T Stands for Bees, Blue Birds, and Weather Catch Up

     Hi everyone. Happy new week to you. And hello to the T day folks who stop by from Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog.

    Last week was  quite cold and on some days very wet  at my house. The rain meant I had a few days off from yard work. It seems like the outside projects aren't getting finished up quite so fast this year, but then it's been raining a lot. Hopefully I'll get my plants planted this week and then it's on to cleaning and setting up the screen porch. 😀 After that, it's just the usual maintenance and  the big spring projects will be finished. There have been more than usual of those this year.

     I did take the dogs for a nice walk one morning before the days of rain started.

 I started my summer job at the lake/boat ramp Wednesday morning when the high temperature only reached 48 degrees F/8.8 degrees C. Brrr.  Good thing I could sit in my car the whole time. The only boat that showed up decided it was much too rough on the water (there were white caps) to go out. Good thing I was reading an interesting book too as it kept me busy. 😏

   

     My other box of bees arrived, and it was actually too cold to install them on the day they arrived. The box spent the day and night in my house. Bees can't fly when temperatures drop  below  48-55 degrees F/ 8.8-12.7 degrees C (numbers vary when you read about this). It finally warmed up just enough the next day so I installed them.

 

      These next 2 photos are the box that the queen comes in with all her maids in waiting around it.

   When I installed the bees, some of them weren't moving nor leaving the shipping box, but they didn't look dead, so after a couple of hours I rewrapped the hive box in the screen material it shipped  in and then put the box in my greenhouse. I knew they'd be warmer there.

     The next morning those bees had warmed up and were buzzing. And a few of them escaped the wrapping too.

       They spent a few days in the greenhouse because it took that long for the outside weather to warm up enough. I gave them some sugar water so they at least had some food. When it finally warmed up a bit this past Saturday I opened the window and the door of the green house and almost all of them flew off- hopefully to the hive. They bond by pheromones to the queen, which I am guessing/hoping they are very sensitive to. The box still had a few bees in it that were now active, so I also put that back next to the hive, and by evening all that was left were those bees that hadn't survived.

   

     A couple of weeks ago I shared this (and a few other) photos of Mom bluebird feeding her babies. I never saw those babies fledge, and after a couple more days I never saw any sign of them in the birdhouse. I wondered what had happened the little ones, but I imagined  they had to be somewhere. Mom and Dad were coming to the bird feeder quite often; in fact they'd be sitting on the pole waiting for me to put the feeder back out in the morning. (At this time of year I have to take feeders in at night because of a couple of incidents with bears.) After they got the food, Mom and Dad would fly off into the woods.   

   

    This past weekend I finally saw one of the babies.  You can see Mom on top of the birdhouse and the baby down on the right side of the photo. It's too bad I didn't see any babies fledge, but I'm happy at least one of the babies made it. There may be more, but I've only ever  seen one at a time and I can't be certain whether I'm seeing the same one each time or I'm seeing different ones. 

      He's learning to eat at the bird feeder now. 

     I've been having a lot of fun watching him. I joked to my husband it's like having a grandchild-smile. 😏 Of course I'll never be asked to babysit which is not a bad thing either. 

     And for my T day drink I have my not so healthy but tasty dinner one evening when I went  on a movie date with my hubby.

    My husband took the afternoon off last Friday to extend his long weekend. He hoped he'd have the afternoon to do a few things around the yard that needed to be done, like opening up the screen porch or uncovering his boat. But no, it was raining, so we went to a late afternoon movie instead. Tom Cruise and the latest (and supposedly last) Mission Impossible movie was good entertainment. The popcorn and Diet Pepsi tasted good too. It might not have been the healthiest dinner but I do like movie theater popcorn.

     That's all for me. Have a Happy T day and a nice week ahead too.