Honey, Honey, Honey

    Hi everyone. I hope you're having a super weekend. So far mine has been busy and the weather has been almost September like  (warm without the humidity). ❤

   Today I'm joining Nicole for Sunday in the Art Room  and Gillena for Sunday Smiles . I have lots of bees in today's post so I hope this post doesn’t give you the heebie-jeebies. 

  The other day I went out to do a bee hive check. Both hives are doing really well. Let me share a few photos with you.

    A) I'll start with my new hive, the one where the bees arrived this May:

    For some reason a lot of these ladies like to enter the hive by going under the top cover and under the outer edge of the inner screen cover as you can see in this first photo. There is a small gap there, which is there so bees can go in and out that way. In the 6 years I've had hives, I have never had any that used that opening as their normal way in and out though.   

    The screen  is the warm weather inner cover because it helps air flow through the hive to keep it from getting too hot. In the winter a solid inner cover gets put on.

   When the bees first arrived in May, I only had one box on the hive. But then the bees got busy with laying eggs, raising young and making honey. In order to give them enough room,  the last time I checked them I added a second box to the hive. 

    The bees now use the bottom box for their brood and the top box for making honey. This is the honey they will need for winter, so I will not take this honey. In fact, I won't take any honey from this hive this year.

    I have still been feeding them with a food patty (you can see the wrappers in the next photo), just because there is a lot of bees, and I want them to produce a good store of honey for the winter. Even with that, they seem to go through a patty in about 2 weeks. 

  Here's some of them actually using the front"normal" hive entrance.

   These next 2 photos are looking down into the hive. This is the top box, and you can see all the white comb they are building. This is what they will fill with honey and then cap.

    And what a crowd they have building that comb. 

  B) I'll move onto the old hive, or the one that came in 2025 and made it through the winter.  In this hive the ladies always go in and out through the main hive entrance.

   One thing I find interesting about this hive is how little they care whether I am there or not. Even when I open up the hive. The new hive is not that way at all. The new hive is very curious and a lot of bees come check me out.

   Earlier this year I added a smaller third box to this hive because the second box, where they store honey, was already quite full. This smaller box is called the honey super, and the honey that gets made there will be for me.

   You might remember the weird comb they formed. ( The post I explained about this is here: The Art of Bee Keeping.) Now that comb is pretty much full of honey, capped off and done. They are also building newer honey comb in the frames that are in this box which in the next few weeks should be filled up with honey too. 

    I decided I needed to have a few tastes of their labors, so I poked the comb with my finger a few times.  It was delicious.

   This is the first year I've ever had a honey supper filling up with honey. Now I need to learn about how to collect that honey. 🐝🐝🍯

  I'll finish my post with this funny that CJ sent along to me. I liked it so much I saved the photo.

Have a super rest of your Sunday and start to the new week.

The Bird and The Bees

     Hi everyone. Happy Sunday to you. I hope the new month is going well for you.

    Today I am joining Nicole for her Sunday in the Art Room and I'm also joining Gillena for her Sunday Smiles.  I'll also be linking  up my art piece to Mia's Birds challenge at Art Journal Journey.

   On this page I used various colored paints in the background. I also stenciled some leaves and added some black dots with a Sharpie. There's also some white paint pen and Sharpie dots too.  Then I added a tissue paper image, which I did not like.  But that  was an easy fix. I have my very old bird book from a college Vertebrate Zoology lab where one of the things we had to do was identify some birds. It's quite outdated in some ways (since I graduated from college in the early 1980's), so I am chopping it up for art when I need bird pictures. It seems a shame to chop up a good book, but it is now getting some use at least. 👍

   I cut out the crow and covered up the misfortune with the tissue paper. I added a piece of painted lace to give him a place to stand. And then I cut apart a paper frame and used 2 corners of it to finish off my page. I'm quite happy with the results now. 😏

   Last week one day I set up a second beehive since later this week I have another box of bees being shipped. I wanted to air out the unused  hive.  I've tried for 4 years to get a second box going, and for several various reasons, I have never had any luck or success. One year those bees in the second hive even combined with the bees I already had.

   This year I'm hoping things will work out. 👍🤞🤞🤞

  When I set up the new hive box the other day, I went into my old hive to give it a good go through.  I was surprised to find the top box was really loaded with honey. 

