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Kill the Invaders! …or… How I’m Protecting My Bees From Small Hive Beetles

Over the last few months, I’ve noticed something every time I’ve opened my hives.

These jerks:

At first it wasn’t a big deal – I’d only see one or two, and they’d be running from a swarm of attackers who were unhappy with sharing the same living quarters. But… Lately…

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Yeah. They’re everywhere. In almost every corner of every super, there’s a mound of them. Interestingly, they’re gathered together because the bees are shoo-ing them into the corners, putting them in time out. I watch them do it – if the beetle isn’t running, the bees curl around it as if they’re planning on both eating it and stinging it at the same time. I don’t think they do either, but it’s fascinating.

One of the first Nashville Area Beekeepers Association meetings I attended was about pests, and for some reason I felt like that was something I wouldn’t have to worry about until a couple of years down the road… Fewer bees, fewer pests, right?

Apparently, the stronger a hive is, the better a colony will be prepared to keep the small hive beetles at bay – and if a colony is weak, the beetles reign supreme. They damage the wax, honey and pollen, and – if there are enough of them – can cause the colony to abandon the hive. So – more bees, fewer pests, then?

Well – not really. As my bee numbers grew, so did the number of these little punks. It’s just that as the hive grew stronger, they were able to coral them better. Almost every time I peeked into the hives, I saw this:

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At the bottom of my hives I have screened bottom boards, which basically means that the structure itself is open, with only a screen covering the bottom.  (“Screened Bottom Board” is a great name, then, eh?)  I’ve had corrugated plastic slipped in since the beginning to basically seal it shut, because I’ve been told that the bees like to draw out comb in the dark. They’re done drawing out comb in the first super (otherwise known as a brood chamber), and it’s been pretty hot, so I could probably leave it open. (I literally just realized that as I was typing this)

However, besides ventilation, the screened bottom board is there so that the bees can push anything they don’t want in the hive out of the hive, without dragging it to the entrance. There’s plenty of trash that they’ll have to drag to the entrance, but hive beetles are small enough (and numerous enough) that it’s convenient to drive them to the bottom of the hive and let them drop through the screen.

Until recently, I’d see just about the same amount of small hive beetles on the plastic and I’d kill as many as I could before they flew away. But the problem is that if they’re just sitting on the plastic, just an inch away from the screen, there’s nothing stopping them from crawling back up into the hive after they catch their breath. So – even though I was seeing around the same number when I pulled the plastic out, the truth is that there were most likely a bunch that came and went when I wasn’t looking.

So – I bought some lunch trays online (had to get them online to get the right size), and they arrived a few days ago. Why? By replacing the plastic with the lunch trays, I can pour in a little cooking oil into the tray, so that when the beetles fall in, they get stuck and die. (I didn’t come up with this idea)

I suited up, including my new ankle guards, protecting me from the curious bee:

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Be honest… Do these make my feet look fat?

All I could find in the kitchen was olive oil – which I know is much more expensive than most cooking oils, but… I used it anyway, with a very thing layer.  Don’t tell my wife.  Success!

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In about 24 hours, more than the usual amount of small hive beetles were stuck in the oil! There were also a bunch crawling around on it, telling me that my thin layer wasn’t going to cut it. Luckily, I ran to Kroger while I was running errands earlier that day and brought back a big jug of canola oil and filled them both up after dumping the first batch out.

So… Another 24 hours later…

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Booyah!  With more oil, I have less beetles!

Wait – that doesn’t sound like a win, does it?

It does to me.  Because I got so many the first day with a thin layer of oil, and then far less the next day, that means the numbers of the beetles had already drastically lowered.  As I said before, every time I pulled the bottom board plastic out, I had a consistent number of beetles – which says to me that the bees were dumping a consistent number out through the screen at regular intervals.  Before, if I shooed them off the plastic and came back the next day, I’d see the same number.  Because the little buggers now drop into the oil, they couldn’t get away – so seeing less hopefully means less overall.

I was away on vacation for a week, and I checked them again yesterday.  (If my present/past/future tense gets a little crazy in this blog, it’s because I started it before I left, and am finishing it now that I’m back)

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I did not dump out the previous bath of beetle-juice (I had to fit that in somewhere), so everything above includes the old amount.  There isn’t that many – which makes me very excited!

You can also see a whole lot of pollen that fell through the screen, which means that they’ve been busy little bees during the week, too.  There were also some moths and moth larvae in there, so the trap is doing double duty.

Regrettably, there are also a handful of bees in the bath.  However, I’ll bestow honor on them, and say that they gave their lives in the line of duty, corralling the invaders to their death.  Truthfully, they can’t fit through the screen, so they probably didn’t follow them into the oil…  It’s more likely that they were on the underside of the screen when I slid it in place – but I think I’ll tell the other bees that they’re martyrs, so that they don’t come at me angrily next time I pop my head in.

I always hate losing bees – but since a good colony has more than 50,000, and the bees only live for about 6 weeks during the summer, it’s happening all the time.  Still…  I’d prefer not to be the reason that they go gently into that good night.

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On another note, I added a honey super, because they’ve drawn out all of their existing comb!  I still won’t get any honey this year, because they need to be set for winter, but they’re on a good path to hopefully be self-sustained.  (Instead of me feeding them sugar water to get them through)  I’m hoping there will still be enough in bloom for them to fill that super up – and I actually planted a few perennial flowers around the hives, so that next year (or possibly this year), they’ll have some pollen close by.

Coop d’etat: How to Build a Chicken Tractor. Sort of.

My chicks were starting to not be chick-ish anymore, and were long overdue for a home renovation. And I know all about home renovations.

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I have a good amount of scrap wood leftover from our house, but not a lot of good clean 2×4’s (or studs, as those of us in the know call them; my constant joke when trying to find a stud is to simply say “I’m right here.” Always a crowd pleaser, amiright?), so I picked up a handful from Lowe’s. I also picked up some 2×3’s because I thought it would be more efficient to make the run out of those to keep it light. Looking back, I should have gotten only one or the other – not both.

