Small, Hopeless Clusters

I get up early- for me- probably not early for you- to start banging away on the equipment I need to make. Personally, I think I am pretty efficient on this sort of thing, making jigs, constantly trying to figure out how to do it faster, etc. If my dead dad were alive, he'd say otherwise- so you can see, there are issues here.

But I build 7 tops this morning, shoot them together, and paint 10 supers. all before 8 AM, when I start work. And after work, I paint all the supers, and then prime, then paint, the tops. And listen to mu Ipod. And sit with mu cat awhile on the lawn in the setting sun. And get up and bang together 100 frames and lay out all the foundation to wax them tomorrow. That's how I roll. On Wednesdays. Not other days. And not every Wednesday, just special ones.

The story here is tragic- as it turns out, a hive I have has this really bad disease.

But to start with, and to end with, here is this photo of 4 new hives at Cherry Valley Farms, with hive #14 in the distance, and the calf barn behind. Or whatever they call it- they aren't calves, they are as big as my car already, but super curious, and bellowing.

The herdsman is Johnny, and he is really nice to me, and has worked there a long time. But I can't really understand his sentences, in part-maybe a large part- because I interrupt a lot. So he will point at the bees- and say "The bees mumble mumble not mumble mumble how mumble?" And I don't know if he is as bad a mumbler as I am, or if his English isn't quite good enough. So I say- are they far enough from the heifers? And he says- oh yes, far enough, but mumble, mumble, how?" And I'd pay, right now, $10,000 of my hard earned money, to know Spanish INSTANTLY.  Like if there were a pill, I'd pay that amount. I'd also have to be able to read it, or I'd only pay $5,000.

Here's the scene with 4 new hives, and their cages emptying:

But the bad part of this story is CPBV, or CBPV, which is Chronic Bee Parilysis Virus. That would be CBPV.  Hive #3 has it, and it sucks. I guess its getting more common? No cure? Bee feces? Too crowded, and bad genetics?

What you get to see is this- as follows- a ton of dead, and writhing bees at the hive base, and at the entry, shaking, wierd bees. Some hairless ( and bees are WAY hairy, way more than me), and bloated (no comment). And I don't get this, but its like they lose some of their bands, and it all changes.

Here's the scene- and understand- that two days before there was a bigger dead pile- which I swept clear....

And here is a sole, hairless, swollen bee, in agony. The video I thought I took, shows it racing all over, trying to deal with this.  Beyond are bees,  freaking out too- shaking- not sure what's going on (my interpretation), feeling regret, thinking its the end-of-the-line (my interpretation). And they aren't even hairless. Just regular looking.

Bee-ing practicallu hairless myself, I get the anxiety. And dimly recall having that sort of jittery reaction to events. I know it's not the same. Still, I empathize.

I am trying to be funny, though in general, disease isn't, as I read- on the net- (the great commune of understanding and insight of people that know and don't know)- that this disease is not curable, and hives often get beyond it- but it involves bee feces- and proximity. And dammit- I GAVE them space last week, and they still do this to me.

The rub is this. I look down on the writhin mass and see a fat queen.

Lost and wandering. I don't get this at all- this is a hive that swarmed last week- and I went though it two days ago and found three queen cells but this is a FAT queen. A laying queen?

Below is a video of writhing bees- and you will have to imagine a queen wandering amongst them- but the end is- I emailed my mentor, and I called Jim at Bee's Knee's, and I despite that info- I picked the queen out of the mayhem- and brought her over into a queenless hive at the farm. And stuck her in.  A small, hopeless, cluster of bees.