How Could We Forget The Honey??

One of our Fiends, Marylin, The Cat Coach, is sad tonight about a Bengal Friend of hers. Can you nip over to her blog and give her some love and support? I will let her words tell the story...Our thoughts and hearts are with her.

Yet another long day today, and I think I am not going to make the shows in the Cities, seeing as how the Cities are more than an hour away, and "early" figures into my waking up in the morning, but I want to hear from everyone who got to the Lojo show. (Or anywhere else fun tonight)

One thing that happened today, besides the chicken soup making and lemon and honey and ginger drink making , was we noticed, yes, we had harvested the honey (Fancy bee talk for Stole the Stuff) but had neglected to extract it, and there it was sitting in the basement, beginning to leak. Oops.



We have an Extractor, as you can see, it's that big silver thing in the picture above, and tomorrow the Birdchick is coming out and we are going to test it for the first time, but we decided to use the old bucket and cheesecloth method for the uncapped comb.

I'll explain. If the bees cap it nicely it will keep for yonks. But if it is not capped, it can turn into Mead or crystals soon, and we didn't want to mix the two. We have more capped than un-capped. We had two supers (bee talk for little boxes) and one brood (bee talk for big box) harvested.



I got out my fancy honey scraping tool and went thru all of the frames and pulled out anything with open comb and scraped away. This is very messy. Sticky too. Now I have these....They will drip thru the night, and we will have honey.



The lighter and darker honey is simply what sort of pollen the bees were having at the time. Here's a closer shot of our golden bucket.



This next is a nice picture (amazing what a girl can do with a camera with a view screen!) of some capped honey, with a wee bit of un-capped in the upper corner.



The Bee Area is a Mess. Old hives and frames and empty hives everywhere. Dripping buckets, and a thin layer of Sticky all over everything. Tomorrow we learn to spin the extractor, which I know will BEE interesting, because like ALL bee equipment, for reasons known only to the Secret Order Of Bee Equipment Manufacturers, it does not come with any instructions.



Love and Honey,
Lorraine

Post Mostly For The Birdchick....

Leaving, for the moment, the Transcribing that has become my world, and Miss Kitty's for that matter, as I have no intention of suffering alone, let's move onto Bees...

(We are transcribing a 2 hour 10 minute interview between Someone who may be our Boss and Someone Else. Very interesting indeed, but the sound quality of the recording is Very Bad. Makes for slow going. I'd say more, but we Assistants are not a chatty bunch some days)

Right. Bees. That I can chat about. The Birdchick is away today, off doing Bird Things, so Boss and I were sent a list of Hive Things that needed to be done. I like, generally to do the Colour Commentary, and leave the step by step to The Birdchick, but since she was not here today, I am going to try and write as her and Tell All.

I feel, sadly, as tho my venture into this, the being of the Birdchick, is a venture not entirely certain to succeed, in fact it may well, not, and perhaps we could go as far to say, no it will not succeed in coming up to her standards, as I have no camera, or any way of displaying the images that no doubt ought to go along with said record.

(ok, ok, so I have been reading a little too much Steve Brust's Phoenix Guards, and 500 Years after lately, why use four words, when you can say it in a hundred? I'll stop, but they are well worth re-reading even if one does tend to get a little wordy, great fun.)

Our first task was to check and see if Queen Kitty had gotten out of her Queen Container and was inside the hive laying brood. When you divide a hive, as opposed to getting a box of bees for a new hive, where the Queen is in her box with the bees and they all dig each other, you have to let the bees you have taken from the old hive get used to the new Queen. She is in a plastic container with holes, that is plugged with hard sugar. The bees eat the sugar and she comes out , and they are friends.

If they are not friends, they kill her.

She had not been eaten out yet, tho nearly. (You stick the container with Queen onto a frame with comb on it.) I wonder if it was because she was on a frame near the edge of the box? There were not many bees near her, tending and eating. We moved her more into the middle, so hopefully more bees will get her scent, and eat her out.

We did notice there seemed to be a new Queen cell, which is a baby Queen. Not sure what this means. You can tell, because they are much bigger. (I did not notice, but Boss knows a LOT about Bees.)

We checked the Olga Hive, which I like to call in technical bee terms, the " We got some honey going ON hive" All well there. We took out her Sugar water bucket, as she does not need it. Obviously.

Going down to the Bickman and Mimiko hives, we found that all seemed well in the Bickman Hive, very active.

On the Mimko hive, we were to add a brood box if they had filled up 7 frames with comb. She had, so we took one frame, with no brood in it (confuses the nurse bees) and put it in the new box, to encourage them to go up there and do bee things. We gave her a new sugar water bucket. She was making a little Funky Comb, on top of the frames, which we scraped off.