Getting Started

I kind of drew up a plan – to the point that I could figure out about how many studs I would need.  I didn’t follow that plan very long, because of the following reasons:

  • I was not building a house, so I didn’t need to have studs every 16 inches
  • My plan was not very good, and I left out just about everything I actually needed

One thing I thought I knew for sure is that I needed 4 square feet per chicken in the coop, and 8 square feet per chicken in the run.  (My brother informed me that I actually needed 10 sq ft in the run, but I was close!)  I decided to go a little tight on those numbers, though, because I want to build a stationary coop and run big enough for 20 or more feathered friends – so this is simply another step along the way.  The main reason for keeping it tight is because since I was building a chicken tractor – meaning I would move it around as they eat everything in the patch of grass it contained – I didn’t want it to be huge and hard to move.  It’s still pretty huge and hard to move even at its current measurements.

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Probably not the right way to add a roof – but again, these are chickens, people.  I decided on a run at 8’x4′, and a coop that would sit on top of half that – that way I could keep it fairly compact while not sacrificing the space on the ground.  You might or might not be able to see the differences in the 2×4’s and 2×3’s, but I started getting nervous when I got to joints that were made with the two types of wood.  It ended up being fine, but I had to finagle them a bit.

Hopefully you won’t see from the pictures that it’s definitely not squared up.  Almost none of the angles.  But I blame it on working on an uneven surface.  And also on the fact of never checking to make sure my angles were square.  Lesson learned.

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There’s a better picture of the ramp, which is braced by a couple 2×4’s nailed into the coop floor and the corner board.  It’s mostly made from scrap, but they don’t seem to mind.

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I pretty quickly realized that even though I planned on having nesting boxes that were accessible from the outside, I hadn’t planned on it.  I had to add the braces because they were sagging pretty badly – and I figured that adding the weight of birds and eggs and bedding would not somehow lighten the load.  I’m pretty proud of how it turned out, though, after calling my brother a couple times and doing some research on the interwebs.

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Some of the “finishing touches.”  Kind of looks like a fort – like the ones that my brothers and I used to build in my parents’ basement when we would launch empty plastic bottles at each other.  If I had this fort, I would’ve been unstoppable.  Which is not to say I wasn’t unstoppable without it.  (Ok, I was not unstoppable.)

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It’s really ugly and probably dangerous, but I have a lot of metal flashing leftover, and wanted to make sure my nesting boxes were super weatherproof.  Just don’t touch the edges.  Or if you do, make sure your tetanus shot is up to date.  It took a long time, because most of these pieces were cut off after they were formed together, so I had to pretty much unform the edges to form them again.  And because I’d never done this before.

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I added some 6 inch lawnmower wheels to be able to move it around.  However (spoiler alert), I ended up replacing them with 7 inchers, because the smaller ones weren’t easy to work with on uneven ground.  The larger ones lifted everything off the ground just enough to keep me moving, but not enough to worry about leaving enough space to let them shimmy out.

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Here ’tis with all the chicken wire on the run – which was a very tedious and laborious process.  I had to cut each individual wire, and then staple almost every individual wire.  If someone knows of a better way to do this, please let me know in the comments – because I feel like the way I did it can’t be the most efficient way.  This is also a peek at the new waterer and feeder, because…

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I just couldn’t let my birds sit in a cramped box when I basically had a finished run for them.  I screwed a piece of wood over the coop entrance and put them inside.  After a time of obvious confusion (they had only ever seen a roof above them and sand/paper towel below them – never the sky nor grass), they were super excited to run around.  As were my cats.

I was nervous that the cats would get aggressive with them (one of my cats, while pregnant, chased down a squirrel and ate it), but they seemed to simply be curious.  I kept my eyes on them for a while, but they apparently like to watch the fowls just as much as I do.

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Almost done!  Added a door, walls, and a roof.  I also added a few more 2×4’s to brace those things (but did it after I had much of the plywood on, so they’re not included in the ‘skeleton’ pictures.  I sealed up the roof pretty well with caulk (the contractor’s version of duct tape), but later added some roofing paper to make sure and keep the leaks out.

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There’s another thing I forgot – roosts!  It’s a chicken’s natural instinct to sleep off the ground to keep away form predators, so this was another thing that I was planning on, but didn’t include in my plans.  I ended up adding some more 2×4 braces – which is much more difficult when all of the walls are on.  Then I just cut some 45° angles on some roost-ish wood I had and drove some awkward nails.

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I added some bedding, and voila!  One by one, they started figuring out that their home had doubled in size.  The first to find it (a rooster, I think) wanted to see just how high he could get.  Luckily, as soon as he got to the highest point of the coop, he pooped.  Thanks for the commentary on the craftsmanship, big guy.

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I also added some chains to the waterer and feeder so that I wouldn’t have to take them out to move the tractor, and also to try to get them to stop pooping in both.  Because they do that constantly.  That can’t be healthy.

Funny story about the bedding: I went to Tractor Supply for the waterer and feeder, and told the checkout guy that I wanted to buy some pine shavings (which were outside the entrance).  He asked me if I wanted flake or fine shavings, and I just randomly said fine.  A guy who walked in, but had paused to watch me check out (creepy…) said “You want the flake.”

I simply said “Oh?” with a surprised look on my face.  “For chickens?”

“Yes,” he said.  “The fine stuff will fall out of every crack in your coop, and you’ll have to add more all the time.  The flakes will last longer.  I noticed your feeder, so I figured I’d help you out.  This is my third year.”

Ah – not so creepy now.  I said thanks and told the checkout guy “Flakes, please.”  I definitely see how flakes are better now – especially because I’m still losing a lot of it through the hole by the ramp.  I think I’m going to build a small ‘fence’ around it so that it won’t fall out so easily.

Now that I’m a farmer I feel like I’m in a club.  A club where, when I’m at Tractor Supply, random people – who are passionate about some of the same stuff – will gladly look awkward for a moment to help a brother out.  Same for bee keepers…  Every single one that I’ve talked to has been super excited to help out and show me anything I want to know.  Reminds me of a simpler time, growing up in Cairo, Ky, when everybody considered you to be a neighbor even if you were a 20 minute bike ride away.  Hopefully, I’ll have some awkward wisdom to give to someone at Tractor Supply before too long.

