Buzzzzz-y Busy

I got a phone call the other morning that made my heart sing! A man in town had a bee swarm in his yard and was asking me to come fetch it! Free bees! It is hard to see it well in this picture, but that dark spot is a the swarm!
Luckily my son Tommy was home, so he came and helped me:) And took this picture of me
 

Swarms are extremely gentle. They keep balled up around their queen, while scout bees fly off looking for a new home. Later, I went back to where I got this swarm and found a cluster of scouts who had returned to where there swarm had been. Imagine if you had told your family you would go off in search of a new home and when you returned, they were gone! So sad to even think about so….
I went and retrieved them and reunited them with their family:) You see the queen’s scent was still there, and they would have just stayed right there until they died! I thought these little sacred lived deserved being cared for and brought to their family:)
I have a friend named Jim, who is in my beekeeping group. He bought a package of bees and I went to help him hive them. Package are one way you can buy bees. They come in a screen box, which has a sugar water can inserted in it to keep the bees fed while in transit. The queen is in a tiny screen box inside this package. One end of her cage is plugged with a candy, that the bees will eat and eventually release her.
  Jim had his beehive all put together and ready. We just removed some of the center frames and then poured the bees in, after removing the sugar feed you can see in the center of the top of the bee cage. It looks like a can of veggies or something..


  This is the queen cell, Jim is holding. He used the hive tool corner to break up the candy plug just a little bit more. We hung this cell between some frames and soon the workers will have ate out the plug and released the queen
 The bees that didn’t pour/shake out were left sitting right outside the entrance. It wasn’t long until they marched out and joined the rest of the hive.
We got the veg garden tilled this weekend
We garden at my nephew Scott and his wife Dawn’s house. Scott was so patient teaching Grandson’s Evan and Breven how to run the tiller
 

Gerald and I went to the Civic Center in Peoria to see Red Green this weekend. Visit the link if you are unfamiliar with this comedian. Gerald has been a great fan of his for years so he had a great time:)
 We had one bummer this week though. We found a woodpecker in our yard that had a broken wing. We kind of guess it was probably hit by a hawk. We were going to try and heal and rehabilitate it to re-release it.. but it passed away within an hour of us finding it:( Must have been hurt worse than we could tell, although Gerald didn’t hold out good hopes for a full recovery to its wing to begin with..


On an up note…. Gerald gave Dylan his very first duck call. Dylan is always wanting me to drive Papa’s truck, as Gerald has duck calls hanging from the rearview mirror. Well, now he has his own:)
 Dylan had some sort of tubing that he was forever using to try and holler at the geese in the fields on the way to school in the morning. So cute, he will roll his window down and just start blowing and blowing this homemade thing trying to get their attention. When I told Gerald, he thought it was time he had a real one:) Quite the big little man now!
We went to the river this week, and I got some of the herb gardening done, but I should save those things for another post as this one has got quite long!
Herbal and Honey Hugs to all of you who visit Comfrey Cottages xxx