July 2 was a day for the record books to be sure. Ever since we brought Olive Isabella Shaunnesey and her entourage home at the forepart of the year, we have intended to upgrade her digs to insulated hives. We had it all planned in our heads and hoped to be done in about an hour – haha. Essentially we were ‘simply’ lifting 10 frames each from 3 deeps and 2 shallows into new insulated boxes. No big deal, right? Well the girls were disrupted, and they had all but super-glued (with propilus) every stinking piece to every other stinking piece – what a chore to pry them apart and not injure any bees! About ¼ of the way into the task, Joshua wrenched his back rendering him doubled over and needing to rest/stretch in the Honeyshack. This chick had to regroup and put on her big girl bee-panties as one entire deep of frames needed to be pried out, rid of bees and carried 50’ to the Honeyshack (for safe-keeping until extraction) where Joshua met me and sneaked the frame through a barely-opened window. Regrettably there are no pictures save one as our photographer al was stung various times – rats on all counts.
The saving grace is many-fold, with the help of some muscle relaxers and great healing, Joshua was back to fight another day today – yea.
Secondly, look what we ended up with. . .yumyumyum – Joshua sneaked a taste which he well deserved considering his battle injury.
We have elected to give Tutwo two of the frames of honey to help ensure her successful summer and transition through winter.
P.S. Suiko and Tutwo were impervious to our comings and goings and the chaos with Olive Isabella’s folks – they just were calm and kept to task. Within 12 hours, Olive Isabella’s people were back to business as usual. YEA, and here’s to a fine honey crop!
