Hi blog readers. Can I just, for a quick second, let y’all know that you absolutely crack me up?! Should I add Cowboy Josh’s picture to my header for your viewing pleasure? Do you think people would search the blog and wonder who the mysterious cowboy was mixed in with our children?
I’m terrible, absolutely terrible, about coming back and answering the questions that you ask in the comments. But many of you asked about the bees and I thought, for once, I’d fill you in. We have had 2 hives for about a year now and keeping bees is not easy, doesn’t come natural, and is actually quite labor, time, and stress intensive… at least for amateurs like ourselves. And really, I can take little to no credit other than giving half-decent moral support to my husband {resident keeper of the bees} and on some days I’ve been known to bark out, “Would you leave those dang bees alone and just come home!” Bees are so very complex and in my opinion a very strong testament to a very creative, brilliant and divine Creator of the universe! I should have been blogging about this all along; you would probably find humor in our ignorance. For instance, we have had stronger hives run off and take over weaker hives because we put them too close together and have mournfully learned that even a small Shop Vac has too much horsepower for bees and will obliterate them into a million pieces. Justin’s pine straw business is called Honey Bee Farms so he naturally receives calls about BEE REMOVAL and of course, because he’s a man who has bees, he has to jump on every opportunity to remove bees from precarious locations and carefully attempt to relocate them to our hives. With all of this said, we have finally successfully harvested our second batch of honey. Our first harvest was not so successful as it was fully laced with larvae because the Queen Bee apparently eluded her excluder and laid her eggs in our precious honey. Do you like how I blamed it on her and not us? We might could have sold it as “Protein Enriched”.
But this week brought elation and celebration to our home because FINALLY we have beautiful clean honey! This is our spring harvest so it is naturally lighter in color. And we strain it to keep small pieces of wax out. Justin harvested nearly 2 gallons from one super {for you bee people}. For the non bee people, if you look at the picture of the hive above, the brood chamber is on the bottom and there are 3 supers above it. One yielded 2 gallons! Which is very exciting. He said their new wax was BEAUTIFUL.
In the picture below, if you look closely, you can see their fresh white wax. This is where they store their honey.
I was a little reluctant to get too close. Neither of us had on a suit so I’d hang my camera over the hive and snap away with hopes of coming away sting-free and with a picture that was clear!
We do not currently sell the honey but we’d like to in the future. For now we are sharing it with our family, still working out kinks and learning as we go! The hives are located on Justin’s family’s land south of town, which is also where we keep our garden. Our backyard isn’t quite conducive for either… although, if you are interested in bees, you can have them in your backyard and this book is a great resource for doing so: The Backyard Beekeeper!
We’ve had a wonderful week with the exception of one little shiner received by the Raiger. She’s not near as pathetic as she looks in this picture! In fact, it really hasn’t slowed her down at all! The only thing that she has complained about is her swimming goggles that press against it! Do you remember Morgan’s… oh heavens, hers was WAY worse!? And the Rover’s had a little one too!
It happened during a backyard round of wiffle ball and this is precisely why we only use plastic bats and not metal ones, I already fear the day we bring a metal one home!
We’ve been poolside some this week and I couldn’t resist snapping a picture of all three of them picnicking. I hope they have fond memories of this when they are older. I remember Mom making lunches for us and bringing them out to us and it is so fun to do the same for them.
And last but not least, we had a wonderful visit with Eiler this week! She and her precious little ones came down to shoot pictures for her fall catalog, she felt confident she could take the purple out of Paige’s eye! We’ll just have to wait and see! If she can, I’m going to need some lessons from her! 
That’s all for now! I really do appreciate all your comments and kind emails… y’all are SUCH an encouragement to me and I am so grateful for you! And sometimes I laugh at myself and think how gracious y’all are to not point out all my spelling and grammatical errors. I posted the last post early in the morning and Justin didn’t “proof” it for me, which means when I went back and read it later I found many RUN ON sentences and grammatical errors! Oh well!
ps- Our zinnias, although nearly mauled by varmints and rovers, are miraculously blooming.
Paige’s poor eye! You’re right – she does look pretty pathetic…but I’m sure it’s not slowing her down at all. If you start selling honey please let me know because I want to buy some! 
