Signs of Life

A more beautiful  Winters day could not be imagined in any tale of fiction or work of art. We were still hovering around 4 degrees this morning as the sun came up but by noon we were pushing 30 and have passed the freeze level at 2pm.

I been burning a low, slow, lazy fire comprised of some small dry Elm logs and a couple pieces of green hickory in the wood furnace all morning. It pops the blower occasionally and keeps the inside at a steady 77 degrees but mostly I am just keeping some coals going more than anything else. I pushed all the critters that have been occupying the house out onto the porch, laid down some fresh hay on the path to the wood furnace because otherwise it will soon be churned mud and relaxed on the tail gate of my pickup just enjoying the sun rays and fresh air.

30 degrees feels like a warm Spring day right now let me tell you.

The snow still lies heavy over the grass and gravel but anywhere it is paved or on the buildings it is melting swiftly. I would estimate we still have about 6 to 8 inches of the stuff on the ground though. I waded out to the garden bee hives and was greeted by many instances of the picture you see above.

Yes dead bees.

Bees that are away from the hives, some already melted down into the snow several inches as the sun warmed up their little corpses. Now some of you might think being happy about dead bees seems kinda contrary to the entire idea and hope of my girls surviving Winter. However these bees are away from the hives which means they were more than likely carried out by the workers still alive inside or flew out on their own and got too cold. Either way they came from inside those hives.

Another words they are a sign of life that inside the balls are probably still alive and functioning.

Or they could be the few survivors that finally came out to die alone in the Winter wasteland. Except bees don't do that, they stick to the queen to the very last. No these dead bees scattered about are a pretty sure sign that there are more alive inside.

Tomorrow I will venture out to the other bee yards and see what I can see but I now have a bit more hope they also survived since those hives are a bit better protected than these out in the open.

After a couple of hours the supervisors were ready to go back inside to their nice warm beds. They had fully explored everywhere the snow had melted but were pretty limited and refused to actually go out into the snow although the birds that were out there were quite interesting.

Life is good

After coming back in my direct supervisor decided she wanted to be carried around on my shoulder. She usually gets her way I have noticed.

Keep Prepping Everyone!!!