   Look at the capped (the white) honey on this frame.  The other side was just as full.  All 10 frames in this box were like this. Either the bees ignore this honey all winter (which I doubt) or they have been very very busy lately.

   You can also see below that the bees were expanding their combs upward. It was time for another box.

    I added another smaller honey super on top. I hope it fills up with honey so I can remove it and take the honey, and then, since it is still very early in the season, I can put another box on top for the bees. I haven't had this situation before because usually at this time of year the hive is pretty depleted. That's one thing I love about beekeeping, the bees keep throwing new situations at me, and I am always learning new things.

   Plus you might think I'm weird, but I find watching the bees very interesting and very relaxing. I don't usually even suit up anymore, but I do have to really relax completely. If I'm relaxed, the bees basically ignore me, and I can stand there and watch them for a while too.

   I'll let you know how the second box goes. Until then, I hope you have a honey of a day- grin. 

   

Sunday Art and Bees

     Hi everyone. Happy Sunday to you. I hope you're having a wonderful weekend so far.

    Today I am sharing a journal page for Gillena's Trees Are Awesome, Aren't They? at Art Journal Journey. I will also be linking  up this page to Nicole's  Sunday in the Art Room  and Gillena's Sunday Smiles .    Plus since I've used various types of media, I will be linking  up to Creative Artiste Mixed Media Challenge Blog which this month is #125 and always has a theme of Anything Goes.  

   My page today is more true for last Sunday's weather than for today, but I was thinking of the quote "April showers bring May flowers" when I created this page.

   I started with an umbrella stencil and some water color markers. Then I used watercolor paints to make the colored sky over them. I like how watercolor paint took away the sharpness of the umbrella images.

   Next I took a crackle stamp and stamped it along the bottom of the page because I needed some ground to base my other images on.

   I painted the tree tops with acrylic paints and used a Sharpie to create the trunks.  They may not look like trees here in New Hampshire in April,  but someplace in April you already have green leaves. Probably more places than not  already have green leaves. 😏

    Then I took an older TH die as well as a small stack of colored cardstock. This  is one of those thick chunky dies Sizix used to make a lot of, not the small metal frame dies that are more popular now, so I could cut a big stack of colored house shaped pieces at once.  I assembled  3 of those images together to make my house. 

    On white paper I used a stencil and traced the square shapes that would become the windows. I cut them out, glued them down and drew in the details.   I also outlined the house to give it more definition on my page. I then took a raindrop stamp (Impression Obsession) and some dark blue ink and stamped  raindrops all over my page.

    The flowers in the bottom windows are actually each a piece from some cloth trim that I clipped apart and colored in the center. I drew in a stem on each. I also added a punch-out picket fence from a 49 and Market image set.  To finish the page,  I stamped the eye in the middle and colored it in. I also die cut the umbrella and stamped the details. Then I used a quote from the same Hero Arts set that the eye and the umbrella  image came from to finish this page. 

   The other day it was one of our warmest days so far. The hubby and I took the bee winter enclosure apart. Boy were there bees out and about.  Here's the enclosure partially apart. It had a roof and another side wall on it which are missing in this photo.

   There were so many bees going in and out. At one point there was a cloud of them in front of the entrance.

    Once the enclosure was off I opened up the top and took a peek inside. There were a lot of bees on some of the left over winter food. I had really stuffed the hive with sugar patties and also pollen/protein patties in the fall. You can see where they have eaten away at the edges over the winter.

    I didn't do a deep dive into the hive this time because the bees were pretty wound up with us down there taking down the winter enclosure and changing their environment. But I will take a deep dive into the hive soon.  However, I can report that although they were curious about us and what we were doing, they were not aggressive and no one was stung.   😏 Of course we weren't nervous and just ignored them so they just went along with their own business as we were with ours.

    I left the bags of half decayed garden leaves under the base to block any spring wind.  But other than that, here's the hive now.

   I'm really excited that with the very long, very cold and snowy winter we had the bees actually made it. 👍😀❤

    In another month my next batch of bees will arrive so hopefully this year I'll have 2 hives. I have tried this before, and never had any luck, so we'll see what happens.

   Have a great rest of your weekend and start to the new week.

