A Hard to get going day

I had to run in to the county seat today and take care of a vehicle registration. Seems I have the right to travel of course but any mechanism other than the Liberal bicycle requires fees, taxes and inspections. Which actually makes me wonder how long it's going to be before the state starts hitting those spandex wearing environuts with their own set of taxes and fees. I mean many of those bikes cost more than my little PoS beater car and they are using the roads too. Shouldn't they be inspected and have insurance as well?

Anyway that ate up a good chunk of a perfectly gorgeous morning. On my way back I decided it was time to begin taking apart and cleaning up the dead out hives I have from Winter losses.

Oh ya... I didn't lose anymore hives with this latest arctic blast either so I am still looking at nine hives going into Spring. At this point I am about to breath a huge sigh of relief too because I don't think I will lose anymore either. The forecast is predicting almost 70 by Monday and I think I am going to put some actual syrup in the hives as it should be warm enough for them to start taking it especially if I feed it inside the hives.

So I had the one dead out from the North bee yard and I was kinda curious to see what had happened since that was a pretty strong hive going into Winter. It was also a bit heavier than I expected it to be. I loaded the entire thing up in the truck then drove home to eat a quick lunch and when I came back out to start my inspection the entire thing was full of bees.

I tried to get some good pictures but the Sun angle was so low in the sky all I got was glare mostly but apparently in the few minutes I was inside eating the girls from the Garden Hives discovered this open dead out hive and began robbing it. It's all good if they can make use of what's left but it made it a bit hard to take the hive apart and I even got stunk once when I put my thumb on a bee that I thought was dead.

I decided to finish taking the hive apart tomorrow and hope I can get some good pictures because what I found was kinda interesting. So I moved to moving wood chips around from the piles I have of them. I got some pot holes and ruts kinda filled in and a few loads spread out when I discovered the piles are all frozen solid about 3 to 4 inches in.

That kinda ended that project.

I moved on to trying to take the old fence down in the front grass lot. The field was way too wet and muddy yet to take the truck or the tractor out in it so I just grabbed some hand tools and walked. The panels that were used to patch the thing have become so sunk into the ground (which is still frozen about 2 inches or so down) that I couldn't budge them.

By that time I just gave up for the day and put my tools and the parts of the hive I could get to away. I managed to make some progress but it's going to take another few days of warm temperatures to begin thawing and drying everything out enough to actually get any real work done outside. Once I get these two dead out hives taken apart and cleaned up I think I will switch to working in the shop for the next couple of weeks as bee hive production needs to take priority right now anyway.

Then again I really need to get those wood chips spread out so I can plant some more fruit trees too.

Keep Prepping Everyone!!!