The title is for one Miss Carol who had been wondering about the bees.
The bees are dead. Long live the bees.
The bees I had died. ALL OF THEM. Dead. Deader than a door nail.
Best use of the phrase and a pretty accurate representation of midwestern curmudgeonhood.
Anyway. Many many beekeepers around here lost many many bees. Lots of dead bees. It was a Bee-pocalypse.
But the grant that got the group of us started with bees thought we should soldier on and they got us more bees. So far 2 hives are set up. One is carniolans which I had before. One is saskatraz. Hybrid with some canadian cold hardy stock in the background.
Soon we get more bees from a local guy with his "survivor queens." Those are queens that have made it in local conditions and god only knows who the baby daddy is. But he's local.
I had 2 of their hives before but they were AGGRESSIVE and died out. One may have had a laying worker because the population petered out and they were a**holes! A hive needs a queen to stay organized and calm...well, calm for bees.
The ones I have so far are doing well. The carnies have stopped bothering with the sugar syrup supplement. There are tons of dandelions out and yesterday the hawthorn trees started to bloom along with some random shrubs that may be small hawthorns. That means plenty of food for them. I fed the saskatraz again since they had emptied their syrup jar or it all leaked out.
Both hives are pretty calm. I can feed them without disturbing them much or opening the hive at all so I didn't suit up or even put on the hat and veil (that's the face screen thingy that keeps bees out of your face and hair and hopefully from going down the cleavage). I won't try that with the local bees. They are hardbitten redneck bees who will cut you just for looking at them (or so they were last time...we'll see).
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