Bees

As suspected, my remaining colony is not going to be long for this world. There’s no queen, so it’ll slowly wind down as the remaining workers die off naturally though they’re all valiantly going through the motions. One or two of them are laying eggs in a last ditch attempt to salvage things, but they’re nevertheless doomed. If I had another colony around, I might be able to fix the situation by transplanting open worker brood and letting them raise a queen but my gut tells me that we’re too late in the year right now. The nectar dearth is firmly in place, and the fall stuff (goldenrod and asters) never seems to produce a whole lot in my area. Actually looking forward to a short break.

The stock was always a little funny, anyway. I originally caught it in a swarm trap a couple of years ago so it was feral or issued from another hive nearby. Their honey production was always low, and they are produce/gather copious amounts of propolis, making for extra-gooey inspections. I had anticipated an early swarm season with our mild winter, but the trap never caught anything (and last year, by comparison, I caught 2-3, though none of them lasted particularly long). So who knows. Starting over will be a good exercise – back to basics and so on. I did get a reasonable honey harvest out of them this year, so for that I’m grateful.

Garden

Pulled up the cukes, zucchini and squash. All yielded well before the squash bugs arrived. The green peppers never produced a single fruit, so they came up too. In their place: arugula, spinach, cabbage, broccoli, and bush beans. I have garlic sets on order and when they arrive, they’ll replace the tomatoes, which should be about done by then. Beautiful day for it, too: low temp, low humidity and just breezy enough to keep things interesting.

Radio

My HF rig made it to CA, so now I wait. drums fingers on desk

Books

About halfway through Frank Sheed’s Theology and Sanity. It’s slow work, but so far pretty rewarding. My only quibble is that it could have stood a bit of editing. In the first part of the book, it looks like hyphens, colons and semicolons have all been replaced by question marks, which makes for some odd reading and furrowed brows. His use of ALL CAPS FOR EMPHASIS is also a little jarring, especially when there are MANY THINGS in the SAME SENTENCE that NEED EMPHASIZING. I said it was a quibble.