky is...is...is...just fucking massive) and did so with a modicum of grace and dignity and at speeds imperceptibly faster than previous years.

So yay for that.

Also, there was Cards Against Humanity with favorite friends, emptying of the liquor cabinet, soaking in hot tubs, woodsy snowy walks with the dog, birthday whisky flights for Bubba and lots of poor behavior and butt bruises.

See for yourself...



My last semester is underway and OH DAMN THAT WAS FAST
I'm probably not going to stop freaking out about how fast this whole going-back-to-school thing has gone by until I graduate in May, at which time I'll be freaking out about how I need to get a job or something similarly grown up and scary, so just get used to either reading it or ignoring it.

If you're ignoring it, skip to the next section now. Bye!

Yeah, so my first day of class was yesterday and, um, it was kinda the sweetest thing ever. Sweet and also sorta sad, which people call bittersweet but since that sounds cliche, I'm just saying that it was sweet and sad. Like sweet and sour but, well, not.

This makes no sense! Yay! It's a Finny post!

So, you know how you would go back to school in the fall when you were a kid and there'd be happy reunions with teachers and friends that you hadn't seen all summer because your mom wouldn't drive you all over creation to see that one friend whose family lived in the boondocks or because your best friend went to camp or whatever other tragic childhood things befell little friendships? But then you'd see those friends on the first day and it'd be all "HOW WAS YOUR SUMMER?" and "I missed you!" and "Want to grab lunch and maybe we'll get beers because WHY NOT it's a special occasion since I haven't seen you in four weeks?"

Well, it was like that and it was adorable and lovely and sweet and I didn't expect it, so it was even extra special and sweet and now I'm getting all verklempt and sappy and I hate to read that kind of shit, but there it is.

I - me - the girl who was weird and unknown and wearing shiny new red rain boots to work on the muddy farm with her style-y haircut just a scant year and half ago, has made friends that greet with hugs and enthusiastic lunch-with-beers invites and instructors that know it's my last semester so don't even ask whether I've fulfilled the prereqs for their classes and, well, it's nice as hell.

And in a few months I'm going to be sad - really sad - to go.

Fucking love it here.

Again - yay for Awesome Steve.
All was going, like, SUPER well with the beehive before we left for Montana. The girls had put up a super (box) of honey for their winter, they were having babies, foraging, hiding out taking good care of their queen, escorting intruders out of their winter den successfully - ALL WAS WELL.

I had even begun to entertain the idea that me - the most failingest of beekeepers - had actually successfully overwintered a hive of bees and this year was going to FINALLY be the year for honey and YAY.

Oh my delusion. It knows no bounds.

But about the bees pre-vacation - In addition to the overall supreme health and happiness of the hive, I even saw the queen every time I checked the hive. Girlfriend was on the job and darling to boot (she crawled up on my hand a few times and I imagined she was saying HI because I'm sappy like that).

Then we went to Montana.

When we got home, all of the bees were dead except the mighty queen.

ALL OF THE BEES EXCEPT THE QUEEN DIED.

Like, the bottom of the hive was covered with tiny fuzzy sad little bodies and there was a giant mass grave of dead girls around the hive.

The queen, in all of her regal poise, wandered the frames of capped honey and abandoned brood just...lost.

She again crawled up onto my hand, searched around for a clue and flew away briefly - returning to my palm after only a minute or two investigating the nearby airspace for a reason. A cause. Some explanation as to why her mighty colony of hard-working, gentle, productive bees had up and died out of absolutely fucking nowhere.

The waterer was still half full. There weren't any solid signs of invasion, infestation or disease in the hive itself. The weather had been warm, but not hot, and definitely not too cold. They had plenty of food stored away.

I'll tell ya - I nearly cried.

However, in lieu of crying like a puss, I let the Boss Lady crawl back into her empty (albeit full of honey) hive, collected my best and favorite swears and flipped off the sky.

Because I'm a grown up.

Then I read through some of my beekeeping books which, as usual, offered no helpful guidance, and then emailed Awesome Steve because obviously.

Awesome Steve, after reading my mini soap opera synopsis of events, asked whether anyone had been tenting for termites nearby.

WHY YES THEY HAVE. There are fugly tents all over the damn place right now.

Oh.

