No WAY!

Ok, so you know that I took that beekeeping class two quarters ago? Well, you also know how the bees have been disappearing (which is so much more important than global warming, really, global warming won't even matter if we don't get our bees back in business)? Well, I found this video on Swissmiss today. AMAZING! I'm still giggling a little....

Mr. Reggie

I found this little dude curled up in the cupholder of the new car when I started to transfer all of the odds and ends from the subaru to their new home. I felt terrible that he got locked in there at some point, but he is awfully cute and his untimely death gave me a chance to carry him around in my hand for a while.

Bzz bzzzzssssszzz

What Star Missed Today...

1. Rain: it rained today. Not anywhere near epic conditions, but there was rain and I did walk in it for unusually long distances. Also, everything had big, fat, happy rain drops squatting on them.

2. These flowers: who also had happy rain on them.

Gorgeous. They were tucked away behind the Lab buildings on the way to the O-farm. A lovely little surprise in the beginning of what promises to be a very long day.
3. The Walk to the O-Farm: Here is the path, and here are the leaves that line the path (note the happy rain is here as well).
This is what happy rain looks like.

4. My Tea: Oh so pretty in its very own mug.

Ahhh.. blackberry tea.

So tastey.

So I went to beekeeping this morning and learned about...

bee disease!

(if you say this out loud it mostly rhymes).

Anyway, it turns out the bees are dying. Who knew? There are a variety of things causing this: Varroa mites, tracheal mites, American Foul Brood, and of course the Colony Collapse Disorder which is the main source of the bad news. About 32% of bee colonies failed last year, 29% of those were caused by CCD which at this point, remains a mystery. Everyone is panicking about it, including Haagen-Daz (the ice-cream company and also the main contributor of funds towards researching this epidemic. Our ice-cream is IN DANGER! Don't you people realize how frightening that is? Contribute dammit!).

Oh, and we also learned a little bit about the animal predators.

Skunks:Will walk up to a hive, scratch around on the side panels to get the bees nice and angry, and then saunter to the front. Here, they wave their luxuriantly rank tail in front of the hive entrance. The bees then attack the tail, get stuck and then the skunk just turns around and picks them out as if they were little popcorn kernel snackies. Crunch crunch crunch....

Bears: Don't really want your honey mr. bee, all they want are your babies. The bears like the brood (which are apparently quite edible, but a little tangy... I really wouldn't know).

Lizards: And other small critters can sometimes just hang out inside of the hives and pick bees off as they buzz on by. Jake (the bee-instructor) was telling us about a lizard he found in the bottom of a three story hive. He had popped off the first two supers (the boxes bees hang out in) and found a little, fat lizard on the floor of the bottom one. The lizard had been there SO LONG that the bees had covered him in a thick layer of wax with just his head free. He was calmly and quite contentedly snapping up bees the walked past his head and showed no desire to move in anyway. Jake popped him off of the floor, a change that the lizard wasn't too happy about, so he wound up just staying in the hive anyway. His little wax mummy casing was pretty nasty because of the months of dead skin sheddings that had accumulated. Gross.

I think that's all I'm going to tell you for now.

You've Been Swarmed!

I had another bee class today. We didn't actually go out and poke about the hives today, instead we took a quiz, talked about bee social behavior (bee dancing (on a side note I found a video about bee dances on youtube with a narrator who sounds startlingly like the actor who plays Richmond on the IT Crowd show) etc.) and then watched some bee related youtube videos. Quite helpful really.

Ahhhh I'm covered in bees!

And then what must be one of the most frightening insects of all time.

There were audible gasps of horror in class when we watched this clip.

Tomorrow for my Fifties class Michelle and I are going to make tomato soup cake (a classic from the era) with cream cheese frosting for the potluck. Wish us luck!

The O-Farm

I had another class about bees today which was amazing. We got to wear bee suits, have bees crawl their little bodies all over us and I got to watch some chickens lay eggs because I was early for class.

Chickens, not laying eggs. Chickens definitely laying eggs.
Star, not laying eggs but wearing an out-of-this-world hip bee suit. Right after this picture she pretended to be walking on the moon around the perimeter of the garage-turned-headquarters of the O-farm (as the Organic Farm shall henceforth be dubbed).

Fantastic.

Light 'Er Up!

"... and then you take your hive tool and KILL THE QUEEN!"

Today in my Beekeeping class we learned that you
a.) don't exhale when bees are mad, so very mad.
b.) when you have a "bad" hive (meaning they're just plainly evil little buggers) you kill the queen and
c.) when you light something on fire starting at the bottom of whatever it is, you then rotate your hand so that it's not above the flames that are slowly licking their way towards your easily cooked flesh. Genius.

We started our first day by looking at the bees in their little wooden hives, then we got to put on the safari hats covered in netting, then we got to take them off, and then we got to play with the smokers. A beekeeping smoker looks like a french press and the Tin man from the Wizard of Oz got together and started a steamy little family. What you do is you find about a 4in x 5in bit of burlap sacking and you loosely roll it up. Then, holding the roll in your hand you take a lighter and begin to light the bottom on fire.

The whole object is to make an ember that'll last for a while. However, this is where my special genius comes in. So I'm holding my quickly blazing piece of burlap sacking, watching the flames get higher and higher and I'm getting more and more worried. Jake (the beekeeping teacher) looks over and says something along the lines of "Oh, you haven't really been around fire, have you? Huh." and then tells me to drop what had become a ball of flame. He scoops it up and says slowly, "Now, when the flames get that big, you rotate your hand so that the flames are going upwards... AWAY from your hand. I think we need to start with basic wildlife survival." Star, meanwhile is laughing her head off and then proceeds to do the exact same thing I did.

Silly Star.

It was sort of cold and pretty muddy out there, but very cool. The bees had just come in yesterday and were a little groggy but the chickens were very much awake. I think next time I'll take my camera so I can show you all the chick chick chickens!

Oh, and I managed to burn myself on the smokers. I can't be expected to remember EVERYTHING. I mean, I have way more important things to remember, like the exact time it takes to microwave a bowl of oatmeal to perfection, than that metal gets hot when it's been on fire for a while. Sheesh, who needs wilderness survival when you can just make the same mistakes a couple of times and then learn your lesson (or do I learn my lesson? I've been burning myself on things for the last 20 years, so that makes for a pretty poor learning curve).

Bees Knees

So I'm officially registered for Beekeeping class on Tuesday mornings. I think this'll be AMAZING. Star is in the class with me and we get to spend two hours a week on the campus Organic Farm wearing bee suits and messing with some hives. Plus, all of this is in the Spring which is gorgeous in Olympia.

So my official, final class schedule, as opposed to the one I posted in March, for Spring is this:
For a total of 16 credits I'll have class on:

Monday: 6-9:30
Tuesday: 10-12, 3-5 and 5:30-9:30
Wednesday: 6-9:30
Thursday: 3-5

One of the cool things is that the Research class from 5:30-9:30 only meets for five weeks and then we're done, so pretty much once April is done I will have a better, more manageable schedule. Cuz the way things are here, Tuesdays are grueling.

At the end of the beekeeping class (and if I pass all the tests during the quarter) I should have an apprentice beekeeping license, which would rock.

BEES! and lavender

The bees are everywhere and oh so happy. I have to stop myself from picking them up like those little pipe-cleaner chicks you get at Easter, because unlike those wee chicks, bees have a way of making any attempt to cuddle them unpleasant.