The Devil Made Me Do It

My younger brother Marc is going to kill me for writing this.

I remember when we were kids, I swear, he could've won an Academy Award.

The boy had all of his teachers snookered.  They'd tell my parents how he was a model

child, kind, courteous and oh, so well mannered.

He was Mr. Hyde at home.

All spit, vinegar and fury.

In fact, I secretly referred to him as Satan's spawn.

(Thankfully, he grew out of that and is an incredible brother now).

My point is, Kean clearly takes after his Uncle Marc, the younger version.

I had to go to the first day of a two day disability training meeting.

My mom watched Keanut for the morning and my dear friend Kim Leach

took over for the afternoon.

When I got home, Kean was soooo sweet-- hugging on her, hugging on me, then back to her.

I was worried about leaving him after yesterday's Chemo-- but Kim told me he was wonderful.

Yep, he was until about an hour after she left.



Then Angel Boy turned into Anger Boy.

Old shades of Uncle Marc emerged.

I'm pretty sure we can blame it on the steroids Kean is back on again.



 Thankfully he's only on it for ten times each month

and won't end up going back to the Buddha Baby stage (see below).

But we will get Roid Rage Boy.

Oh well.

p.s. Byron opened up our one remaining hive tonight.

It looks healthy and thriving.

Keep your fingers crossed the little guys survive and we get some honey-- yum.

Mass Murder, Death and Destruction

Bring on the black!  We are all in a state of mourning here at Barker Park.

A few days ago, we noticed many of the bees from our hive on the outside of the hive

and tiny bits of what looked like chewed up wax all over the ground.

In the picture below, you can see the wax and those dark spots are all dead bees.

We called on our bee expert -- Grandpa Bodily who said he had read and heard about this phenomenon

but had never seen it in person.

It seems a rogue bee had gotten into the hive, stolen some honey and then triumphantly

gone out and gotten the rest of his hive to come raid ours.

Grandpa Bodily said the two hives will fight to the death.

Sure enough... our hive was decimated.

Here's a closeup-- see the fuzzy, yellow bees-- those were our good guys.

The bee in black is one of the bad guys.

 Here's a picture of one of the queen pods-- she would typically be protected inside that little cone-- but alas,

she was M.I.A.

 Byron opened up the hive and it was cleaned out.

Literally.

Grandpa Bodily said the raiding bees can strip a hive clean of honey and bees in two hours flat.

Both of our hives got hit.

It is so sad to drive by our hives and see nothing-- no little bees buzzing around.

Now I kinda know how farmers must feel after losing a crop.

It sucks.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, ends your lesson for the day on nature.

Tune in again, hopefully, we'll have a more positive lesson in the future.



Beesapalooza

Bees have been very much on the minds at the Barker homestead.

Holland has been working on a science project on our bees for the past month.

The first one didn't work, so we completely changed and started another bee project last week.

I've been stressed enough about it, I've been dreaming of bees-- scary, eh?

This afternoon, when she went to check the temperature of the hive, lookey at what she spotted:

 For those of you who are not bee-savvy, that big brown nest looking thing is a swarm of bees.  And there's actually another smaller, swarm above and to the left.

We used to have three hives but lost two over the winter.

So McGyver... I mean, Byron suited up and took down the swarms.

 He placed the bees on the branches into a bucket and moved them over to one of our empty hives.

 We figure he gathered about 5 thousand bees.

They weren't too happy at the beginning...

But I'm happy to report, they settled right down for a good night's sleep.

And we have no stings to report.

Mission successful.

Now let's hope for a good haul of honey.



A Taste of Heaven

Eureka! Guess what we feasted on tonight??? Our first harvest of fresh honey. And oh boy, was it ever yummy! We couldn't even wait for the crusty bread in the oven-- we just gobbled it raw. Of course, we had to avoid the one dead bee in the corner. But that's a small price to pay for fresh, straight out of the hive, honey!

The girl on the right, is Meagan, our neighbor-- in case you were wondering...

And yesterday, Reesey's preschool had it's Halloween extravaganza. Don't ask me what her costume is-- some kind of goth fairy princess that made a pit stop at the Mardi Gras.

The boy with her is Kamden-- one of the two boys in her class.

Byron Barker's Bizarre Busy Bee Bonanza (Part II)

There was nothing restful about Sunday. We were like busy little bees preparing for the great bee transfer. Sorry for the cheesy writing. I couldn't resist! Some of the girls' friends came over and helped us paint our bee box. I venture to say, we have the cutest bee box in the country. If the bees don't like their new home-- they have no taste!

Last night around 7, Grandpa Bodily helped us prep the bee box with some honey.

He then "coached' Byron on how to do the big transfer--- move about 20 thousand bees from a sealed cardboard box into the bee hive.

Can you see all the bees in the box? This is about as close as I dared get. (I think you can click on the picture to get a bigger look at the massive amount of bees).

In fact, Byron had quite the audience.

Even the horses were intrigued.

Who would've ever guessed watching Byron put his life at risk could be such a party?

Anyway, I'm happy to report another successful operation-- meaning no stings. Byron did have a bit more professional attire this time around. We borrowed a real hat from our friend Susan (thanks)!

Honey, sweet honey-- here we come!

The Secret Life of Bees (Part 1)

As if we don't have enough craziness in our lives--- Byron has, for a while, wanted to get a few boxes of bees going on our property. He's even looked into buying a "hive" of honey bees and having them shipped to our house. (Really, they do that and it's about a hundred bucks). We can save our money. This afternoon, our neighbor called us over to look at a swarm in his tree. Voila--- free honey bees. We threw together a make-shift beekeeper costume. Whaddya think of my handiwork? Ski boots, snowmobile pants, gloves, some netting, my old hat from Haiti and a roll of good ol' duct tape-- ta da! Anyway, under the careful coaching of Grandpa Bodily (did you know he used to raise bees in California?), Byron was able to put the football sized swarm into a cardboard box without getting a single sting!!! Grandpa Bodily estimates they captured about 20 thousand bees tonight. The box was HEAVY and boy, oh boy, you should have heard the ranting and raving of those bees safely inside the box. They weren't a happy bunch.

This is Bob-- it was his house and his tree. We very smartly watched from a distance. (I got there late-- after it was done).

Now that phase one is done and the bees are in a box in my garage (I'll be parking outside until they are gone tomorrow), Grandpa Bodily and Byron have headed over to my friend Susan's house to pick up a couple of bee hives. She happens to have two extra. Sure seems like we are meant to have bees. I hope we know what we are getting in to!