A new poodle chapter

About three years ago, my cousin decided to get a dog. He wanted a dog that could ride along with him in his truck as he made service calls for his business. The dog needed to be a poodle because of his allergies. He found a breeder with puppies who talked him into taking the mom instead. That was Lucy.

But Lucy was not a very outgoing dog – super sweet but shy, too – and really, the job didn't lend itself to ride-alongs like my cousin hoped. Lucy ended up staying home alone a lot. So my cousin got Jackson to keep her company.
I met Jackson when he was about 4 months old. We had a little meetup at the dog park.

Such a cute little guy! And good for Lucy, who clearly relished his company.
Fast forward to today.

My cousin recognized that he was too busy to give Lucy and Jackson the attention they need. He loves the dogs, but could hardly spend time with them. I had told him more than a year ago that when Sophie died, I would be happy to take them. So today they became mine.
I thought I would wait longer, but it's been very hard having an empty house, and I knew these two would be happy here. They're good dogs.

Thank you

Thanks to everyone who left such kind comments about Sophie. She really was a special dog.

Sophie came to me when she was two months old and I was living in South Dakota. My mom found her for me in Chicago after a long and careful search and drove her out. (That's Mom with Sophie at right.) Working nights, I had a lot of free daytime to devote to the training and exercise of my goofy little girl, and even after we moved to Colorado, I continued with advanced training, both voice commands and hand signals.

I think good genetics and abundant exercise helped her stay healthy as long as she did. The training and her sweet nature meant she was welcomed everywhere and admired even by people who don't like dogs. When her hearing started to go, she still could follow hand commands, and she knew never to cross the street without waiting for me to give the OK.

When she was three, I adopted another poodle, a 5-year-old named Doogie (that's the name he came with). He was an awesome dog, too. Twice her size and a big love-sponge. Sophie used him as a pillow, and taught him the Good Dog rules by example. His later diagnosis of heart disease meant two years of constant vet visits, myriad medications and a long, slow decline. Sophie was with him when he died in his sleep. She knew he wasn't coming back. She seemed happy to be an only dog again, so I didn't adopt another.

After my experience with Doogie, I hoped that when Sophie went, it would be fast. And it was. On Monday we were getting ready to go for a walk when she had a massive seizure and didn't come out of it. The Sergeant and I rushed her to the vet but nothing could stop whatever was happening in her brain. So I let her go.

It was a hard decision and an easy one. By that point, her life had already ended. Her heart couldn't take any more drugs and she'd likely suffered severe brain damage.

She lived a good, long life, longer than most. So while it was horrible to lose her that way, I can console myself that it wasn't before her time and that (hopefully) she lost awareness very quickly. She went from fine to gone in 20 minutes.

If there is a doggie heaven, I am sure Doogie was there to welcome her.

Sophie, 1995-2009

Bearding bees

We've finally had a couple of hot days, with temps in the upper 80s, after a long stretch of cooler and cloudier weather and afternoon storms. The bees have been able to get out and about, of course, but they are much more active when it's nice and hot and sunny and they can work without fear of interruption.

Warmer days also mean a warmer hive. The ideal temperature in the hive is about 95 degrees, summer and winter. If it's cold out, the bees cluster together and vibrate their wing muscles to create heat to keep themselves and their brood warm. If it's hot, the foragers are out as much as possible while the house bees work on tending to the young, cleaning the hive and managing the honey and pollen stores.

And keeping the air moving. Bees position themselves throughout the hive and fan their wings to accomplish this. Good air circulation helps maintain a steady temperature and evaporates the water that is in the stored nectar. When the nectar is sufficiently "cured" and capped with wax, that's honey!

If it's really hot out, the bees will bring in extra water for evaporative cooling. And at night, when the hive is full, the bees will gather on the stoop in large numbers, a phenomenon called "bearding." Bees will beard if the hive is too crowded (a warning sign that they might swarm), but it's also just something they do when they're hot.

When I went out in the garden late last night to cut some herbs, I could hear my bees buzzing and discovered they were bearding. I took some pictures with the flash (as above), but they weren't great.

Tonight I went out with the tripod and used my headlamp to illuminate them instead. That worked better.
Click on this photo (and the flower ones above) to see it larger.

I don't worry about swarming, as I know they've still got lots of building room, and this is a pretty small beard. I figure the girls are just enjoying the balmy summer evening.

