Author: magrilless

Fantesstic Friday

This week Tessa:

Sat up all by herself. She’s not super stable and it doesn’t last more than a couple minutes, but she definitely has the strength and balance for it now. 
Forgot how to sleep. She started to wake up around 2 and then not go back to sleep until 4. Waking up at 5 after that has made several of these days nothing short of exhausting. 
Has pretty much eschewed her pacifier. Her fingers are the much-preferred mouthing object these days. Which is good since they can’t fall on the floor or get lost in her blankets. 
Is moving past spitting up. Oh, there are definitely still incidents in which we have to clean up the floor or change cloths. But they are fewer and farther between. Hallelujah!
Has started squeaking and squealing. They sometimes are for pure joy bubbling up and out. And sometimes just talking. I think she’s going to be a talker like her sister I think. 

Maggnificence

A story by Maggie (with a little help from Bill):

One day, a very large elephant wearing a mask decided to call out to his brother. Wooo…wooo… said the elephant. When he didn’t hear any reply he decided it would be best to go see if he could find him. The elephant climbed up to the tallest branch on the tallest tree that he could find. But, he was too heavy and down he went. Sploosh!!! The elephant splashed down into a pond. He sank quickly until he was totally covered with dirty, mucky pond water. He swam to the edge of the pond where there was a drainage pipe. To his dismay he got sucked into the pipe! He had an idea how to get out of this mess. He would use a pipe bridge, and that would magically transport him to his brother. So, in he went, and although it was dark and a little scary, he was brave. Soon he was out of the dark pipe and his brother was right in front of him. And he spun his brother around and the two elephants embraced their trunks in happiness!

Fantesstic Friday

Tessa is a rolling-over queen! Maggie and I happened to be watching when she did it the first time. And then the second and third and fourth and more. Once she knew she could do it, she wanted to practice it a lot! Unfortunately she can’t go from tummy to back yet, so she would get frustrated pretty quickly. Which is fine if I’m not cleaning up a breached diaper in her carseat. But otherwise this is exciting!

Tessa is just so sweet. We say that a lot around here, like once a day. And that’s really most of what there is to say about Tess. She’s just so sweet.

The Bee’s Knees

For those of you who haven’t heard, we are now beekeepers, apiarists, hivers. Our two backyard hives are now inhabited, and as of Saturday, we are buzzing with activity around here (last time I’ll make that pun, I promise). 
Stage One: prepare the hives.

We disassembled and painted the hives well in advance so there wouldn’t be any painty chemically smell to them when the bees were ready to move in.
Stage Two: position the hives where we want them.

Bees don’t like it when their hives are moved so it’s important to think about it carefully. We decided on the back corner of our yard. It’s close to the garden but not in the way, easily cordoned off from small people, and gets early morning sun to help warm them up fast each day.
Stage Three: Moving in day.

The bees came over from Utah in a screened box, one box and one queen per hive. That’s 10,000 bees in 1.5 cubic feet times two. The queen is in a tiny little cage in there, separated from the unwashed masses so they don’t kill her right away. Bill reached inside, took out her box, and plugged the hole with a marshmallow. (Over the next couple of days the bees will eat through the marshmallow until they’ve freed her from her cage. By then they’ll be used to her scent and come to think of her as their queen.) Then he rubberbanded her to the middle of a frame (one of those black rectangles pictured above) and placed the frame in the hive. Next he turned the box upside down and just shook out bees over the hive and hoped most of them would land inside, with their queen.

These are the boxes next to their hives the first evening. On Sunday night they were almost completely empty. And today the boxes are ghost towns while the hives are quite full and active.

Stage Four: Wait and see. Now we just leave them alone pretty much. Bill gave them some sugar syrup in a mason jar to give them some easy food and energy. But we don’t bother them or take apart their hives for a couple days. At some point Bill will open them up and make sure the queens have exited their cages. But generally speaking, they are now on their own and just residents of the backyard. We probably won’t get any honey this year, as these ladies are working hard to make their house a home, but we’ll play that by ear, check on them occasionally, and see how everyone does. Bill went from the only man in a house of 4 ladies (Gretchen, Maggie, Tessa, Eliza) to the only man in a house of 20,004 ladies!

And we need your help in names. While we can’t name all the bees, obviously, we want to name our queens. That way we can say “checked on Mary’s hive today” or “saw some yellow jackets trying to get into Elizabeth’s.” Any suggestions for our two queens?