After what seemed like a month of Portland’s patented KrapWeather, we’ve finally gotten some sun! And no sooner did I go out to dose myself with vitamin D, did I see these kids:
Killer! Bees!
So, as I’m standing there basking in nature’s wonder, one of the little bastards flies right over to my leg:
And takes a dump on it.
Kind of… cute… in a bee kind of way.
It appears that I just happened to pick the only tube with dead bees in it when I looked earlier in the season. They’re not coming out of the other half (that I didn’t molest) either. It looks like that one might have had mites since the cocoons appeared different than the viable ones.
In any case, wifey and I walked over to the other location where I’d left half of them, and two of them were, let’s say, making love. And a third was emerging from a separate straw. Hopefully, we’ll be sick with mason bees.
Given that the spraying seems to have forestalled the oozing goo on the peach tree… no, I won’t even say it.
Dennis the chicken man called to tell me that he’d learned from MacMurray Hatchery that several of the chickens they’d sent were infected with “epidemic tremor.” That’s actually what Dippy had. It’s characterized by lack of balance and stunted growth. He also explained that even if they survive (50-50 chance), they’re screwed up for life. He’d managed to get some to survive, and now he’s got to dispatch them (the disease is transferred to the chicks from the hen.)
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I literally laughed out loud at the “who’s a little poopy bee?” caption. Hee.
[...] If you’re not familiar, mason bees work like this. In the early spring, they come out of their cocoons, fly around, collect pollen by the bucketful, and build nests (one at a time) where they drop an egg, some pollen, and cork it with mud. Then, they do that again… and again… until they die in early summer. Those eggs hatch, eat the pollen, grow into adults, and by late summer, they’ve wrapped themselves into a cocoon to sleep for the winter… and the beautiful circle of life continues. THE CIRCLE OF LLLLLIIIIIIFFFFFFFEEEEEEE!!! [...]