We also set out carpet tack boards around the hives. They are slats of wood with nails sticking up. Discourages the heck out of skunks.

There you have it. The Birdchick will, one hopes, be home soon, and can get back to doing her own Bee Reports, and I can get back to saying things like: WOW, how cool, I was totally Covered in Bees!!!!!!!!

Love and Bees, (but not transcribing) Lorraine

Bee Movies?

Tonight is the Premiere of Coraline, as most of you probably suspect already and I think we do need to do a shout out to Boss and to everyone who made this movie happen.

I don't talk much about Boss, as this isn't the Boss Blog, but the Fabulous Lorraine blog, but I have to say to him, "Darn, I'm proud of you." He's been working so hard the last couple of weeks, the kind of hard that would have broke most people. I'm not sure what I will get back tomorrow, I am envisioning some sort of Puddle of Goo, but whatever it is, I'm glad it is coming.

Coraline tonight in Portland! Tomorrow, all over the country. Can't wait to hear your thoughts. I know, however, how you are going to feel, as you see, I have seen it. Twice. Your eyes will shine, your heart will be happy, and you will believe in Magic.

And then you will go and see it again.

Kitty has Portland Pics up already!! Including one of one of the most beautiful young ladies going!

Enough of movie premieres. Clearly there are more important things we need to speak on, like ME for instance and just how did I spend my day, for the most part?

Bees.

I know, a little early? But it's never to early to start planning, and it WAS over 30 degrees for the first time in over a month, I believe. Felt like spring! No one, of course, wore a coat, and everyone who could worked outside. The lines at the car wash LOOKED like lines at a drive in movie premiere, (you can't wash cars under about 30 degrees) and people kind of danced as they walked along.

I, cleaned the chaos that was Bee World in the Garage.



It looked a lot like Nightmare on Bee Street, dead bees everywhere, dust, cobwebs, old frames everywhere, bits of hives, half combed bits, old wax.....Nothing was in it's proper place, with frame spacers, hive tools, smokers, and bits of tinder lying everywhere, along with dirty socks, old shoes, and water bottles.

And honey. Lots of honey. Lovely, sticky honey. All over everything.

Clearly a job for Bee Assistant.



Who clearly had NO idea how to go about this. Had to go into see Merry Housekeeper five or six times and ask "What gets up honey?" What do you dust with?" "How do you wash the floor?"

Finally she gave me a bucket with soapy water and a rag and told me to go off and play by myself, she had work to do.



Did my best, now at least when the Birdchick comes out next week to order our new Bees, we can see what we are working with and what we need.

It's never too early to get excited about Bees, I say.

Love, Movies, and Bees,
Lorraine

Happy Birthday Dr Score!

First things first...If you are reading this tonight (Tuesday) tomorrow is Paul's (our own Dr. Score) Birthday!!!!! SO we need to send him some Very Many Happy Returns of the Day! If you are reading this tomorrow, Today is Paul's Birthday! Wish him well!

(if you are reading the Thursday, long after we have moved on, Keep up or get culled from the pack, hee-hee)

Today was a Honey Extraction Day (see, you science types, I know some big words too!) There was some sort of Snaffu (another technicial Bee Term) at the extractio plant, so we decided to do it the old fashioned way. A bucket and cheese cloth.



This is the poor sad honey from the failed hive. We got the bees a new home and are totaly stealing all the honey they made. AND today I regestared for our very own X County Fair! Oh yes, blue ribbons in both our classes! I separated the dark honey and the light and combined a couple, so we can taste and figure out which is the best. It would be a lovely end to such a great hive.



This is all a very sticky business. Tomorrow I have to Moosh the buckets. (another techicial Bee Term) meaning Moosh them down so the honey gets thru. I could have done this today but I had reached the point of Done, before I got to it. Then I will take what is left after the honey is gone, called "Slumglum" and boiled it to extract the wax, and then use it to make, well things. No, don't know what yet. Or how.

Took the Bengals out. Venus met a dog and bee-lined for the house. Mim got stuck in a tree. Took Cabal to Doggie Day Care while the Grouting was going on, and the Trainer said he was kind of sad no one would play with him. One dog his size was too old and the others too little. So his school expeirence might mirror ours...

Love and Bees and Life,
Lorraine

Cabal's Slumber Party...

Well, you asked for a report on how Cabal's First Slumber Party was going. Are they doing their nails? Wrestling non-stop? Watching scary movies? Well, er, no. They aren't. Nothing says PARTY like a trip to Doggie ER....



We had been having a wonderfully fine day. Freckles came out early, and then Johnny showed up with his dog, a black lab named King Kong, and Merry Housekeeper brought Golden Retriever Kuda, we had a PACK! A pack of big dogs who all wanted to play with Cabal. He was so happy. We had a game where I would let them out, for a run and yell Pack Coming!" And Johnny would yell "Release the Hounds!" and out they would go!



