Beeeeez Beeeeez and More Beeeeez

Well, Shawna here is the bee blog finally. You have been after me for a while to get this written, so I am writing it now before I write any thing about our little vacation to Colorado (hopefully James the 1st will get this before he comes home).

These are the bees. James wanted to start an new hobby and I wanted to get more production from my apple trees. I provided the place and he provided the bees. I am so happy. I am not much of a beekeeper, I leave that up to Kelly and James. I do need to learn how to take care of the bees so that James and Shawna can continue their lives with army and schooling. It works out well because I learn about another hobby, get lots of fruit production, and lots of yummmy honey.

I had some pictures of the hive when I added the honey super on about July the 9th, but I think they are on Hailee's camera and so I decided to get into the hive again. Not just for the pictures, but to inspect the bees and make sure that everything is going good. I also had to put the inner cover on the right way so they wouldn't get to hot.

I opened the hive later in the day at about 7:00 in the evening. This is the time when all of the how to books say DON'T OPEN THE HIVE, so I was a little nervous. The grape vine was in the way and I didn't want to make the bees mad brushing away the grape vines. I haven't been stung yet this year and I didn't want to end a perfect record. I have never seen so many bees. I have never been with Kelly when he opens his hives during the summer months. That many bees can be slightly intimidating. I usually move real slow but being uncomfortable I found myself trying to hurry too much. On with the story dad.

I took the honey super off and it didn't look like they had done much during the last week. It is probably my fault though because I didn't understand what the inner cover was and when I did I was in Colorado visiting my mom and dad. So I removed the HS and then started prying out a middle rack from the upper brood box. It was stuck to the bottom rack as the bees have connected the upper and lower racks with comb and honey. After I removed the rack, I placed it in the extra brood box that James left and pried out about 3 more racks so I could have room to work. As you can see they have been busy and there were many bees. They were all about home from the days work. I saw no burr or other strange comb but I did see rice grain eggs so the queen is doing her job. There is capped brood and capped honey also. I also think I placed the HS on at the right time because there were about 7 full racks out of the 10 in the upper brood box.

I scraped off some of the honey and comb gluing down the one rack and just felt like this was the wrong time to be playing with the bees because as you can see in the picture, I am in short sleeves and I have no bee bonnet net either.

I probably could have handled one or maybe several stings on my arms but if one would have flown up my nose or any other orifice from the neck up, I probably would have dropped a rack of honey and bees and then I would have had a real mess. So after scraping off the one bottom rack, I put the racks back in the brood box and then the HS, and then, just to make sure that the girls

(bees) were happy and content, I added the bee feeder with a gallon of water and sugar. I did this because Lorie thought I should. I then put the inner cover on and now I hope that the bees will make lots of honey.

After Rachel and I were through, I pickup what was left of the comb that I had scraped off and fought the bees for a taste of the honey. It was the best honey I had

ever tasted. It had a different taste or flavor that I had never tasted before. I am a real fan of Kelly's honey and I like it because it is crystallized. This had a different flavor and I was puzzled as to what the flavor was. After I thought about it and was talking to Shawna that night, I realized that the flavor was due to the cinnamon we had used to get rid of the ants. Any way, I still haven't been stung yet this year.

Shriners Parade

Back in May of this year in Newcastle, I was witness to a very interesting parade. The Shriners organization is pretty strong in this part of Wyoming and they had a parade. I don't know if it was specifically to initate new members or what. One person watching the parade told me that it was an initiation. The initiates were dressed in various flavors of bathrobes as you can see in the picture. They were assigned the task of horse poop collection.

It was fasinating watching these old men, for the most part, play with different things. There were turtle cars, and small truck go carts, and model A go carts, and horses, and floats, and snowmobiles, and there was even a band that rode a float playing some tunes that I didn't recognize.

The Shriners have several hospitals around the country where they give free care to children. This, I think is a very noble cause to have fun and donate time and money for. As far as I understand this good orginazation. Have fun looking at the pictures.

Devils Tower

Well, I actually wrote this chapter a week ago but my internet connection was very poor and I couldn't save it so, here I go again and start catching up.

Devils Tower: many of you remember this from the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". This is where I first heard of it. What a dumb movie. A grown man playing in his potatoes just like the little brother in "A Christmas Story". After the movie, I became acquainted with the geologic feature through one or more geology classes. It is about 60 miles from Newcastle so, I decided on one of the days that the drill was down to go and see it for myself.