Here’s a mini tour of the Coop d’etat:

Bee Aggression, Chicken Detective

A lot has happened since my last post – here’s a quick list:

  • I was away from the real world at Camp Loucon for a week
  • My band shot a video (we’re actually not appearing in it, and I was just the guy holding a sweat rag for between takes)
  • We realized out that our construction loan was expiring in August, so we scrambled to get everything in order to refinance the loan to a normal mortgage.  (Don’t worry, Dave Ramsey – it’s a 15 year, and we have more than 20% equity in it!)
  • Part of what we had to get in order was the house.  So, we quickly tallied up what we had to get done to have an appraiser come by.  Another list!
    • We had to pour the concrete for our front porch and sidewalk
    • We had to fix the septic tank cover that broke when the concrete truck drove over it while pouring front porch and sidewalk (which involved me pouring a literal ton of concrete – yes, over 2,000 pounds – after my uncle helped me form a new tank lid)
    • Putting all the hardware on the kitchen cabinets
    • An immense amount of painting, staining, and polyurethaning
    • Lots and lots and lots (and lots) of general fixes around the house
    • Cleaning
    • Anything else not mentioned above that might make a big difference in an appraisal
  • Multiple trips to various county government buildings to pull or file forms needed for closing, requested from my bank AFTER they needed them, which has resulted in pushing back our closing date twice.

On Friday we got our final inspection from the county, and the day before we had an appraiser come out.  So – barring anymore stupid requests from our bank (we’ve not had great experiences with them, so I won’t link them or give their name – ask me if you want to know who to avoid), we’re DONE!

Back to what I know all of you have come to see…

My Bees are Trying to Kill Me

I guess it’s only fair that my bees are ramping up their venomous attacks on me, considering I kill a few of them each time I move their homes…  When I first got stung, I had fairly minor swelling (not to mention a fever and convulsive shaking), so I assumed that future stings would give me less of a reaction.  On the contrary – I’ve been swelling way more.

First – how I got stung:

A few weeks ago, I was inspecting my hives like any normal computer programmer does.  It’s been a surprisingly cool summer in middle Tennessee, but that’s not to say it’s cold, but rather low 90’s.  When I do my hive inspections, I wear long sleeves, long pants, long gloves and a bee veil.  As such, I get very hot.  And I sweat.

There have been a number of times that I have mistaken sweat slowly dripping down my leg as a bee, and had to calm myself down at the thought of a tiny stinger zeroing in on my nether regions.  “That’s sweat moving down, David,” the inner dialogue usually goes, “bees would start at the bottom of the pant leg and move up.”

But this time…  This time the sweat was moving up.  Wait – not sweat.

I honestly didn’t know what to do.  At first, I just thought I’d leave it alone – it crawled in, so maybe it will crawl out.  When it got to my inner thigh, however, I knew it was time for action.

I swatted my leg out of sheer terror.  No plan, just swat.  It’s obvious what the outcome of that would be (though I didn’t think of that at the time), but I’d much rather she sting me on the thigh while waltzing up my leg than pretty much anywhere north of there.

After I had sat the box full of bees down, I ran through the woods trying to get far enough away to…

…take off my pants.

Well, not all the way, but enough to get the stinger out of my inner thigh and allow the dead bee to roll out onto my sock.  It had to be a funny sight – a guy completely covered from head to toe except for the exposed underwear.  Or creepy, at least.  Good thing my neighbors aren’t too close.

I finished the rest of the inspection after tucking my pant legs into my shoes.  I’ve heard other beekeepers suggest wrapping duct tape around your pant legs, but I was always under the impression that it was to prevent ticks.  I will soon add duct tape to my beekeeping equipment.

Immediately, the sting was just annoying, but not too swollen.  The next morning, however, it took up my entire thigh.  I drew a sharpie line around it to keep an eye on the swelling.  I popped benadryl and used a topical antihistamine cream for the next few days – and eventually it went away.

So, on my next trip out to the hives, I started out by tucking my pants into my shoes.  (Still need to get that duct tape)  All went perfectly during the inspection, but when I was taking off my gloves I didn’t realize I had a bee in my elbow pit.  When I bent my arm, it knew of its impending doom and went out in a blaze of glory.

Day One:

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“Arm Selfies” are a thing, right?

 

Day Two:

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Sheesh – looking at them back to back makes me think I might have actually had a bad reaction.  I haven’t learned my lesson, though – luckily.  At least it takes a day to swell, and not a few minutes.  That’ll give me enough time to drive to the hospital if needed.

Again, benadryl and antihistamine cream, and I’m right as rain.  Though I have discovered that non-drowsy benadryl causes me to sleep for a very, very long time in the middle of the day.

CHICKS!

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Er – wait…  Not really chicks anymore.  These are like…  Chickens.  Or at least fowl teenagers.

They’re not full grown yet – they hatched about a month ago, and it could be a couple of months before the hens start laying – but I’m amazed at how fast they have grown.  Before I left for camp, they definitely had grown since the furballs hatched – but when I got back, it seemed like someone replaced them with larger, feathered creatures.  I wish I got a better picture – but hopefully you can see just how huge they’ve gotten compared to the feeder.

I had to give them a bigger box and put a bit of chicken wire on top because they would flap their wings anytime they’re nervous.  A couple of days ago, I went out to the garage (where they’re staying now), and one of them was standing on top of the box.  Luckily, I think it was scared of its newfound freedom, and was just walking around above the other chickens, not wanting to let them out of its sight.  There was a fairly small opening on one side of the box where the chicken wire was too short, so I had to cover it.

I’m not a Murderer!  …I think…
[***Warning – pictures of dead chicks ahead***]

After the remaining eggs sat in the incubator a day or two after they should have hatched, I decided to play detective to see if I could find out why they didn’t hatch.  What I found was a fairly interesting progression of chicken development.

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Ok…  So – I might have killed this one.

It’s pretty much fully developed, and I think it died just before eating the yoke (which busted when I cracked it open).  Heck – the picture looks like it’s ready to chirp.  But it won’t chirp.  It will never chirp.  I blame myself for opening the incubator too much.

