Bees Last Week

I got into the hive last week to feed the bees. Evidently, they're making honey! They built a bunch of comb inside their feeder, so I had to bust it out in order to fill the feeder.

The comb on the right side there is the stuff built in the feeder.



Lots of bees. This was the first time that I have had a panicky sensation when getting in the hive. Very instinctual, "oh no lots of buzzing, stinging insects spilling out everywhere....." But I got over it. This pic is the bees before getting smoked.



The smoker really does work.



I put on the queen excluder under the honey super to keep her from laying eggs in the honey.



This is the comb I pulled out of the feeder. Some of it had honey in it already. It's quite tasty! It's actually totally amazing, it tastes green. Like flowers smell..... That may sound crazy but it's the only way I can think of describing it.





I also had a couple of helpful assistants.

not SO dumb

Well Pocketmac sorta worked, I've got my blackberry syncing with ical, and ical syncing with google cal, so it''s doing what I wanted it to do there. Yay! I'm a little annoyed that I have to plug it in to sync, I was really hoping it would sync automatically with bluetooth. Since I finally got it connecting with bluetooth, now for apparently no reason whatsoever. Still haven't figured out the photos thing, but I feel I made some major progress.

technology and me

I usually consider myself kind of ok when it comes to technology things. I'm no fancy hacker or anything, but I can set up a wireless network and generally get things to work. But it doesn't seem to be so with the case of blackberry/mac compatibility. I finally got the bluetooth to find each other. But it still keeps clicking off to disconnected. I try to "browse the devise" and it says its not browsable. But why? I just want two things: I want to get my calendars on my phone and computer to sync, and I want to be able to retrieve any photos taken with my phone. ISync isn't compatible, and the "Missing Sync for Blackberry" is like $40 that I don't want to spend. I can plug my phone in to my computer with the little cord thing, but that doesn't seem to do anything but make my phone angry about not having enough power to properly charge or something. So now I'm attempting to download pocketmac for blackberry. I don't know how I'll get it to install from the computer to the phone...... since all this bluetooth and plugging in doesn't seem to be doing much. I have had my stupid phone for ages now, like a year and a half or something, and never just taken the time to figure all this crap out. THIS is why! It's SO frustrating! and it makes me feel stupid and inept. It would probably be a whole lot easier if I paid for the internet service and had that to do all this with, and it's probably the major feature of the whole damn blackberry anyway, but that's just too rich for my blood. Sure makes the iphone and g1 tempting.... I would assume the iphone would gladly syn with ical, and i bet the g1 syncs nicely with google cal.
ARGH!

Crankytastic

I am so cranky..... so so cranky. Just can't shake the cranky.

obsessing over chicken coops

this is the artistic egg shaped chicken tractor from the yard and garden show. It was pretty dang cute, but totally impractical.



I've been looking at lots of different coops and I think jeff and I have decided on a chicken ark or tractor style coop. An A-frame one that we can move around the yard. I'm so excited to get chickens!