Packing, packing, packing, packing. Boring on the front…..
Play some piano? Don’t mind if I do!
Housewarming party To Be Announced…..
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“Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.” Roger Caras
Here’s my new eighty pound best friend. This guy is perfect. And huge.
Gets along with the cats, obeys and is generally just the most mellow fellow out there.
If you are here via satanoscillatemymetallicsonatas.com, welcome! (I bank useless URLs.)
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Bee….log…err…what?
www.mcipac.marines.mil So, the blogging thing has really taken a back seat to all the other things I’ve got going on right now. The Bees are in pretty rough shape. I quit logging their stuff until I get it under control. Multiple waves of ignoring (or overthinking) what my books told me left me with about 6 weeks of trying to get all the wavy comb straightened out in my hive. It’s heading into winter and due to this, there’s a chance there may not be enough honey for them to live off of.
I started to check the hive yesterday and my neighbor started vacuuming her pool. I’m lighting my smoker and about to expand by another bar but she just opened her back door. There may be a plot against me now. Maybe it’s about the cats (longer story). I just checked and things are slowing down. It’s getting cooler.
Old Age Realization:
Tardiness is one of my pet peeves. A strong pet peeve. Tardiness is a lack of respect for other people’s time.
My other anxiety ties closely to parking. There’s never enough. Anywhere. I don’t mind parking far away and walking. That’s not my problem. My problem is then that I have to leave earlier, so as not to be late, and then walk the distance that it takes from where I parked (which has to suitably be marked that I won’t be towed.)
Combine the two, and it’s just a recipe for anger and frustration.
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Bee Log Star Date 93
Partial Inspection: Day 93
Time: 2:30pm
Weather: 90
Blooming: Crepe Myrtle is still blooming around the ‘hood.
Combs:
Bar 12 is now okay. Bars 13, 14 had a slight “puff” so I sliced those out. Bars 15 and through 16: Wavy:
Bar 17 is next to the follower board, so the small comb they’re building on 17 is straight. I scraped off some of the wavy and pressed some straight on 15 and 16, so I’ll have to check again next weekend.
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What I did my summer (non-vacation) – Bee Log Stardate 86
Partial Inspection: Day 86
Time: 11:30am
Weather: 92
Blooming: Nothing that I really noted.
Combs:
After last weekend’s flood of angry bees, I had to check the cross comb situation……and…..it’s gonna be sticky. D’OH!
Bar 12 is now okay. Bars 13 through 16 are a little wavy, bar 17 is next to the follower board, so the small comb they’re building on 17 is straight. I scraped off some of the wavy and pressed some straight on 13 through 16, so I’ll have to check again next weekend.
This may take a while. There’s a lot of bees inside the hive. They’re crowded but I can’t open it up until they get the wavy situation corrected.
On the plus side, the destruction wasn’t as bad this time, the bees didn’t flood out in a massive ball like they did last time.
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“I want to be Robin to Bush’s Batman.” Dan Quayle
New addition to the homestead:
Bat house numero 2! It’s humongous, a 40 pounder. Wish me luck. I hate heights so I don’t want to have to move it.
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Bee Log Star Date 79
Partial Inspection: Day 79
Time: 10:30am
Weather: 82
Blooming: Nothing that I really noted.
Combs:
After the party we threw and another “lost weekend” before that, it had been a while since I opened the hive. I opened it, and to my horror, I had cross-comb! *gasp*
It was my own damn fault really. 6 bars of wavy comb. I added too many bars in a row and they didn’t keep straight. Damn organic really. The smoker came in super handy.Sooooo…..I took my handy dandy beehive tool and scraped straight down on the comb, straightening out the comb. A veritable FLOOD of honey drowned the hive. Bad, baaad beekeeper.
They were not amused (below), but they were back to normal the following day. Not sure about the internals, will have to fire the smoker up again and check out the bars and make sure I fixed it “right”.
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“For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all.” ~ Aristotle
Bat update –
When I ordered some bee supplies from Amazon I also picked up a small bat house.
It arrived. I was underwhelmed.
But it got mounted in the front yard.
So, rather than mull over how I failed on my rocket style bat house (stupid warped wood) I went ahead and ordered a new bat house. I underestimated how big it was – even though I kind of roughed out how big it was from the dimensions they listed.
Wow. Big bat can.
Hope it works! (Shoes for scale)