After that, in the order I opened them, they get smaller and less developed.

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dead-chick4

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They might have died for any number of reasons, but one reason could be that the temperature wasn’t perfect, and that I didn’t have anything circulating the air in the incubator.  But this is speculation, which I’m probably not even close on.  Some detective…

It’s probably good that only five hatched, though – because I’m definitely running out of space in the current brood box.  I started building a chicken tractor on Saturday, and I’m fairly close to finishing it.  (I wanted to finish this post before adding anything about the chicken tractor, so that I have two blogs rather than one at 5000 words)

Because of everything that’s been going on my world, I probably wouldn’t have been able to build the chicken tractor sooner, which means they’d all be sitting on top of each other right now.  Currently, they’re merely sitting very, very  close to each other.

[Actually, I’ve already moved them into the run on the chicken tractor, which is unfinished, because it’s taken me almost a week to finish this post…]

So – next time you tune in, I’ll have a bunch of fun pictures of building a chicken tractor.  I promise, no pictures of dead chicks.  Well – unless one of my chickens dies and I feel like it’s worth posting a picture.  But even then – not a chick.

But I’ll leave you with a teaser on the chicken tractor production:

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I’m Officially a Farmer

It took every ounce of willpower in me not to make a title like “I’m Surrounded by Hot Chicks” or the like.  I mean, that would probably get more hits from search engines…  I’ve already warned my wife that I’ll be using puns like that often from here on out.

I’ve got chickens!

Late Friday night, I thought I started hearing chirping sounds from my incubator – which I found a little strange, because none of the eggs had hatched…  I checked and rechecked, and each time I stood silently by the incubator I heard nothing.  As soon as I left the room, though, the little high pitched sounds drifted around me.

I thought I might be crazy, because hearing chirping from inside an egg would be a lot like hearing a baby crying while still in the mother’s womb.  Maybe that’s happened before, but I’m not aware.  And it would be very weird.

Around 3am, I was still awake, and checked on the eggs one last time before going to bed, and I did indeed hear the chirping coming from the incubator while my ear was right beside it.  I’m not crazy.  *whew*

I then woke up at 6am to the lively chirping of a definitely hatched chick!  (I don’t think I’ve mentioned before that the incubator has been in my dining room, much to my wife’s chagrin)  I tiptoed out of my bedroom and found this little guy (or girl) wondering what in the world was going on…

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My brother had told me not to open the incubator once they started hatching because any drastic change to the temperature or humidity could kill the unhatched chicks (either drowning them because the air bubble inside gets too small, or shrink wrapping them with the shell membrane), and I had confirmed it from websites that I’d been reading.  But in that moment, my excitement trumped any logical thought I had in my head.

I started freaking out because the humidity gauge was reading a little high, and I was scared that the open egg was – well I don’t know why I was scared of the open egg.  I opened the incubator without thinking, and put him in my temporary brooder and grabbed the broken eggshell.  I then had a thought that the egg might need to stay with him (because before they hatch, they eat the rest of the yoke, and I had the thought that maybe they continue to nibble on it), so I googled it.  I would be lost all the time if not for Google.

Google shamed me for opening the incubator, and reminded me that I needed to leave all chicks in the incubator until they were dry and fluffy.  As you can see from the above photo, it was definitely not dry and fluffy.  So I again opened the incubator and put it back inside.  Surely I learned my lesson, right?

I stared at the little guy (girl?) for a while, and then realized it was barely after 6am, and I went to bed at 3am, so if I didn’t go back to bed I would probably collapse soon.  I could survive on three hours of sleep in college – and did often, sometimes resulting in the best test scores of my college career – but I can’t do that anymore at 31.  I’m getting old.

So after a few more hours of shut-eye, I bolted out to the dining room to see what else had occurred.

Not much.

I did see a few eggs with some tiny cracks, which my brother informed me to be called “pipping.”   Basically, the chick inside is pecking at the shell and makes a tiny little hole, and they could hatch anywhere from immediately to 48 hours later.  So, I did what any rational person would do: I stared at the eggs for a very, very long time.

The day before, I had decided that I was going to get a lot done on this day, so I motivated myself to get on with my pre-determined projects.  Literally every 20 minutes or so, I’d hover over the incubator to see if anything else had happened.  Around noon, the second one emerged, and the first knew it was time to establish the pecking order – which I now know to be a very literal phrase.  Kind of the oldest-child syndrome to the violent extreme.

In no time, both of these little dudes were dancing around and climbing all over the other eggs, rolling them around like they were playing a game.  I’d probably be freaking out again, but I’d read that that’s ok, and it, along with chirping, actually inspires the other chicks to hatch.  It took a while longer (while I was busying myself with other projects), but a total of four eggs hatched that day.

I won’t lie.  I opened the incubator a few more times.  I was still freaking out about the humidity, and was terrified that the unhatched chicks were going to die because it was 1% off.  I also got impatient, because one little guy worked on breaking out for hours and hours, and I helped him along a bit.  At first I thought that I hurt him, because when he got completely out he was still connected to the egg by his bum.  I did some more googling, and found out that his umbilical cord was still connected – which happens occasionally – and it would fall off soon enough.  I couldn’t help but think that it was because I tried to step in…

After a lot more checking and rechecking, I went to bed that night.  This morning, I woke up to another chick!

Nothing else really happened – we went to church and when we got back they were all pretty much fighting as siblings do.  Except day old human siblings don’t peck at each others’ faces.  Maybe they would if they had beaks, but luckily they don’t.

Yesterday evening, I moved all five (yes, I know…  I opened the incubator again!) to the temporary brooder because they were all fluffy and dry at this point.  I quickly saw that my brooder is going to be too small if any other eggs hatched.  I’m very afraid that no others will hatch, though, because of my constant overbearingness.  And if they don’t hatch, I’m confident it’s because I killed them.

I started with fifteen, and I’ve still got five eggs left in the incubator, but I feel like hatching five of them is an accomplishment.  And next time, I’ll keep the incubator closed.

Ok, I probably won’t.

