Holy crap. Has it really been that long since I wrote last? Life has been zooming by at near light speed during the last few months. After almost 4 months of having a tree land on our house we are nearly half-way through getting the work done. The outside looks trim and proper but the upstairs bathroom looks like hell. Just last week they blew in all of this foam insulation into the rafters, as a result it looks like the Stay Puffed Marsh Mellow Man set himself on fire in our bathroom and stumbled all over the place.
I also just landed a new full time job as a Cartographer for SNL Financial, a locally based research company that provides an exhaustive amounts of research to the business sector at a national and international level.
The bees have been doing fairly well. I plan on heading out this weekend to provide them one last dole of heavy sugar syrup to tide them over until early Spring. My friends hive..well we will see. They don’t share the same robust nature of my insectoid demon spawns from Texas.
So far I have not provided any Apistan strips, Menthol packets, Checkmite, essential oil colonic s or one gram of Terramyician powder to my bees and they seem just fine. The true test will come next year when I wait and see if they pop out from the dark side of the moon come Spring alive and well or in a wooden mausoleum. They seem strong.
Before I moved to the Central Virginia area I took off about 60 pounds of frames from my older colonies to extract as soon as I moved in. Well 1.5 years later I extracted the honey in my driveway within the city limits. What a mistake. I thought I would encounter less bees. I forgot that Charlottesville is an agro-friendly community. We can have goats, chickens, and yes even bee hives on our property.
Within 10 minutes of uncapping they began to come. The scout bees. The scout bees must have danced a highland jig because within 40 minutes every honeybee within the Charlottesville area was at the Rugby Road Honey Free For All Festival. It was almost absurd trying to extract but it had to get done. Hundreds of bees perished in my extractor whose lid had been torn off by the movers. If you looked down into the sea of Fructos you could see the poor souls trying to extricate themselves one leg at a time to no avail. Eventually they went under and were later filtered out into a mass of sugary death. I probably only pulled about 40 pounds of honey but it is enough to give away to people who count in my life. So much for reaping huge profits again.
With the cooler weather came Halloween. This year I dressed up as a Zom-BeeKeeper. The makeup kit provided to me by the Halloween store assured me I would have the skin of a Ghoul if I followed the simple directions. About an hour later I looked like a white guy in black face. I quickly had my wife take a few pictures and washed off the makeup and put on the less controversial Cowboy Action Shooting costume. Happy Halloween to all.
Oh Nooo A Zombee Keeper!!!
More braiiiiiiinnss!!
