Herniated disk

Well I have to have surgery this Friday on my c5 and c6 vertebrae where there is a herniated disk and bulge pressing on my nerves, making my arm tingle and losing strength.  Not very happy about it but don't want to play around with treatments the doc thinks will not work due to my lack of response to a week of steroids and anti-inflammatory drugs.  

We have so much to do and so many started projects!  One of our hives, the Roman hive, lost their queen but luckily a couple club members who know that I'm disabled from lifting came over with some brood and a capped queen to install in that hive with hopes it will set the babies right in a week or so.  The other hive, the Gothic Hive, seems strong.

Lesson 1: don't use a rubber band to secure the queen cage, it isn't secure and the extra panic of finding the cage and putting the queen on top of the bars made for the hive to start building comb inside the lid instead of on the frames.  When we opened it up the combs fell down and could have very well killed our queen.

Lesson 2: A miller feeder is less invasive feeder for beehives than the Ultimate Hive feeder 

and doesn't allow for that extra room where bees can build comb willy nilly.  We have two arriving on Monday and hoping a club member can help me switch this out and both hives will continue strong and happy.

The comb we took out was so pretty with nectar stored and pollen.  We also saw eggs so are pretty sure the queen was on these combs and most likely perished when they fell down.  If the cage had stayed down in the frames I'm sure the bees would have built comb where they should have since they follow the queen.

Our horses are doing well.  They need a good grooming but other than that are content and happy.  Grass is coming in, we already spread manure and seed in one field and in patches in the other field plus strayed for weeds just in the fields.  We are allowing all sorts of flowers and such where the horses don't need have their food grown.  We still have plenty of hay so are slowing getting the ponies on the field.  Obviously it will be a while before I can ride again.  So bummed.

We have seedlings starting for some gardening in a fenced of area for our garden.  Steve is building us some raised beds in a little bit for us to transfer them.  It will be awesome to just go outside and pick my salad!  For now that's the drama at Geek Acres.  I have the best husband ever, who is helping out so much.  I hate we can't divide the chores like we normally do but such is life, if the tables were turned I'd be doing the same!  Happy spring wishes to everyone!

The Bee Package installs!

I'm dealing with an arthritic neck and possibly a pinched nerve, MRI next week, so wasn't really up to being fully hands on with our bees.  Still very excited!

Activities around Geek Acres

What can I say but life is pretty busy, we are gearing up for beekeeping, dealing with a mud season (aka muddy ponies) and preparing for spring in many different ways.

Steve has been working from home rather than on site for his recent contract, which has been great. He's also had some fun making things with his new wood working toys. He's made several bluebird boxes, hive stands and a beekeeping tool box for me and has other things in the works. 

 I've spent a lot of time painting the beehives. There are many steps involved since I'm not painting them just one color, I'm painting them like houses. The first one I painted like this cute building we saw in Rome that was gorgeous. Then I decided to make a stone sided gothic style manor. I found a dollhouse company that makes cool stencils for doing stonework on dollhouses so I used it for the beehives using paint. Easy peasy! Just takes a really long time but going a little crazy on cuteness is sort of my thing. 

We also prepared our apiary site.  The first site we had liked was a bit too shady so we decided on one much more prominent in our backyard and with full sun.  Hopefully it will work well.  

That shady area is just down the hill from the beautiful plum tree we had to majorly cut back.  It was plagued by black knot fungus with the only way to help it survive being to cut out the infected wood.  I thought this tree was so pretty but it was over grown, not pruned and in a shady area it just had all cards stacked against it.  We will see if it can survive and if it will return to it's pretty self some years down the road

Stay tuned, we got our bees and I have a video of our bee package installations.

I have a pinched nerve in my neck and having pain and numbness so haven't been able to do much the past couple of days.  The horses are doing good, I've been dying to go work with them but that will have to wait a little bit.  At least it's greening up and they are shedding and getting shiny again!