Rant: Why “Emissions Inspection” Has Nothing To Do With Clean Air, and Everything To Do With Government Corruption

I just failed “vehicle emissions inspection” on my 2000 Blazer.  What is Emissions Inspection, you might ask?

Lucky.

Under the Clean Air Act (1990), states are required to implement vehicle emission inspection programs in metropolitan areas whose air quality does not meet federal standards.
Wikipedia

Some states have opted out – and all of them should.  Here’s why:

If your vehicle is pre-1975, you’re exempt

old-vw-van

Wait…  So, if you’re driving a truck that was built before companies added counter-pollution measures, you don’t have to get tested.  You could be commuting in a 1970 VW van that leaves a smoke trail rivaling a crop duster, but that doesn’t matter.  Don’t misunderstand me – I don’t think that they should have to get an inspection, because I believe that no one should get an inspection.  This segment of vehicles is the very reason a law like this exists – but it is saved with a broad stroke of policy.  Thus, the law has nothing to do with clean air.

If your vehicle is 1975-1995, they test what is coming out of your tailpipe

tailpipe

I mean, if there is any true test of what a car emits, I’d say vehicular colonoscopy would be the way to go.  The only real problem with that is that it would be fairly easy to fake.  All an offender would have to do is redirect the emissions, or at least disburse them so that only a portion reach the tail pipe.  Heck – if your car is in bad enough shape, it’ll do it for you!  A few simple cracks in your exhaust, and voila!  You’ve got yourself a non-polluting golden chariot.  A better test would be to seal the vehicle in a room with multiple sensors, and let it run for an extending period of time.  But I’m definitely not requesting that.

Oh, and there’s also a visual inspection of the gas cap.  Because biased human eyes are the best way to tell if a gas tank is sealed up tight.

If your vehicle is post-1996, they simply query your computer

sick-computer

Here’s where my problem occurred.  I have a problem with my transmission, which meant that my service engine soon light came on.  I’d often heard that if your engine light was on, you would fail an inspection no matter the reason for the light.  My transmission slipping, though definitely not giving me a perfectly smooth ride, doesn’t shelf me in with those nasty pre-75’ers, or those pesky pre-1995’ers!  If you took an an apples to apples comparison, my Blazer would still emit far less than those.  Again – not saying I can’t improve it – but I’m simply arguing that this testing standard doesn’t actually look for emissions.  A better test would still be the equivalent of a rectal thermometer.

Supposedly, if I spend over $200 trying to fix the problem, I get an automatic pass.  I can’t confirm that, as I’ve only heard it from friends of friends of friends.  But if it’s true…

Semis are exempt

semi-pollution

Whaaa?  I don’t know how many times I’ve seen a semi, driving down the road, all of a sudden belch out black smoke for a few seconds.  Obviously, that’s not a special air freshener…  Once again – I’m not out to pummel tractor-trailers into submission – they guzzle tremendous amounts of diesel in the name of keeping America running, and kudos to them for it.  But – wouldn’t you say that’s where a lot of our transportation pollution comes from?   The cabs fit in a weight class (over 10,500lbs) that simply doesn’t need to be tested.  Perhaps I should add a few tons to my Blazer, then I wouldn’t need to get an ok from the gov to keep driving, amiright?

And my biggest beef…

It forces thousands of cars in metropolitan areas to idle, emitting needless pollution

traffic-jam

I waited in a line of at least 50 cars for about an hour (the line was out to the middle of the road before turning in), and the two options were to cut off your vehicle and start it every few minutes, or just sit idling.  Naturally, everyone left them running.  And I don’t think it would actually help pollute less if they did the ol’ start/stop method.  But my point is that – to avoid traffic pollution – they are creating hubs of traffic jams for solid 8-hour days.  Traffic jams that would simply not exist if there were no emissions testing.  Sure – people might still be driving during that time – but it’s an hour (plus travel to and from) of extra pollution that every vehicle in a metropolitan area has to cough up.  (pun intended)

Ok, so it’s completely inefficient – but how is it government corruption?

This is where the crazy conspiracy theory David comes into play.

Sure, you could say that, even though it’s not productive in any other way, emissions testing creates jobs.  There were at least 6 “technicians” working there while I was there, who I’m assuming just make minimum wage, or thereabouts.  For the sake of ease, let’s say they make $10/hour, and the test itself costs $10.  That means that, as long as they have one car per hour, they’re paying their own salary.  But it doesn’t take an hour – it’s only a 5 minute process, so they might get through 10 in an hour, which equates to $100; minus $10 for the tech, and the company nets $90 per tech.  With I’d say an average of 3 techs working throughout the month (I went on the last day of the month, so they had more schmucks like myself and more techs than normal), the company itself makes a monthly $518,400 (90/hour*3 techs*8 hours*20 business days in a month*12 months).

Hmm…  That’s good money.  And that’s only one testing station.  I might be off a bit (they actually operate 11 hours a day, plus saturdays, but the volume probably evens out), but since there are a few testing stations in my county, which means it’s possibly a $1.5 million generator.  I assume that the company that does this is owned by a politician’s brother-in-law or campaign contributor.  What other reasons would they have to create a needless law that requires an extra $10 tax on vehicle renewals anyhow?  I’m not going to go into any sort of “keeping tabs on citizens” (they track your milage, and you have to get out of your vehicle while they get in there to do their tests, etc), because I don’t really think that’s going on.  But if I were a bit crazier…

What about you?  Is there anyone else that thinks this is a big pile of trash covered in political spray paint?  Or is everyone else happy to pay them to tell us that our cars are acceptable in their sight?

You Win Some, You Lose Some

A lot has happened over the last three weeks!

First – The Bees

At the risk of sounding confident, I’m actually getting a hang of this whole beekeeping thing…  I guess about two weeks ago, I decided to remove the top feeders in both my hives, because both hives had a decent amount of “honey” stored up.  (I put quotes around honey, because a lot of the honey was made from my sugar syrup rather than nectar)  I figured that, while flowers were blooming, it would be better for them to go out and gather rather than lazily assume that food will always be raining down over their heads like manna.  That way, when I put my first medium honey super on, I’ll get pure honey rather than sugar water.

