The Wayfaring Wordhack

My bees that is.  After a bout of coldish weather--but nothing that should have bothered my European dark bees--I went out to check the hive and could hear nothing. No buzz or hum when I tapped on the side.  And several dead bees littered the landing board.

Then, we had a couple of warm days, so I planned to open the hive, fully expecting to find it pillaged, my bees dead or gone. My beekeeping neighbor had told me that two of his colonies had perished due to wasps robbing all their honey.  Before I even opened the hive, though, I saw bees going in and out!  Hooray. :D  

J and I did weigh the hive and found that it is not really heavy enough. So I need to feed them according to popular beekeeping wisdom.  Which I do not want to do.  I really, really, really want them to make it without treatment or being fed syrup.  Nevertheless, it is heart-wrenching to think of them starving.  I would like to feed them honey (something that makes NO commercial sense, seeing as how expensive honey is compared to sugar) but I only have 1.5 kg from my beekeeping friend. It is a no-no to feed store-bought honey which can contain pathogens. 

I did not harvest any honey from my bees this year, letting them keep everything they gathered, so their lack is due to the split being made a bit late in the season and not because of my mismanagement.  So now I must decide:  fully trust them and their nature to get them through or feed them what I have and hope it is enough.

Being a steward is not easy.

As I also testify as two more of our hens were killed by a bird of prey and two others barely escaped. 

Forgive the hodgepodge nature of this entry, but there has been so much going on this week

- It seems wrong to include this first category in an entry with more trivial stuff, but it has shaped my week and affected me more than the rest, so:

This week, we have been notified of three deaths : the doula who helped bring Farmer Boy and Ti'Loup into the world lost her husband. He died in the night in Cairo, we know not of what. A friend's son, who had been paralyzed and in a coma last year after falling from a roof, made a miraculous recovery only to die a few days ago of a brain aneurysm. Another friend's 20-year-old daughter was in a fatal car wreck on Thursday.  So much grief. So many questions about how well are we loving those around us when we have no idea when our lives on this earth will come to an end. So much anger at myself every time I lose my temper with my own lively, hyper-alive kids.

- Our broody duck is down from 4 duck eggs and 3 goose eggs to one duck egg and 2 goose eggs. I thought the drake was stealing them from her because I saw him in the nest with her. We were prepared to harvest him because we can't have an animal that eats the eggs or young and it woluld be too hard to house him alone and only let him with the others for breeding purposes. So, we separated them and then discovered it was the mother duck eating the eggs. :( She is still on the three, and I don't know whether to take them from her and put them in the incubator (which I detest)or just leave them and see what happens. Sprout is devasted because it is her duck, and of course, what is good for the gander...or drake, in this case, is good for the duck. 

The reason I haven't just moved them to the incubator---besides hating the thing--is that it is still occupied by one egg, which leads me to my next topic:

--Mr. Crude (as I call the man from whom J bought the duck eggs because of his penchant for sexual innuendo, which i often overhear) is either dishonest or not at all careful of his duck breeding. J asked him for Khaki Campbell eggs, and instead of saying he didn't know what that was or saying that he has a mixed flock, he sold J a dozen eggs, only 4 of which were viable.  ( Granted, he was not selling them as hatching eggs, but J was very clear that that is what he meant to do with them.)  Two ducklings hatched on the 11th, one hatched today, and the other should hatch tomorrow (it didn't make it out of the shell) from the look of things, and so far, of the three, none of them appear to be KC ducks.  Two could be Rouen or Rouen crosses, and one could either be a Cayuga or a Swedish cross...or something else entirely. Looks like if I want Khaki Campbells, we are going to have to drive an hour and a half one way and pay 2euros per egg for them.

- Just when I told rimturse  that our hens were doing great on the hatching front, our latest clutch only produced 4 chicks out of 9 eggs. Two chicks were crushed under the mom, two mysteriously disappeared (no sign of them or their shells), and one egg never developped. Then  the mom pretty much rejected them for the first day. The kids babysat the chicks in the warm greenhouse until we could convice the hen to mother  them. All is well now. 

- We finally got some rain, brought in on those lovely dark clouds looming over our daisy-studded field,