Summer Waning Summer Moon
The smoker worked. Mostly. The bees have had 2 to 2.5 months of breeding, brooding and comb building. There are a lot more bees than there were in April when Mark showed me how to load a box a’ bees into the first hive box. Weekly I’ve checked each frame, when there are three hive boxes on as there is now, that means checking 28 frames each time.
The bee’s propolis had welded together many frames this time, so prying them apart proved more difficult than it had the first weeks. With smoke to discourage angry bees each frame came out with minimal interference. After checking a few frames in each hive box, I put the top box on the bottom, left the middle one in its place and put the bottom one of top. If I understand it correctly, this encourages the bees to continue producing brood, making the colony more healthy for the winter while also expanding their honey base in the honey supers where the queen cannot go.
In this way the colonies survival over the winter gains a higher probability while still allowing the bee-keeper to harvest some of the honey flow.
Today, after the hives, I cracked the case of the outside air conditioning unit, took it off and sprayed off the literal blanket of cottonwood fibers that had collected around the fins which guide air past the cooling coils. I could have done this three weeks ago, but I forgot about it. It’s not fun for me since it involves lot of little screws, a cantankerous body of sheet metal that must line up with the holes just right and more bending than my deconditioned joints can stand. A good prod to get back to the resistance and flexibility work as well as the aerobics.
I tend to emphasize the aerobics since the heart and circulatory system and the respiratory system tend to cause death if not tended with care. That’s only half of the battle though, the other half is having enough strength and flexibility to live the life time saved by regular aerobic exercise.
The cantankerous sheet metal awaits. I’ve written this while letting it dry off. This all falls under the British category of estate management. Where are all the servants again? Oh, that’s right. They are me.