June 25th-Sunday

What a day!  I got up early enough to take a short walk before getting ready to go and see my friend with the bees.  Then I found that I had made an error in a work email so I had to fix it before I could leave.  It only made me about 5 minutes late for the bees.

The bees... When I got there my friend Steve helped me get into the safety outfit.  My splint was a bit of a problem, the long gloves didn't go over it well.  After the first 2 hives, I took it off and just tried to be careful with the arm.  There would be a total of 8 hives to visit this morning and the first 2 were in his yard.  The frames get removed, examined and then returned to the hive.  They are looking to be certain that the hives are healthy.  Making sure the queen and the rest of the bees are doing what they should be.   I spotted the first queen.  They mark her with a dot. In one the the other hives I found the unmarked bee and Steve marked it.   All the hives but one had some kind of cage around it to protect them from bears.   The one that was not protected by a cage is the one that I took most of the bee pictures at.  The glove needed to come off to take the pictures.

The queen has the dot.

Other than the bees, my happy for today was getting to spend most of the day with the guys in the picture.   I know them because of the SCA and I met them all before having children.  It was wonderful being able to catch up today.