Weekend Chatter

    Hi everyone. Happy Sunday. Last week was a very busy week  (dog surgery, doctor's appointment, mother-in-law rushed to the hospital/ mother-in-law visit, some walks, a Friendsgiving lunch, a movie, a hockey game, daughter and son-in-law visiting, a hacked credit card, the hubby coming down with a terrible head cold, and  a few other things, including one I had to say no to because I was already busy) so I am hoping I can enjoy a quiet Sunday and even a quiet few days early in the week. Why is it some weeks get overly  crazy like that and then there are a lot of quieter weeks in between?  It would be great if things just spread themselves out; at least I think so.

     The first thing I have today  is a page for Wendy's On, In or By the Sea challenge at Art Journal Journey Here's some more sailboats. I'm not sure I like the water on this one as much as I did on the page I shared this past Thursday, but I don't mind it.

     I made this page by painting and ink spraying the ocean and the sky as well as the waves. The sailboats are also hand made. I drew the base of the boats on white paper and cut them out. I also cut the sails out of some colorful paper.  I did have to play with the water a bit because in order for sails to be out there needs to be some wind. I thought the best way to show that was to try to show some motion in the water.

   The flag with the quote and the seagull are images I punched out of an ocean set of images. 

     And here's a few photos from a few things last week starting with the greenhouse.

     We had some heavy rain Thursday night and that was good because (besides the fact that we needed it) we noticed there was a bit of a leak someplace along the ridge line of the roof. Although it needs to be fixed, it's better to know so it can get fixed. I also cleaned up my mess over in my husband's workshop and brought all my planting supplies into the greenhouse.

     David at Travels with Birds suggested last weekend that I get some cracked corn to put out for the wild turkeys who visit. I did that, and one afternoon they were back, mostly in the area where I spread a lot of corn.

 A few of them ventured into the yard, and at least I could get a better photo of those .😏

    This past Friday night was the Border Battle in college men's hockey, a big rivalry between my and my husband's alma mater and my daughter and her husband's alma mater. This time around the game was held  at the University of New Hampshire.

       It was a very exciting game, as these games almost always are. My family has an annual rivalry game get together, and we have a little family fun. Of course when my and my husband's team wins it's even better- hee hee-😉.  My sister-in-law sent this next photo meme to us regarding the game. The Maine black bears took away the fish which is what the University of New Hampshire throws out on the ice after they score their first goal. I personally feel bad that a fish gave its life just to be thrown out on the ice at a hockey game, but it's their tradition. 

 Today I want to make some reading time since with my past busy week, I've barely cracked open a cover. Here's a meme I came across last week that not only spoke to me but made me smile:

    I hope it makes you smile too. Enjoy your Sunday and the start of the new week. 

On The Savanna

 Hi everyone. Happy weekend. I hope yours is going well. At my house we've  had and have a lot of clouds, which is not making me very motivated-grin. 

      I'm back today with a new journal page.  This time we're going to the African savanna where a few curious wild animals are taking a look at us.  I'm linking my page up to Jo's Wonderfully Wild challenge at Art Journal Journey. I'm also linking up to Gillena's Sunday Smiiles.

     This page in my Dina Wakely journal had a bit of grit, so when I rubbed yellow and red ink pages over it I got that cool textured look. To finish coloring the background, I used watercolor paints.  I used some acrylic paint to paint the sun, and once that dried I added some yellow glitter glue to it to give it some energy.

     All of the animals are stamped and fussy cut. I used markers to do some coloring. I thought the zebra needed something so I stuck the funny bird on his back. I also thought the zebra needed to be in the grass since that's what they eat, so I stamped this swirly stamp that reminded me of grass. I stamped it on acetate a couple of times with Staz On, and then I sort of fussy cut the pieces and layered them pieces to make it thick like layers of grass on a savanna would be like.  I would have preferred to make the grass green or brown instead of black, but black is the only color of Staz On I have right now.

     Finally I stamped the words from an old set by Technique Tuesday. And for some reason after stamping the words, I thought the ostrich needed a bow, and the bow does work great on her long neck.

      We also had some good news this past week about Miss Maddie too. I think the specialist has finally got her blood glucose levels under control. Hurrah! We've been playing around with insulin levels since January, and she's since gone blind (which doesn't seem to bother her one bit), but now she's definitely acting more like the Maddie we know and love. 👍

     That's all for me in this post. Enjoy what's left of your weekend, and the happy start of the new week also.