I put my second deep brood boxes on both hives about three weeks ago, before removing the top feeder.  The last time I poked my head in, they hadn’t drawn much of the new frames out – just starting on the center frames – but there were a good amount of bees exploring it.  I’m going to be checking in today – so it probably would have been better for me to wait to post with a fresh update, but I just wanted to post everything that has happened lately.  (Or I won’t – because it started raining as I was writing this)

Two deeps deep!

Two deeps deep!

I also removed the entrance reducers for both hives, which are used to simply reduce the size of the entrance so that a small hive can defend itself.  If they have a wide entrance, then robbers (bees from other hives that are low on honey stores) could come in and steal honey without encountering a lot of bees.  The first hive (the one with only one mark on the entrance, and the one that I thought had no queen for a while) pretty much immediately covered the entire entrance board, which proved that the reducer was getting in their way.  Later that day, the second hive, however, only had a few bees around where the entrance used to be, and seemed even less active than when I took the reducer off.  I put it back in, but somewhat awkwardly diagonal, so that bees could get in almost half of the whole entrance.  I checked on them a couple of days ago, though, and removed the entrance reducer at that point, and they’re defending like champs.

Strong defense of second hive entrance

Strong defense of first hive entrance

You can kind of see how I awkwardly placed this entrance reducer

You can kind of see how I awkwardly placed this entrance reducer on the second hive

The picture is above is fairly late in the day, so there are a lot more bees hanging out than mid-day.  I saw both hives bearding the other evening, and I thought I took a picture, but apparently I didn’t.  “Bearding” is basically when all the bees are home for the night, and a whole bunch of them cover the front of the hive because it’s hot inside – way more than the picture above.  If they’re bearding mid-day, then you’re probably about to have a swarm (half of your bees will leave, if not all) – or at least that’s how I understand it.  If I’d seen a hive of bees bearding before I learned all of this stuff, I probably would have assumed they were plotting to kill me.

Here’s a little zen bee moment for you…  Their buzzing is actually calming to me these days, because I’m continually in awe of them, and of the design that they are following perfectly (that results in honey for me!).  Around 1:40-2:00 you can see the queen (bottom right at the beginning, then bottom center when I turn the frame around.

Second – The Chickens

Two weeks ago Holly and I went up to Kentucky to see my family for Father’s Day, as well as go to Hasting Plants (my aunt’s greenhouse) for her annual season-end blowout.  (If you’re in the southern Indiana/Illinois area, you should check them out.  But – next year.  Season’s over!)  My brother was originally planning on giving me some eggs from his meticulously bred Delaware chickens, but the roosters up and died not too long before he started breeding them, so I got a mix of 15 Delaware, Ameraucana, and Black Copper Marans eggs.  I promptly put them in my incubator upon getting back home, and they’ve been sitting there for almost the entire time since.  I’ve opened it a few times to add water to keep the humidity up, but I’ve been trying to simply leave them alone.  For the first day or two, I constantly looked in on them – as if my eyes would make the process any faster…  I’ve calmed down since.

Chicken Incubator

I candled the eggs a few days ago, which is taking them in a dark location, and putting a light behind them to illuminate the inside of the egg.  A few of the eggs are blue-green, and I couldn’t see through those shells at all, and I think I need a few flashlight because the others still didn’t give me a great look.  The image at the top of this post is what a candled egg looks like – though that is not my image because I could barely see inside even when I wasn’t trying to get my camera ready.

I candled them again today, because there were a few that looked to me like they weren’t developing.  I didn’t take them out of the incubator early in the week, because I didn’t want to make an assumption and throw away good eggs.  When I did it today, though, 5 eggs still looked completely undeveloped, so I pulled them.  I cracked them open to confirm, and four of them looked like they never started developing, most likely because they were jostled too much during travel (all of those yolks were broken).  The last one started developing, but died probably on day 7, based on how the embryo looked.  I couldn’t tell at first, because the eggs had a large shadow ring inside it, which I thought might be a big crack in the shell messing with the light.  I called my brother and he told me it was probably a blood ring, which basically is a sure sign that the embryo died – and that was confirmed when I cracked it open.

I’ve still got about a week before they start hatching, which means I need to get on the ball in terms of preparation.  The first living arrangement won’t be too difficult, but building their long term home will take some time.  I figured if I actually got the eggs first, I would have some hard deadlines to make sure these things happen!

NewBee Mistake: She’s Alive!

Last time on our program, our hero discovered no signs of a queen in one of his hives, so he took measures into his own hands.

Whelp, I checked the frame of brood that I transferred into the “queenless” hive a few days after I placed it, expecting to see a queen cell.  No luck.

I checked again a few days later, and still no queen cell – but I magically saw a bunch of eggs!  And upon further inspection, I found my queen!  I don’t know why I was having so much trouble finding eggs or the queen previously, but she seems to be doing her job.  There I go trying to be in control, and they let me know that they were just fine on their own, thank-you-very-much.  I’m pretty sure it’s safe to say that they know about what they’re doing a lot more than I do…

I was planning on opening up my hives today to get a picture, but it started raining just as I went outside.  I’m going to have to actually start paying attention to the weather, since it directly affects the things I do now.

In other news, though, I’m ready for chickens!

incubator

 

Well – maybe not completely ready – but I’m ready for eggs.  (At least in this case, the eggs are coming first)

My father-in-law’s college roommate gave the above incubator to my mother-in-law to give to me, and I picked up an egg turner from some folks on Craigslist last night.  Also got another heat lamp while I was there.  (I asked them why they were getting rid of all their hatching gear, and they said they went vegan.  Yup – it would make sense to get out of the chicken game if you won’t eat meat or eggs…)  I thought about doing without the egg turner, but my brother wisely encouraged me to get one – otherwise I’d have to turn them manually at least twice daily.  I told myself it wasn’t a very big commitment, but he shed light on the fact that for three weeks I would not be allowed to be gone for a day or two.  Plenty of people have friends feed their dogs/cats while they’re on vacation, but I’m not sure folks would understand the need if I said “Hey – can you swing by on Saturday morning to turn all the eggs, and then come by in the evening and put them back to how they were originally?  And Sunday, too?”