Apparently he's lost 10 hives to nearby fumigation this year. TEN, PEOPLE. That's 600,000 bees - dead. That's enough bees to pollinate 10 acres of apple trees or five acres of almonds or, or, or...I'm not going to get all statistics and alarmist armageddon bullshit on you, but that's fucking bad.

And terribly, heart-crushingly, soul-smashingly fucking sad.

I'm sad about it.

Alas, he thinks that's probably the cause of my hive die off because of the sudden and complete death of all bees except the one who doesn't leave the hive - the queen.

So now what?

Well, that's a good question. I asked it myself, to myself like a crazy person and to Bubba like a sort of crazy person, and you know what we all said? Resoundingly even?

Welp, time to get another package of bees then.

Yep. Even with no free time to spare, a question as to where we'll live in a few months when I finish school and a history of beekeeping tragedies - I'm getting a new colony of bees. Steve put me down for a package and gave me explicit instructions about what I need to do to prep the hive for their arrival.

There are blowtorches involved, you should know.

The upside, which thankfully exists because otherwise WHOA NELLY REFILL THE LIQUOR CABINET, is that the top super full of capped honey is now MINE ALL MINE.

So, I'll be harvesting 10 full, bright, gorgeous frames of wildflower honey this weekend while trying not to cry about all of my lost girls.

Mostly, I'll just be swearing and drunk. So, normal for a Saturday I guess.

Cheers to you, ladies.

Bees in a box

Hint: it's not shaped like a pineapple.

So, I know I promised you a new queen bee strutting around in a bikini laying thousands of eggs after her flight over from the Hawaiian Islands, but I'm afraid that absurd fantasy is not to be.

Firstly - there are only a few Hawaiian bee yards that rear queens and of those bee yards, one is sold out until June and one requires a minimum purchase of 25 queens.

Um, I'm not trying to repopulate the Castro, I'm just trying to get my beehive running again.

Sheesh.

Worse news than that was that mated queens are just non-existent in the continental US this early in the year because they're still rearing up for shipping in April.

So, no queen in my hive, no single queens in Hawaii, no queens on the mainland.

What to do besides freak out and cry?

Call my friend Steve, of course.

Do not even tell me that you don't remember Steve.

Steve who saved my effing bacon when I lost my first queen when installing my first colony by talking me through The Rapture I'd brought upon our home and yard?

Yeah, you remember Steve.

FYI: New beekeepers of the world - get yourself a Steve. They're the best and always help and sometimes help at really inconvenient times but are always so super awesome and accept tomato seedlings in exchange for brood frames (frames with babies in them) that you should cultivate this friendship with all your might.

So, I emailed Steve. I told him the woeful story of how I'd bonked the supersedure cell while I was checking the hive and how there weren't many babies left in the hive and no eggs and no queen in the whole wide world and uh oh.

To which he said, "Let me check my hives for a queen cell and I'll give it to you."

Oh really now? Your awesomeness continues a year later when I'm back asking for more help?

REALLY.

Unfortunately, none of his hives had queen cells, but he did have a nuc frame full of babies at various stages of growth, so he packaged it up with some attendants in a styro cooler to keep them warm and set them out in front of his house to pick up within the hour.

Which, of course, was at 2pm on a weekday which meant that yours truly was at the office and getting ready to go to a meeting.

Um, crap.

UM, CRAP.

To make a long story short, I'm now the weirdest person that all of my coworkers know. I'm probably also on the bubble with my manager because I had to pull the, "I have a hard stop at 4pm and MUST leave." thing when our meeting started, which is never the way to get into the good graces with people.

I also had to bribe my carpool buddy to leave work early, too, because I NEED TO GET HOME FOR A BEE EMERGENCY.

We're ready to rumble.

Thankfully, she is well versed in not only my weirdness, but also my beekeepingness.

Bless all of these forgiving and only-judging-me-behind-my-back souls.

So, after racing down the peninsula to Steve's house, gathering up the cooler from his front yard, transporting it to my house in the backseat of my friend's car (thankfully none escaped - that would have been DONEZO for our future carpooling) and smoking out my own hive - I've now managed to install the frame of babies into the hive with all my girls and HOPEFULLY they're in there making a new queen right now.

See that bit of comb between the 4th and 5th frame there? That's the smushed queen cell. Sad.

I even plopped on a fresh new feeder of syrup this morning, so they'll be well fed and won't even have to leave the house to get started on this queen.

You gotta love a queen carrier made from an old cooler.

