fasdo

Happy next prime age Jeff. I am so happy for your accomplishments and recognition this year. Teacher of the year, earning your masters, getting a spot on the voice and being a finalist in the Amazing Race. Okay….the first two are more than enough. You are an inspiration. Enjoy your day.

We love you.

I (Pete) was late in getting this post up, but it’s still PJ’s birthday and you can still wish her a good one!

Her new bee jacket with zip attached hat and veil came today. So with her B day today she is both wiser and harder to sting.

The school had a luncheon recognizing some of the seniors, including Sarah. She got a really cute polar bear.

She is a beautiful, awesome young woman.

The kids also had their last concert today. They will play Memorial day and Norah will play at commencement.

Here are the girls and some of their friends from band.

Here is the band. Both kids were buried. Pete recorded the concert. Sarah had several solos that she nailed. The director gave them a new piece a few days before the concert. Awesome.

Here is Sarah’s Solo (LINK)

The swarm decided to move, but didn’t stick around to be captured. Pete took the pictures. I was in Portland with my girls visiting Urban outfitters.

A brief (very brief) rest…

We had lobster for dinner.

And, the bees are working the crabapples and apples, but mostly too high for me to get pictures of them.

The moon hive had an open queen cell on the bottom of a frame and a closed queen cell in the middle of one. We didn’t check the lower box at all. The sun hive (source of this recent swarm) is queenless, but full of queen cells. We expect one to emerge, mate and start laying eggs. The first capture that we kept has a nice active queen. The second one does not, so we moved some eggs over from the first one so the bees can raise a queen. They will let the little girls emerge and then keep feeding them royal jelly and build a queen cell around her. It will take about two weeks or so. Then she will need to go out, mate and start laying. So, with four boxes of bees, I think we have one active queen.

Sarah and Norah worked on their piece for band last nice. The band teacher keeps giving them new music (the concert is tomorrow!). Both girls are doing well.

I was out taking pics of the flowers looking for honeybees, and our bees swarmed again- time four. They are definitely scouting out the two swarm traps. They didn’t go yet, but there were dozens of scout bees checking out the boxes.

If you look carefully, you can see a scout in the entrance of the box.