I’m hoping that I’ll be getting my eggs this weekend from my brother (some from him, and some from another farm that he orders from).  I’ll then have 21 days to figure out exactly what I’ll be doing for their different stages of life after that.  The immediate need of a space for the chicks is not a concern – there are a hundred options for that.  The thing that will keep me working is building a coop and run.  I’m also considering trying to build a chicken tractor (small movable coop/run), that would both buy me a little time on the big coop, and could act as a quarantine if I’ve got some sick birds.  And it would also allow them to eat some of the goodies in my yard.

I’ll have some land flowing with eggs and honey soon enough!  Though, I’m not sure I really want to see eggs flowing through my land…

The Queen is Dead. Long Live the Queen!

I know what you’re thinking.

“Wait, David – that image is not of a queen – it’s body is too short and wings too long.”

Or maybe that’s not what you’re thinking.

I’ve been watching my hives over the last week and a half, trying to make sure my busy little friends are comfortable and well fed.  More importantly, I’ve been making sure the queens were laying eggs so that I didn’t just spend a lot of money for no reason.

One hive is doing great – I see different stages of larvae on multiple frames, and I’ve seen the queen roaming her kingdom, gracing the common insect with her presence.  The other hive, however, isn’t doing so hot.  I haven’t seen the queen yet (I’ve looked through it multiple times), and I still don’t see any eggs or larvae.  I called up Joel White, and he told me what to do: put a frame of brood from the thriving hive into the broodless one.  The one rule was don’t transfer the queen.

This makes me nervous – this seems like a very advanced beekeeping skill, and in fact this is the way you split a hive.  So, it’s something that I definitely want to learn – but not necessarily a week after I officially started.  But – the other option was helplessly watch my bees work themselves to death with no babies rising to take their places – which didn’t seem very positive.

I lit my smoker (with a little trouble this time…), opened up the broodless hive, and gave it one more look to make sure I wasn’t simply missing the tiny eggs before.  Still none.  About 90% through this hive, my smoker died completely, so I had nothing to calm them with.  I’d been relying pretty heavily on smoke in the past, but I didn’t have a lighter with me because my pocket lighter ran out of fuel, so I would either need to go to my barn to relight it (leaving the top off the hive for a while), or just keep chugging along with no smoke.  I decided to see how they’d do sans-smoke.  For the most part, I was surprised to find that they were almost as calm as when I smoke them – though I did have a few more bees sting my gloves than normal.

I went through the thriving hive, found a frame of brood, and brushed all the bees off.  That was nerve-racking.  If they weren’t already agitated, bristles the size of a house ripping them away from their work would probably do it.  Again, though – they were surprisingly calm.  Obviously they buzzed in anger, and some kamikazed themselves at the screen over my face, but considering the number of them that I forced off the frame, it was minimal.

After the frame was completely free of bees, I placed it in the other hive.  I continued traversing the frames of the queened hive to make sure I wasn’t taking the only frame of brood, and saw the queen conversing with her subjects.  I then replaced the stolen frame with a frame from the other hive – which they hadn’t even touched yet.

Again – uneventful.  Still no stings (in my skin) or pain.  I’ll be checking on the queenless hive in a few days to see if they’re rearing a new queen, and the other hive will probably need a super (box of frames) added, assuming they’ve drawn out that new frame I put in today.

I need to figure out a way to take pictures of my bees rather than relying on stock photography – but I don’t know that I have the coordination to hold a phone in one hand, and pounds of stinging insects in the other…  One thing at at time!

The Proper Way to Install a Nucleus Colony of Bees

If you’re looking for a repeat of my last blog, where my activity with bees ends with pain and suffering, alas, you will be disappointed!  I learned from my previous mistakes, so I took the proper precaution this time around.

I’d been anticipating getting bees for months now, reading, researching, trying to put things into practice – but until yesterday everything was pretty much only theory.

Yesterday, I picked up my two nuc colonies from Joel White Apiaries (who I had a great experience with), and placed the nuc box itself where they would permanently go.  I was at first under the impression that I should immediately transfer the frames to my permanent hives, but Joel said it would be better to let them orient themselves to the area first, so that they knew where they were before I also confused them by putting them in a new hive.

So – easy enough.  But the drive back home, with thousands of bees in the back of my SUV buzzing at the same noise level as my vehicle’s engine and air conditioner, was more than a little nerve-racking.  I took all turns much slower than I normally do, because I kept having this image appear in my head, where the boxes tipped over, and two swarms of angry bees decide that I am their enemy.  That didn’t happen.

I got home and carried both to their locations, and removed the duct tape that was sealing their entrance.  After only a moment, they were out and about – obviously wondering where in the heck they were.  I put tape on the entrance of both boxes in two designs – firstly because I wanted them to easily differentiate which hive was theirs of the two, and secondly because I figured I could put the exact same tap design on the permanent hive, so they would recognize it quickly when their old box was gone.

And – then nothing.  I left them to do their thing.

This morning, I donned all my protective gear (helmet with veil, gloves, hive tool and brush), and moved the nuc boxes off their blocks, and replaced them with the new 8-frame hives.  After smoking them for a while, I precariously took each frame from the nucs and placed them in the new hives.  It took a while, but believe me – patience was worth not panicking from making hasty mistakes.

After getting all frames in place, I planned on giving them some sugar syrup to feed them – but apparently I did not make near enough.  What I planned on dividing between the two hives barely was enough for even one.  So – when I was done I came back and made a little more, which I have cooling in the fridge right now.  As soon as it’s at a decent temperature, I’ll fill both of the top feeders up.

So – there you have it.  No drama, no getting to laugh at David’s misery…  One project started, infinity minus one projects to go!

Why You Should Have the Proper Equipment When Opening A Beehive (Lesson Learned)

Let me preface this with the following:

I am an idiot.

I’ve been thinking about getting bees for over a year now, and have been reading and researching a good amount in that time.  I attended a weekend seminar on beginning beekeeping, and feel like I’ve got the basic understanding down.

A few weeks ago I bought two complete hives (no bees), and all the equipment I’d need to go with them.  I then tried to find some bee packages to order, but to my dismay, there were none available.  After about a week, I decided I’d spend the extra money and buy some nuc colonies, but they wouldn’t be ready for another month or so.