High on bees

Oh look, another swarm!
Would've been fun to capture it myself, but here's why I couldn't:
Yeah, I don't have a 12-foot-ladder like Michael does. The bees first clustered in one tree, then took off and reclustered down the block.

It's really interesting to follow along under a cloud of bees, trying to figure out where they're going.

This was a big swarm and took an hour to vacuum up. They were headed to a family in Nederland, up in the mountains. A swarm that size might have a good chance to build up enough stores there before winter comes.

Sure hope so. They were sweet girls.

Frolic Friday

Now with 200 percent more poodles!

Queenright

When I did my first inspection of the hive last week, I asked Deb if she'd come take pictures. Not just as a record for the blog, but also because I could then examine the combs more closely at my leisure simply by enlarging the photos. And I could ask those who are more expert to look at them, too.

I had my own camera set up on a tripod to take video, and it really bums me out that it came out blurry. I think a bee may have flown in front of it as I was focusing, and I didn't notice because of the veil. Next time, I will double-check that, and also shoot in shorter, Youtube-friendly segments to minimize the need to edit down. Lessons learned.

I let Deb wear the full bee suit and just donned a veil and gloves myself. The gloves probably weren't necessary, but I didn't want to risk another ring-finger sting.

The first thing I did was mark the top bars with a yardstick. I read a tip, too late, to shove all the bars to one side before the bees start building comb. That way, when you take a bar out, you can put it back in exactly as it was positioned before.
You also want to mark the bars so you put them back in facing the same direction as when they came out. Bees do some pretty fancy calculus to position their combs just so, and you don't want to mess that up.

My solution was to draw a line across all the bars. When I put bars back, I made sure the line matched up again.

Then I started working through the bars, starting at the end farthest from the entrance. The far bars were empty, but I could tell when I was getting closer to comb because they were more and more glued down by propolis. My lovely hive tool came in handy for gently prying the bars loose.
Propolis is basically bee-glue created from tree sap. It has anti-microbial properties and is used to plug up small holes, smooth rough edges and stick things together so the hive is nice and solid.

It was pretty exciting to get to the first comb!
It's so cute! This bar is just getting started. Notice how the bees have found the precise center of the bar and are working outward from there.
The next comb was even bigger.
See the bees hanging off each other on the bottom of the comb? That's called "festooning."
It sounds very festive, doesn't it? What they're doing is creating a living plumb line so that their comb is built exactly perpendicular to the pull of gravity.

Here I'm holding an imaginary plumb bob and as I explain festooning to Deb.

This is why a top bar hive has to be absolutely level. If your hive is tilted, your comb will be, too, and that may make it difficult to remove.

The next bars were completely built out.
I was looking at each bar and trying to figure out what I was looking at. And not really knowing what to be looking for. Mainly, I was concerned about finding evidence of a queen.
I wasn't looking for the queen herself (she's hard to spot), but for eggs and brood. Brood is babies, and if you've got a lot of brood, you know you've got a queen.

I got some expert opinions on the last post to help me, and the consensus was that the capped cells are capped brood (and not honey) in a nice, solid pattern, which indicates a productive queen. In other words, this hive is "queenright." Hooray!

When I got the rest of the photos from Deb at a somewhat higher resolution, I was able to blow them up and see larvae in some of the cells.
I should explain the bee life cycle here: The queen lays an egg in a cell. When it hatches into a larva, the nurse bees feed it honey, pollen and royal jelly. When it gets big and fat, the workers cap over the cell, and the larva spins a cocoon (just like a butterfly), pupates and becomes an adult bee, emerging to become a worker herself.

In the above photo, you can see a couple larvae in the cells at the center. Around the top is honey, and around the bottom is capped brood.

It is actually possible for a hive to continue for some time without a queen, so wondering if I had one or not was a valid concern.

I still had six bars to inspect, but the sound of thunder started making me a little anxious, and the bees were also getting more agitated. They didn't want to get rained on, either! So I decided to stop there.
I was taught that you never want to be more than a couple of steps away from closing the hive. That way, if you or the bees start having issues, you can quickly close up and go. With the top bar hive, you could always just toss an extra bar into the gap. But otherwise, you're just sliding all the following bars forward like hanging files.

The only thing that slows down the process is the girls themselves, who invariably insist on trying to dash out or in as you are slowly easing the bars closed. You can get them closed without crushing anyone, but it takes patience.
"Mind the gap, girls, mind the gap!"