Beekeeping skills & 1st stings

I had an evaluation this week with my beekeeping mentor, where she rated my skills thusfar during the apprenticeship. Overall, I did well.  I think she over-rated me on many things.

Yesterday, we checked 3 different hives that I am assigned (2 other locations, and the one in my backyard). I decided to try doing the hive inspections without using gloves, to increase my dexterity. My gloves tend to get in my way since they are too big for my hands. The first hive check went smoothly gloveless. The 2nd hive check, I must not have zipped up  my hood completely, because I ended up with 4 bees in my bonnet. After getting them out, we returned to the hive to finish the inspections, where I was stung on two of my fingers. 

We returned to my house to check the hive here. I anticipated it being full, and I was right! We had to add another box! I had gloves on for this hive check, and promptly DROPPED a frame that was full of bee. Yes, dropped.  Ugh.  No more stings, but I was very embarrassed.

Milking, Bee update, and Future

For the past 2 weeks, I've been in "training" learning to milk a friend's miniature goats, as I will be milking while she is on vacation. It is MUCH harder than I thought it'd be, as their teats are very small. Also, this 6am milking thing is.... well...tiring. I'm usually up at that hour anyhow to let the hens and dogs out, however I head right back to bed afterwards (it takes all of 10 minutes). No so easily done after being up for a while milking.  So I'm tired. And I suck at milking.  It's a very slow learning curve.

The bees are well, I recently had to add another box to the hive to make room for all the brood.  Yesterday we checked their progress, and have moved up into the new box and are drawing it out. What is drawn out in the new box is filled with brood.  With the weather warming, they are taking less and less of the sugar syrup and will probably stop completely over the next few weeks with the increase in pollen (i.e. protein) availability. Also, as you can see in this video, the entrance reducer probably needs to come off soon. You can see lots of pollen being brought into the hive!

Lately, I have really been wanting to add one of the automatic doors to the coop that are on a daylight sensor, and open/close automatically at the appropriate times.  This would make the chickens even LESS work, and make me feel like they are secure at night from predators when we go away for the weekend. However, they are expensive (several hundred dollars).

Cull and butchering

I agonized and agonized over the decision of whether or not I should cull the Wyondotte.  I kept going back and forth about it. Finally, I decided to do it.

I hosted the class at my house, a total of 8 people attended (including the teacher and myself).  We processed a total of 12 birds. 

I am glad I decided to cull the Wyondotte, she had lots of internal abnormalities, including inflammation on her reproductive (egg laying) track. It makes me feel better that her egg laying issues were not just a fluke, and likely to happen again. I feel like I made the right decision. 

I was also very worried about one particular part of the evisceration.  The very first cut you make, is a circle around the anus - you have to do so carefully so not to rupture the intestinal track.  I had read about it many times, and seen it once. The one time I saw someone do it, I didn't have a good view so couldn't really tell what I was supposed to do. This time I had the teacher standing next to me as I went.  I now feel 100% comfortable that I could do so again, by myself.