There is an Indian ledgend about this land form. It tells about several Indian maidens who were out gathering berries or doing whatever maidens do. While they were gathering berries, a giant grizzly bear began chasing them. They prayed to the Great Spirit and he rescued them by causing a portion of the earth to rise up and lift them above the great bear and out of his reach. Anyway it is a pretty good story except I am left to wonder how they got down. The cliff is very steep. I may not have the whole story right.

Now on to the geology of the tower. The rock making up the tower is volcanic. It is a trachyte: a volcanic rock composed chiefly of alkali feldspar containing little quartz and plagioclase. As you might see in the picture, there are columns of rock. These are formed as the magma cools and forms 4, 5, 6, and 7 sides columns just as when mud dries there are usually 5 sided columns. There are two theories as to what it really is: one suggest that it is the eroded remnant of a laccolith much like the Henry, La Sal, and Abajo mountains of southern Utah, the other theory is that it is a erosional remnant of a volcanic neck. I like the old volcanic neck. The columns comprising the tower appear to be coming from a vent. There are volcanic flow structures with solidified columns in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. I have seen other flow structures similar to this. It would be interesting to visit Ship Rock, New Mexico and see if the old volcanic neck remnant there is similar to Devil's Tower. Then again, each volcano is different and depending how deep the magma solidified would determine how quick it cooled and this may or may not have formed the column structure seen in the tower land form. Probably discussed it too much.

Changes Are Good - Right?

I've had a couple changes in the past week. First of all, I picked up a little side job a couple weekends a month. I have a little neighbor lady (Lecta) who is somewhere in her 80's and lives in her own little house right next to her daughter who takes care of her. Well, the daughter (Julie) announced in Relief Society that she needed someone to watch Lecta a couple weekends a month so I volunteered. The perk is that she pays me to do it. Lecta is not hard to take care of but is not remembering very well any more. We took her with us to see the fireworks on the 4th of July and she loved it. She even remembered that she had gone two days later. I took over the "Love Comes Softly" series as well and she watched 6 of them by Sunday. (She can't get much by herself). Anyway, I enjoy Lecta so I think it will work out well taking care of her since I live right next door. My second change is that Sunday I got released from my Primary job which was teaching 6 - 7 year olds in Primary and am now in the Nursery. I don't mind doing a round in the Nursery, other than I'll be reminded every week how much I miss my little Brooklyn and I really love my Primary kids. I'm so sad. I had Becca, Calvin, Cory & Jack. They are so cute. I guess I was inspired to have them over last Monday to make M&M cookies. I thought being released as Young Women's President or Relief Society President was hard. This is even worse. For some reason I became very attached to my kids. Jack has only been to Primary about 4 times this year and he was there two weeks in a row now. His mom came up to me Sunday and said he talked about coming to my house all week. In fact she said that Monday night he took charge of the whole dinner and told his brother that he couldn't have a cookie until he ate his brocolli (sp?). She said he didn't feel good Sunday but he wanted to go to Primary and he did. That was the first time all year that he was there two weeks in a row! I hope he keeps coming. Oh well. I'm sure I'll come to love the Nursery kids as well.

My First Attempt at Blogging

Well, I've never done this before but decided I would try it even though Jack isn't here to hold my hand and guide me through it. Yesterday, the 5th of July was Jack's and my 24th anniversary. I realized last night as we were praying that I have now been married longer than I was single. That's a mildstone in life isn't it? Jack had to go meet with a hydrogeology client near Richfield in the morning and didn't get home until 5 pm but that gave us the evening to go and do something. I realized the girls (Nikki, Rachel, and Hailee) had plans when Nikki came up to me in the early afternoon and announced that she thought Dad and I should go and do something this evening for our anniversary . . . something that would get us out of the house. Hmmmm. Well, we went to a movie (Get Smart) and when we came home the girls were all dressed in black skirts, with black shirts and looked very much like waitresses in a very fine restaurant. We were directed downstairs where the lights were low and a table was set with a tablecloth and all the trimmings. Our menu for the evening was framed and sitting on the table and candlelight surrounded the room. It was extremely romantic and cozy. Dinner included: shimp cocktail for an appetizer, then salad followed by raspberry sorbet to clear the pallet. We then had the main dish which was marinated steak and a baked potato. Then it was finished off with fruit kabobs and an ice cream sundae. I'll never forget the evening. It was perfect. Aren't families wonderful!!