Not Everything Goes As Planned

I just realized I just stopped blogging after the Great Bee Loss of 2014, never even updating the blog about what had happened. I chalk it up to dealing with the sorrow that came with the Bee Loss. Here's the nutshell version:

We did our first check, which I talked about the post from April 2013, noting that the queen was out and the bees seemed to be buzzing away. There were decent numbers of bees coming and going from the hive each day, things seemed to be as they should be. We did our second check about a week after the first and the bees were just ... gone. There were a few dead bees lying on the bottom of the hive, but only about five. There were a couple nice pieces of comb started, both about the size of C's hand. One even had lots of nice little babies, the other a touch of honey. But no bees. Well, that's a lie. There were about three bees, just hanging around, seeming confused about where everyone else had gone. We joked later (when we were finally able to joke about it) that they must've been the bees no one else liked. We figured they must've gotten sent to scout new pollen sources and all the other bees hightailed it while they were gone. We were really sad. We tried for a long time to figure out what went wrong, but we finally came to the conclusion that sometimes things just do. We've tried to rectify any issues or problems that may have existed with the old hive by getting the new, pre-made one. I will definitely miss the little windows that C put in the one he built especially for me to be able to peek in without disturbing the bees, but I'll live. It's more important that they stick around to pollinate lots of plants, and maybe make some honey, than that I get to peek at them whenever I please.

But we comfort ourselves by telling ourselves that all those other bees are probably still out there somewhere, pollinating away, improving the ecosystem. The world needs more bees, and hopefully we've helped make that happen in some small little way. And we're trying again this year! Fingers crossed!

Every year is a new year

Well, I'm going to try starting this back up again. We didn't do a garden last year because we had the wedding in May and traveling and what seemed like a million other things throughout the summer, so we thought we'd let it go for a year, and start again next (now this) year. And here we are with something even bigger than a wedding coming in July ... a new baby! But we've ordered the bees and will be starting seeds in a few weeks, so we're doing it anyway!

What we did do last year was get chickens. They have been a real adventure. They will be a year old June 1. We got two Americaunas and two Barred Rocks. They were all supposed to be girls, but chick sexing is not a 100% science, so we ended up with one Americauna rooster. He's gorgeous, but he's a total butthead. He's recently started charging us and throwing his talons up when he gets close. And he doesn't even have his spurs all the way in yet. I told C if he even looks wrong at the baby he's finding a new place for him (the rooster) to live unless he wants to find him (the rooster) in the crockpot when he comes home. Other than that, we've really enjoyed having them. And we love the fresh eggs! Although I fully expect to have them coming out our ears by the end of the summer.

Why would that happen, you may ask? Well, we went to the farm supply store today to look for something totally unrelated to chickens and there was a sign as we walked in that said, "Chicks are here!" I knew just by the look on C's face when he saw it that we were in trouble. Yep. We couldn't leave without six new babies - Golden Sexlinks, which are a cross between Barred Rocks and Rhode Island Reds - and two little ducklings. We are already finding out that the ducklings are quite a bit more loud than the chicks. This should be fun!

We'll be trying bees again this year too. We decided to go with a brand new,
prefabricated hive. C painted it this weekend (it's going to be very colorful and bright - welcome to my world!) so there would be plenty of time for it to air out well before the bees come. Here's hoping for more success this year than we've had before.

So much to make us excited for spring! Then excited for summer! Heck, we're excited for life!