virginiaisforlykoshes: Honey, Cake, and Gifts

Abraham's eagerly anticipated birthday finally arrived. Every time someone called him "the Birthday boy," he got a huge smile on his face. And although he tried to herd all the family together mid-morning so he could open his presents (forgetting that that is an after-dinner event), he had a happy day.

I planted 100 raspberries in alternating rows with the asparagus. I found a couple examples of this on the internet, and although most people don't recommend crowding your asparagus, I would rather not keep the asparagus patch weed-free while I wait for the four-inch little sprouts from seeds to become a full, usable patch in three or four years. We'll see if I regret this idea at a later date.

Cheri continued with her never-ending task of tying up tomatoes. They look so nice! And I am so thankful that task is not falling to me.

Phil plowed all the remaining beds but one. (Catherine the cow pushed over her fence a few days ago, and was grazing in the weeds. Phil corralled her with an electric line and the last energizer, but she still has access to part of the garden. He'll deal with it as needed, I suppose.) All peat bales but one are now spread. The earth looks a good bit different.

As I am anxious to have beds for my remaining asparagus, the surviving rhubarb, and the low-growing lavender, Phil began to till. He had made a few passes when, with a horrible grinding noise, the tractor quit.

Thankfully, he had simply run over a large root, which bound the tiller and automatically killed the engine. Nothing was broken. But, due to mechanisms I don't really understand, the tractor was completely stuck. Phil tried all the methods he could think of, then called Butch, who will come in the morning.

The bees, when I went to look at them, appeared agitated. Their humming was a bit louder than normal, and there were more bees around the entrance than seemed normal or good. Fifteen or twenty bees milling around, where one or two had been at first, made me think it was time to expand their entrance. Phil tried to remove the entrance reducer, and was stung on the inner arm for his trouble.

I took the Celadon hive apart then. There is nothing much happening in the upper brood chamber, but both bottom brood chambers were quite heavy to lift (and they'll get heavier: 50 to 60 pounds, I believe, is the expected weight of those boxes). I expanded the opening, turned the very bottom of the hive around, so the bees don't have two "entrances" to confuse them anymore (and to prevent them from going into an area filled with Varroa mites), peeked at the hive formation (just removing the end frame; I didn't look at every bit of the hive), then put the hive back together.

The Celestial hive was different. I have read that, when a beekeeper stops providing all the foundation wax a hive needs, it can take up to three generations before the bees resume their wax building that they should do instinctively. I was still surprised, though, to find a large quantity of wax connecting the two brood boxes, running horizontally to the frames. The bees were not building as I wanted them to! So I brushed the bees away, scraped up the wax, trying to leave as much of the liquid in the hive as I could (the workers will figure out how to use it: bees are excellent repairmen, as well as all the other things they do). I moved some of the frames around, so they wouldn't be as inclined to build incorrectly in the same spot.

And I'll check the hive again more quickly next time; perhaps weekly, rather than waiting three weeks. I don't want to disturb them too much, but I hate for them to have to work so hard, only to have their work taken from them.

The comb I took was put to good use. Most of us had a taste of our first honey (or nectar: it was a very light fluid, not as viscous as I think honey usually is; perhaps the bees had not dehydrated it to make "real" honey yet). We chewed the wax, too.

Before dinner, Phil wondered aloud if all the children should have baths, as it would be difficult to imagine a more dirty set of boys. Jadon, quite the wag these days, commented that he would be more dirty if he went out and rolled about in the dirt.

Sadly, a short while later, he crashed his bike. While not terribly injured, he lay for a bit in the orange Virginia dirt, and, in the initial throbbing pain of banged limbs, did, actually, roll about in the dirt. Orange now from hair to bare feet, he was soon riding about again.