Sunday, April 6, 2014

The bees are here!

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We did it - we brought our two tribes - 120.000 bees - home with us, on a three hour car ride with three kids in the back(Eva spent the weekend with her friend). And it wasn´t nearly as complicated as I had feared, rather the contrary.

The guy who sold us our bees was a friendly guy of russian origin, with a fun accent and very open. He has around 120 tribes, but he wants to step down a notch, so he can spend more time with his grandkids. His many, many tribes are scattered all over the land, so he took us to this unbelievably gorgeous place:
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Our two tribes waited for us right behind this beauty.

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We inspected them, and they seemed lively and healthy enough, so we began moving the frames from his boxes into ours. That made the bees a tad fuzzy, but we´ve got Buckfast bees, who are very friendly, and we were all wearing proper gear, so no harm was done.
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After that, we went for a walk, and spent a while chatting about life with the nice guy who sold the bees, standing in the sunset while the kids dipped their feet in the icy creek, trying to pass an hour, so the bees would have time to properly settle in their new environment. See, the working bees go wherever their queen is. By transporting the frames - with their queen on it -  into a new box, we sort of forced them to move, and it took about an hour until they all crawled into their new home.

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Almost there - look, we can allready begin to wrap them up :)

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Before this endeavour, I admit I had some respect of the idea spending 3 hours in one small car with 120000 bees and three kids, but look, it went really smooth. The bees sat in their boxes, patiently aiting to be let out again, and we all arrived home savely. It was pitch dark when we came home, and when we carried our ladies up to the pallet which is now their new home. During the day, they are humming, oh, how they are humming!
It sounds like sitting next to a huge, smoothly running engine sitting there in the grass next to them. Tonight, we´re adding the second story on their homes - the honeyspace. I sincerely hope the ants keep apart from them.  

As for our other animals: 
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They seem to be adjusting just fine - and finally, I get to show you a picture of Svetlana, who was still really shy last week. Well, she isn´t anymore :)
They are all interested in everything we show them, they like picking at Eva´s shoelaces or Mehmet and Miro´s Playmobil people, and they are as curious about us as we are about them. 

They´ve given us 7 eggs this week: 
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The 3 small ones are from our chicks, the other ones are  store-bought - you can see a clear difference in size - our eggs are much cuter :) The other four went into this morning´s breakfast - the first scrambled eggs from our backyard ever - what a feast!

I still need to work a little - I need to prepare the easter treasure hunt for the kids at school. I´ve got a nasty cold and I´m much rather in the mood to snuggle up with my boys and the new 3 ??? volume - or at least sit behind my sewing machine. Next week is going to be so exhausting - I´ll really have a lot of work, and this cold makes me tired allready. 
But hey, the good thing is - after this week, we can look forward to TWO FULL FREE WEEKS with no school whatsoever, with time to sleep in and to write and to craft and sew and watch the chicks and bees and cook some syrup. Man, am I looking forward to that!!!

Music: 

For a busy week I need some Mr. A-Z  - and just in case you don´t feel patient enought to wait for the screaming to end - the song starts around 1.40 :)

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