I've been living in a busy bee nightmare. I should just expect that things are not going to go as expected. Building the screened bottom with inspection tray and the hive top feeder took WAY longer than I anticipated. It took the entire weekend. That meant letting the epoxy cure in the top feeder on Sunday night and going back out to the apiary on Monday after work to switch out the new screened bottom and feeder system. I wasn't very happy about that because it was so darned cold but I moved quickly. This time without a veil or gloves and still no stings. I'm starting to think your attitude has a lot to do with how aggressive they are towards you. So far they have been just as gentle to me as I am to them. After placing the new components we took peek...OMG!! We built the top feeder wrong. Argh! To make a long story short for those non-beekeeper readers, we build the slat in the center of the feeder the wrong way so that the slat went perpendicular to the frames. It is supposed to line up with the center frame. Panic mode central. We didn't have any options so we quickly built a riser for the feeder so they would have enough room to at least get into the thing. We left them but we were worried and anxious and were unable to do any more.
This morning I called my parents and asked for an update on the bees. The news was grave. There was only one bee in the feeder but that bee was kept company with a bazillion ants. To make matters worse, it was below 60 degrees and pouring rain. What to do? I spent the afternoon reading bee blogs and websites trying to figure out a solution. I got conflicting information because some of the sites said that ants are a huge problem and that bees will bail when ants join in on the fun. Other sites said that ants and bees live harmoniously together and bees benefit from some type of acid in ants. I wasn't sure what sites to believe but I'm going to try to get rid of the ants as best as I can without using pesticides. I read that cinnamon works.
After work today I had my first beekeepers association meeting. I'm so glad that I went. There were lots and lots of friendly and helpful people. The energy was great and I was glad to see a few respectful and well behaved children there.
Here I am at 11pm with a sink full of dishes, tons of plants that need to be transplanted, friends and family to call, books to read, a cat to be brushed and played with...and in a far off land I have bees that are being terrorized by ants. But I’m tired and have a long day tomorrow. I feel like my world is in a tailspin right now. Pictures will have to wait until next time. I know you will understand.
Daphne
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