A Golden Glimmer Of Hope…

I’ve been monitoring the honeybees all week.  The good news was that they were eating, which made me really happy.  I got even happier still when I saw them coming in loaded down with pollen!  Normal hive activity made me almost giddy actually, I mean to me that’s a positive sign and as long as they are working I’ll keep working to help them all I can.. Or should I say ‘we’ it appears that a little bee love has worked it’s way into Randy’s heart as well.  His concern for them has surprised me and his determination to ‘stop whatever has been stealing from them’ has tugged at my heart, I love this man SO much!
So today, we went out first thing this morning and using metal screen he had cut to fit, he covered the two ventilation holes that were easiest to access.  The third however we decided to wait till later in the day when fewer bees would be in the hive as that one was in the middle of everything!  So after lunch we suited up, fired up the smoker and went in.  I moved all the empty frames from the end, then carefully took out 4 of the combs and placed them in that empty section so that Randy could put a piece of the metal (read that as chew proof!) screen over that last hole.  I carefully lifted and began to move the comb back when something sparkled and caught my eye, it was honey!  They made honey again and put it in their comb, I could’ve cried!  Then another frame I lifted there were girls all over it and Randy said “look it’s got pollen in it”!  Sure enough the cells had pollen in them, bright beautiful golden pollen.  I actually feel like I can take a breath or maybe release the one I’ve been holding since all this started. 
This doesn’t change plans though, we will be building hives this winter and I’ve found a source for high quality Northern breed and raised bees.  So come next Spring, there will either be two or three hives out in my bee yard.  My Our girls, well they are fighters and we totally respect and get that and we are both going to keep fighting right along with them!  Hopefully they can pull off a full recovery with a little help from their bee happy people!