Here is Cabal, and his sleep over buddy, Freckles, this morning, when his, hopefully fair minded owners, dropped him off....(Hey, I'll watch him for you, it will be fun, what could go wrong? How hard could it be?)



And here is the pack in a rare moment of repose...



I finished extracting the honey, by the Old Fashioned Cheesecloth Bucket Method...



Only to have our New Fangled Honey Extractor, that was meant to have been majorly delayed, show up. Hand and Johnny put it together, that is Johnny and Merry Housekeeper (who is going to raise Merry Havoc about all the blood all over the floors and carpets she just today cleaned when she comes in tomorrow..It looks like Massacre of the Innocents)



We went, Cabal, Freckles and my friend Susan (to wrangle Freck, and take a walk while Cabal and I worked out and astounded the rest of the class with his brilliance) to Agility Class, which was wonderful fun. And then back home, where Cabal and Freck went for a final run, as the sun sank slowly, and I changed over the garden hoses...

All was serene, until we got in and being a sober sort of on the ball gal, I could not help but notice that there was BLOOD everywhere. "Right, guys, says I, who is bleeding???" Freck says, "Well now that you mention it, I seem to be gushing blood everywhere.."

A quick look, leads to a quick call to the ER Vet line, where they tell me there is a FEE for this sort of thing, and did I want to put a bandaid on it and call them in the morning.

Now I don't know much about dog medicine (or people either, for that matter) but it is pretty clear when some thing needs to be stitched. And I said that I thought the owners might be rather more irritated if their dog bled to death in the night than if I took him in.

Freck went under, they stitched, we got medicine and I have promised things like "Call you tomorrow, and no, I don't actually know if this is their vet clinic, and no, I sure don't know their last names.."

Here is a picture of the Slumber Party now. Poor Freck is so out of it, and he runs into things with his cone, and gets stuck. I am going to have to sleep down here with him, if I sleep, and make sure he is ok for the rest of tonight. Poor little guy....Cabal is SO upset and doesn't understand why his friend smells funny and is wearing a cone.



Stay tuned to the conversation I get to have with Jane and Robert tomorrow...Not to mention Mickey the Trainer at Doggie Day Care when I get to tell her SHE is taking care of this dog while I work and the floors are re-grouted....

Bauhaus and Workouts

I went to town last night with Chris the Fop to see Bauhaus, ah, a blast from the past. (pulling up to a show in a shiny new black Prius wih your date, who happens to be a large gay man who looks like Tim Curry is a MIGHTY fine evening , felt like the coolest thing going I did!) I had a great time and it is always nice to see Bauhaus, but I was a little dissapointed this time around with them. They played an hour and a half set, including encores, but a huge part of my liking for Bauhaus is Peter Murphy's voice and the lyrics, neither of which you could hear. Very muddy . And the music wasn't enough with them to keep me excited. The crowd didn't hate them , but there was a lack of , hmmm...Frenzy? The last three songs got people going, being the standard last three they do, Telegram Sam, Ziggy and Bela, but for the rest of the night, not even the band seemed real into it, tho it is hard to tell with them, but not a lot of running around, no stage set, and NO LONG BLACK CAPES!

(what is Bauhaus with out capes? Lorraine a' Malena with out corsets?)

Lesson, if you are going to forgo the capes, your music had better be HOT!

They did have a little for the tour only EP which I played on the way home and thought: These guys can still rock! And isn't it nice when you can hear the vocals?????

Ok, I'll stop or you will get another few pages of me whinning at Sherpa about my monitor mix for the show tonight, hee-hee.....

I have been sliding lately with my eating right and working out ideals, and had a long talk with Malena about it this morning. When I get so busy and do so many gigs I tend to grab food on the run and think of the gig as a workout. Neither of which make for a getting fitter Lorraine. I went back and spent some time on Malena's website which is a very good place for inspiration and then went to the store and bought All The Good Food they had. Enough, I say with the laziness, this Wild and Wonderful Corset Convention is happening in six months and I am going to be fit for it.

( I know there will be other equally important bits to this Con, wonderful guests, much talk about literature, mighty fine music and such, but it is wearing the corset that is making me nervous. )

I don't seem to have a middle ground. Either I am eating really well and losing weight and getting fit, or I am on the Hell In A Bucket Plan, so now it is back to the gym, folks, for this girl!!!!!

Actually , I am going out and buying a Hunter Orange Vest to wear for the next couple of weeks, it being the country and hunting season here, and me liking long walks on back country roads, we shall forgo fashion ( and capes ) for safety.

Wish me Luck! If music be the food of love, play on! ( not sure how that fits, but it seemed inspiring! )

Music and Food, Lorraine