I figured I’d use the time for more preparation, so I painted my hives, assembled frames, prepared the location, etc.  But my anticipation has been growing and growing…  I can’t wait to get them started!

My mother-in-law has a farm about an hour south of us, and my wife and I went down there this past weekend for a bridal shower – excuse me, a Tea.  As you might assume, I didn’t go to the shower (Tea!), but they did need a hand moving some furniture at the house that it was held, so my brother-in-law, Nate, and I went to lend some muscle.

Alas!  My mom-in-law recently had 7 bee hives placed on her property (they get a prime location with tons of pollen, and she’ll get pollinators and most likely some honey), and they were screaming “Come take a look at me!” in their steady collective buzz.  So, of course I wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to finally get a look at what my colonies would look like soon enough.

Nate and I drove close to the hives, and I proceeded to approach the hives – sans any equipment.  He wisely kept his distance.  At first, I just walked along the front of them, not getting too close, because I didn’t want to cast my shadow on the entrances.  They were busily moving to and fro, clustering around the entrances, and…  well…  doing whatever bees do.  Part of which was checking me out as well – I had some swirling around me and landing on me, which is normal.

That wasn’t enough, though, so I went around behind the smallest of the hives and took the outer cover off, then the inner cover.  Because it was such a small hive, there really wasn’t much to look at – I could only see just a few bees at the top of the frames.  I replaced the covers.

But I wasn’t satisfied.  I’d seen all the pictures and videos I cared to see – I wanted the real deal!  So, after successfully looking in the small hive, I decided to check the one next to it, which was about three times the size of the first.

Outer cover comes off easily.  The inner cover is slightly sealed shut – which is completely normal, but I don’t have a hive tool to pry it open too easily.  Instead, I just work it a bit, and it eventually comes off.

Bees!  They are all over the place!  It’s exactly what I was hoping to see, an I just stood there for 30 seconds or so, admiring their activity.  A few bees decide to flurry with activity in the thinning spot in my hair, I assume because there was a lot of salty sweat available to them.  Around this same time, Nate decided he’d had enough of the bees and quickly made his way back to the car.

I don’t know what really occurred at that point – maybe because I was starting to get a bit nervous about the bees making the top of my head a mini wrestling ring, or because I simply just realized that I don’t have any protection, nor did I smoke them to keep them calm.  Either they started buzzing louder to tell me to go away, or I just heard their buzzing amplified in my now nervous ears, but I felt like I was overstepping my bounds.  I tried to replace the inner cover without smashing any, which was difficult since I didn’t have a brush to move the bees off of the edges.  I think that was when I was first stung.

With one sting, I knew that more were on the way, and I wasn’t excited about that since there were so many on my head.  I basically let the inner cover lay where it could lay, without worrying if a bee or two met it’s untimely end.

And then I ran.

I ran past the car, and then again that same length, and then again even further.  Nate is yelling at me that I’ve got a bunch on my back – but what I was thinking about at the time was the bees crawling on my face and head.  I was trying to shoo them away, rather than smack, knowing that the angrier they got, the more stings I would enjoy.

Luckily, the stings didn’t hurt as bad as I remembered (I don’t know the last time I was stung), but I was still in a bit of a panic because of the sheer number.  I thought about taking off my shirt, but then I realized that that was basically saying “Here – why waste your time on the little skin exposed on my head, when you have this gigantic target?”  After a while, I got most of them off.

I walked over to Nate and told him to blow the bees that were on my head, to softly urge them to leave rather than force them.  I thought all of them were gone, so we got in the car and shut the doors.  I sat there, trying to catch my breath, both of us laughing a bit hysterically.

Buzzzzz…

Both of us jumped out of the car and ran around a bit, opening the back doors, trying to get the bee out.  After we were successful, we jumped back in.

Then I realized that I never put the outer cover back on the hive.

Crap.

Nate made the suggestion that we go back to the house to regroup, and maybe give them some time to calm down.  I didn’t know what else to do in that moment, so I felt like that was a pretty good option.

We walked in the house through the kitchen, where our wives were also a flurry of activity trying to prepare for the shower (TEA!).  We nonchalantly passed them by, and went upstairs to try to find anything that would work as a bee veil, and settled on a dirty clothes bag and hat.  I then grabbed a thick shirt and gloves.

With Nate momentarily distracting our wives in the kitchen, I passed by undetected with my new gear, and we made our way back to the scene of the crime.  This time, it was fairly uneventful.  With homemade veil adorned, I walked over to the hive, carefully replaced the outer cover, and walked back to the getaway car.  I stopped for a moment to make sure I didn’t have any on me, and jumped in.

Buzzzzzzzzz…

Again, mass pandemonium.  We jumped out and ran around until it was out.  We tried to jump back in, but the dog had taken the opportunity to sprawl in the front seat, since we were too preoccupied to keep him from jumping in.  After getting him out, we jumped back in, and walked through the house like we didn’t have a care in the world.

I didn’t tell my wife until around dinner, so that I wouldn’t be the topic of conversation at the shower (TEA!  TEA TEA TEA!), and a good laugh was had by all at my expense.  At the time, I only knew of about 4 stings – though during dinner, I found another stinger in my head just above my ear.

I was happy to know that I’m not too allergic to bees, because the stings that I knew of weren’t swollen or hardly irritated.  However, on the drive home, I had to swap seats with my wife, because I wasn’t feeling too good.  I ended the night with crazy convulsive chills, and then a 101.7˚ fever.

When I woke up, my fever was down, but I got a wonderful surprise in the mirror.

david-sloth

Perhaps it’s hard to see, but I have a swollen ear and brow.  We counted almost 20 stings!

My wife and I had a baby shower to go to, where I garnered the nickname Sloth (from the Goonies) because of my swollen face.  Then we had dinner with friends from church, who also enjoyed my antics.

Do I regret it?  Nah.  I’m glad to know that after 20 stings, I might have a fever and little sleep (all of which included dreams of bees), but I’ll still be ok.

I don’t think I’ll ever poke my head in a hive without the proper equipment, though!