What a difference a few hours make. The photo is of that same calf from yesterday about 12 hours later. Looked twice as big and full of life! Yes, that is Mom behind her.
The “big event” for the day was to split our bee hive. Last year we lost 9 of our 10 hives to wax moths, mostly because I didn’t know what they were. Life lesson learned. Our one remaining hive was doing VERY well, and showing signs of swarming. Evia and I went out in full gear (jackets, coveralls, masks, gloves, and smoker going full blast) and proceeded to dismantle the one hive and create two new ones – placing every other foundation into each of the two new hive bodies. Apparently they were getting ready to swarm, we saw LOTS of queen eggs, which is just outstanding. I will be very surprised if we are not successful in doing this split. Actually went much better than expected – had we known how easy it would be (smoke if a wonderful thing in distracting bees) we would have taken photos. Of course, there is some risk both hives will now fail, but I think that is pretty low, and some risk everyone will go back to just one of the two new hives, but the next day they seemed pretty settled, so I’m guessing that is low risk as well.
Evia put a roast in the slow cooker in the morning. Alas, I noticed a few hours later that it wasn’t plugged in. So our “slow” setting got changed to “high” – it still cooked for about 5 hours and was great.
We had planned on castrating the bulls this weekend, but the days were too hot to move them. Saturday night we thought about it. Sunday came and went with us realizing that if we moved them in the evening, they would be back by morning since we had a low spot in our fencing they had discovered. We had previously talked about running a new electric wire to segregate off the field with the bad fence, and decided to scope that project out Sunday evening after dinner. We ended up getting the plan figured out and the wire run, but not raised, before it got dark.
The “big event” for the day was to split our bee hive. Last year we lost 9 of our 10 hives to wax moths, mostly because I didn’t know what they were. Life lesson learned. Our one remaining hive was doing VERY well, and showing signs of swarming. Evia and I went out in full gear (jackets, coveralls, masks, gloves, and smoker going full blast) and proceeded to dismantle the one hive and create two new ones – placing every other foundation into each of the two new hive bodies. Apparently they were getting ready to swarm, we saw LOTS of queen eggs, which is just outstanding. I will be very surprised if we are not successful in doing this split. Actually went much better than expected – had we known how easy it would be (smoke if a wonderful thing in distracting bees) we would have taken photos. Of course, there is some risk both hives will now fail, but I think that is pretty low, and some risk everyone will go back to just one of the two new hives, but the next day they seemed pretty settled, so I’m guessing that is low risk as well.
Evia put a roast in the slow cooker in the morning. Alas, I noticed a few hours later that it wasn’t plugged in. So our “slow” setting got changed to “high” – it still cooked for about 5 hours and was great.
We had planned on castrating the bulls this weekend, but the days were too hot to move them. Saturday night we thought about it. Sunday came and went with us realizing that if we moved them in the evening, they would be back by morning since we had a low spot in our fencing they had discovered. We had previously talked about running a new electric wire to segregate off the field with the bad fence, and decided to scope that project out Sunday evening after dinner. We ended up getting the plan figured out and the wire run, but not raised, before it got dark.