Which is what I'm assured they'll do. Assured by Steve. Knower of bees, fixer of bees.

That's the frame I removed in order to put in the Baby Frame. EVERYONE - GET IN THE HIVE.

And in return for this enormous, if not ill-timed, beehive saving act - all he asks is that I let him know how it's going when I check it in 10 days and, hey, if I end up with a Pink Brandywine tomato seedling from my massive seed sowing fest, he'd sure like one.

Only one?

Oh, and if I have a few vegetables lying about this summer, he'd love whatever I've got.

See? Get yourself a Steve, beekeepers. They're the best.

Someone banged my queen, evidently.

Since we're back to doing random posts, let's, like, really go for it.

Let's be super random!

Or whatever, sort of random.

Remember when I was all, Someone bang my queen, already?

Well, evidence suggests that someone(s) did. And that evidence is not just my really broken beekeeping intuition, but rather a more trustworthy source - the video feature on my suddenly (shockingly) functioning phone.

Because my phone is apparently a total perv for bee sex and began magically (shockingly) functioning fully like it's supposed to when I was sitting out in my bee spying chair staring all lazily at the hive, the day after the WHY IS THIS SO FUCKING HARD there's no queen in my hive incident, and saw Ms. Someone Bang Me herself just getting ready to take her virgin flight.

YES.

I saw the queen bee outside of the hive. Which is really quite rare since the only time a queen leaves the hive is to mate and all of my queens have arrived mated in the past so this is the #1 time I've seen a queen bee outside of a hive period so I'll thank you to just be impressed and let me show you the video evidence of said Queen Bee Outside of Hive.

Outside and waving her lady junk in the air like she just don't care, and such.

Then THEN! about 20 minutes later, I was still out in the garden, like messing with the apple tree or something, when I heard piping again.

Remember piping? The SOMEONE BANG ME, ALREADY song of queen bees everywhere? Yes, well, they sing a slightly different song when they're back in the hive and successfully banged.

It goes a little something like this. And when translated into English goes a little something like, "Inform the women. I have mated with many drones."

And then, a little bit later while I was still out there fucking with the garden because I don't know when to leave well enough alone to bang in my yard, I saw some solid evidence that the queen REALLY HAD returned freshly banged and REALLY HAD been advising the staff of the future arrival of up to a million baby bees because the ritualistic killing of the drones had begun.

Like, the queen had gotten her fill of the drones and now they were of no use to her. So, like, off with their heads and shit.

Yay, right?

My hive righted itself, the queen got laid, returned to the hive safely, set her legions of worker gals to KILL and I *may* have a semi-functioning beehive again.

AND I GOT IT ALL ON VIDEO BY SOME FUCKING MIRACLE YAY.

Yes, yay.

And now you may be interested to know that, due to the success of my hive during times of me NOT fucking with it, I have adopted a new beekeeping method.

It's the NOT FUCKING WITH IT method.

Mostly it's just me NOT FUCKING WITH IT unless there's something very visibly wrong with it. From the outside. Where I can't do so much damage.

Like, unless all of the bees are lying dead outside the hive on the ground in a heart crushing display of sadness or not a single bee is flying out of the thing all day even though conditions are perfectly acceptable for flying or I, like, see flames shooting out of the hive - I'm not checking in.

The only time I'm touching the hive is to add water to the entrance feeder (which I can do without fucking anything up), add a super if they've filled the one they have or waaaaaaaaaaay later on if I've been really good, harvest the honey.

That's it.

Otherwise, they're on their own and I think we can all agree that it's better that way. Frankly, I think it may be the only way that I can "keep" bees. Because what I've been doing to date can hardly be described as beekeeping. More like beeFUCKINGUPNOMATTERWHATIDO.

Ugh.

And since no beekeepers can agree on what the right amount of hive checks are, I won't be listening to any that come out of the woodwork and go, "you know, you really should be checking them once a month/week/day/year/second." because shuttup.

Unless you're Awesome Steve. In which case I will totally listen. But Steve is cool with my NOT FUCKING WITH IT METHOD. Because he's awesome and also of a similar mind.

Ooh, on a nice random note to round out the random in this post - I start my first full time farming gig on Monday and HOLY SHIT THAT'S A SCARY AWESOME FUCKED UP THING to be saying.

How do you like my random now, eh?

