SPRING

There's so much work to do in the Spring that I resent having to eat, sleep, or keep up with the daily tasks of living. The house is a mess, I'm losing weight (yea!), and drinking caffeine full time.

I worked the Garden Apiary yesterday: 8 hives, and looked at the hives BO gifted me (a nuc and a deep with a shallow of Honey and nectar). His large hive was not well behaved, but I found the queen, who was laying drones, and may be out of sperm, split them into 2 boxes and left one with a queen cup with an egg. Saw 2 Varroa on top of a drone larva, showed them to CC, who was helping so he'd know next time. We had to scratch out about a full frame of drone brood. I need to check back with that hive and see how she's doing. We saw some Varroa poop in the bottom of the drone cells, but most of the larvae were too young to pull. I figure they were going to supersede the queen shortly. I added a queen cell on a medium frame of mixed brood to the nucleus box and treated with Terramycin

The Garden girls looked OK, but I was chagrined to find EFB in 3 hives. Several had suspicious shotgun brood, so I treated them too. One was bad enough that I smelled it when I opened the top: that sweetish sour smell. The swarm bees had really nice brood patterns, but the 3rd generation queens from the Jester Russian lines are the weakest. I'll be happy to get the Purvis Gold line that I've ordered. I've asked to buy 10 nucs from BO to put them in.

The garden is disked, and laid up in rows. BG planted all the Cole crops, including about 72 broccoli. She'd like to have covered it with spun row cover, but that had to be shipped and got here late Tuesday. I'm hoping that we can risk planting out the tomatoes soon; if we cover them well to keep them warm. They are leggy, 18" tall, but the root systems aren't crowded yet. I've potted up almost all the larger plants, mostly peppers and tomatoes to give their roots room.

The raised beds are full of Cole plants and peas, but we left 3 beds for tomatoes and will plant a row of tomatoes in cages in the field. I think there's room for 3 more raised beds. but 4'x6' this time.

I'm hoping to have a bunch of plants to donate to the Master Gardener's group for their Heart of Virginia sale on May 6th, so I've been working in the greenhouse seeding the little holed flats. Don't know if they'll be ready or not.

The diet is doing well, now that I've recovered from visiting DC and eating too much. It was fun for a while, & emphasized that I still have the old behavior lurking around.

The nieces' visit was a wonderful time. They are so nice to be around, so well behaved and responsive to guidance. My complements to their parents. SH started a blog, populating it with cute pets and composing her stories like a pro. At home she's been writing books for some time, so a blog is not surprising. Most of the time was outside, so we came in tired and only looked at the computer or TV after baths and dinner. We did eat some junky food, though. We took all our cans to the junkyard and used the money to buy pizzas.