Bees & Bricks

This was an exciting week for the bees. It didn't start out well, though! I ordered hybrid bees that are supposedly better with the cold and mites, but the company that received and reshipped them did not feed them, so they came mostly dead. Very sad. They blamed the Postal Service, but I heard of someone else who had the same experience with this particular company and lots of bees get shipped without any trouble just so long as they have enough food. 

I managed to rescue the queen and a couple dozen survivors, but they didn't have a hope of making it, so I expanded the rescue mission. Called up to a guy in Baraga who, luckily, happened to be on his way to pick up the last round of the season from Wisconsin. He was able to get an extra colony for me, so I ended up making the 90 minute drive the next day that I was hoping to avoid. It was good to talk to the expert though. He came up with an idea that might salvage two colonies out of this mess, because just adding some of the new bees to the old queen probably wouldn't work so well for either colony. His idea was to stack two boxes with a queen separator in between so that the workers can go back and forth, getting used to both queens, and then after they lay enough eggs we can split the boxes and hopefully both colonies will be up and running. 

Made a bit of progress on the chairs this week. Should be able to wrap them up next week and get started on the couch. Had some fun building a couple molds for woodcrete bricks and making a few with a friend. It will take a while for them to cure, but they are looking good so far! We also went on a little adventure up to Big Bay yesterday. A sawmill had a big sale event where they had a bunch of artists and vendors with booths, food, and games. It was fun. Beautiful spot. Hopefully someday I can get a sawmill going too. 

Starved bees.

The girls had a class writing trip to NMU.

Happy bees!

Setup for drilling perpendicular holes in the chair backs.

Making the spacers.

Woodcrete mix.

Two molds.

It works!

Time to dry.