The Scariest Plan on Earth

There are running updates, garden updates and bee updates, but since only one of them has the potential to bring about a second rapture, I will go with that one first.

Then, later, maybe I post about the rest.

So, about that rapture.

Remember The Rapture? Not the one with the old dude who said the world was going to end and only special people were going to be sucked off the face of the planet and leave the rest of us heathens to bask in our respective filth and sin and then WHOOPSY it didn't happen, but the one where I unleashed a hailstorm of stinging insects in my backyard and nearly had to go at the place with a match to fix it.

You remember.

Well, because that was clearly soooo much fun and I felt soooo good about my capabilities as a beekeeper and maker of decisions, I'm doing it again.

I'm installing another package of bees and another queen in my hive.

And not just because you want to see another video of me doing the stupidest thing on earth.

No.

So, to pick up where I left off with the bee situation, that nuc frame of babies that Awesome Steve (he's been upgraded from The Best to Awesome. I'm sure you agree that this is warranted.) gave me did not produce a queen.

Whether my bees took one look at all those babies and were like, "Oh good! The party's here!" and reared all those babies for a buzzing kegger (with mead instead of beer, obviously) or they just figured that the cavalry had arrived and they were free to move on to greener pastures, I don't know.

What I do know is that they did NOT make a queen.

Which is a bummer.

Also, I now have a laying worker, which is a pathetic and useless situation which requires a laying queen to fix and since these ladies are all well past the point of accepting a new queen into their midst, this new queen needs some subservients to do her bidding so she doesn't get rolled by the incumbents.

See those little rice looking things. Those are eggs. They are supposed to be floating happily in the center of the cell. Notice that they are not. That is the work of a laying worker bee.

So, now instead of having a One Bee Problem, I have a One MILLION Bee Problem.

Wow, what's that saying about being "bound to repeat" things...Yeah. Hi! That's me! The Not Learning From Mistakes Girl!

*Sigh*

So, in lieu of having a normal and uneventful spring wherein I enjoy the planting of my garden and the satisfaction of seeing my beehive successfully overwinter and go to work, I will be doing the scariest thing I've ever done.

Scariest Plan on Earth:
Step 1 - Place entire hive of bees (which is BTW very heavy with honey and pollen) on my wheel barrow and haul it to the front of the yard.
Step 2 - Remove each frame from both hive bodies and SHAKE ALL THE BEES OFF OF THEM ONTO THE GROUND.
Step 3 - Return all frames to the hive bodies and wheel barrow the hive back to the back of the property.
Step 4 - Install a new package of bees and their queen in the hive.
Step 5 - Hope to hell that I don't bring about Rapture #2 in my yard.

So, you tell me, does that or does that not sound like the scariest thing to do on a Friday afternoon? Or any time for that matter?

Yeah. Thought so.

Given the WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT-ness of the situation, I felt compelled to find the up side. Because otherwise I was going to run stark raving mad into traffic wearing only my bee veil and a glossy sheen of freshly extracted honey.

So...up sides:

1. I will have the opportunity to install the screened bottom board on the hive so I can easily check for mites.
2. I will NOT be installing the hive front feeder like I did last year which called in feral bees from five counties and, thus, caused the rapturing.
3. I will NOT lose the queen from her tiny cage due to improper handling with gloved hands.
4. The new colony will have a super duper head start since the hive isn't brand new anymore and therefore doesn't need to have comb drawn out, nectar collected and turned to honey or pollen collected and turned to food.

That's a good brood pattern - if only there were brood in the center instead of NOTHINGNESS.

I had to have Bubba walk me through these up sides so that I wouldn't focus so much on the I REALLY DON'T WANT TO DO THIS AGAIN-ness that was starting to suffocate me, but I think I've come to peace with it.

As much as one can come to peace with the concept of abruptly evicting many tens of thousands of stinging insects from their hard-fought food source and then turning around and inviting many thousands of other stinging insects to move into it.

It all seems rather rude.

But that's exactly what I'm doing.

On Friday afternoon. Right before I'm supposed to leave for the weekend. Which may or may not happen because we all remember what happened the day after I installed my hive last year.

Which - what if I was off gallivanting in the mountains when that happened?

I'm thinking that my Shitty Neighbors would have turned Shitty Animal Control Callers.

Or something equally not good.

So, yeah, stay tuned as I perform the Scariest Plan on Earth. I'm sure it will make for a good story if nothing else.