The queen is dead; long live the queen!

Here's some beekeeping updates:

With the unseasonably hot weather we've been having, the bees often congregate (or "beard") outside the hive on hot evenings. Apparently this in no way indicates swarming is imminent; it's just to cool down.

One of our hives is thriving enormously (the one on the right).

So much so that it was time to put on supers.

The active bees had built burr comb on the underside of the lid. Yep, definitely time for supers. I don't want crowded conditions to trigger swarming.

But the other hive wasn't thriving at all. In contrast to the right-hand hive, the left-hand hive many frames were still entirely empty, with no comb-building at all. A close inspection of the existing combs revealed no eggs, no larvae, nothing.

Crud. The queen is dead.

After consulting with our beekeeping mentor, we made arrangements to purchase another queen. Unfortunately I couldn't pick her up until my next "city day" in Spokane, which was yesterday.

This is the beekeeper, fetching the queen. You can see just a few of the dozens of hives he has scattered around. Behind him is the Spokane River -- he's right on the bank. It was a lovely peaceful spot in the midst of the city.

I wanted to get right close in to take photos, but not without protective gear -- as the beekeeper noted, the bees get testy when working with queens, and he doesn't smoke his bees when opening the hive.

He removed a frame...

...and put it to one side.

I was surprised to see it was a specialized frame with queen cages tucked inside.

Reverting back to the previous photo shown above, I learned later that while the frame with the queen cages was put to one side, what the beekeeper was doing was taking another (empty) queen cage, and tucking in some worker bees inside to become attendants to the queen for the next few days.

Then he closed up the hive. Back inside the shop, he removed the plugs from the queen cages (closing them up with his finger)...

...then put the cages end to end so there was a tunnel between them. We gave the insects a few minutes to sort things out -- either the queen would crawl into the cage with the workers, or the workers would crawl into the cage with the queen (which is finally what happened).

He re-plugged the queen cage (which, by the way, has some sort of food source inside the cage) and handed it to us. Younger Daughter carried it on her lap as we made the long drive home, making sure to keep it out of direct sun.

Once home, it was past 7 pm and too late to insert the queen into our hive. This morning we made ready to do so.

The queen is helpfully marked with a bright blue dot. Apparently the color is determined by the year -- 2015 is the "blue" year -- and this will help us locate her in a mass of moving bees, should the need arise.

Younger Daughter christened the new queen "Elizabeth II." Long live the queen!

This morning I smoked the weak hive and opened it up. I filled the frame feeder with fresh syrup -- the stronger hive has long since ceased using supplemental feed, but the weak hive still needs it -- and inserted it back into the hive.

Then I inserted the still-plugged queen cage between two frames and lodged it there, and closed up the hive.

As Don put it, there must be a Borg-like sense of relief at the introduction of a new queen, even if she's a stranger at the moment. After all, without a queen, a bee's existence is purposeless.

According to the instruction of our beekeeping mentor(s) (both said the same thing), we'll wait a few days before replacing the plug on the queen cage with a mini-marshmallow, which the bees will chew through in short order. A day or two after that, we'll lift an entire frame of capped brood (brushed free of bees) from the healthy hive and insert it into the weak hive, so the bees have a jump start on extra workers. A day or two after that, we'll repeat the process with yet another frame of capped brood from the healthy hive. And -- hopefully -- that will do it.

Incidentally, it's worth noting both the professional beekeepers I've spoken to in the last week have asserted the same thing: this is one of the toughest summers regional beekeepers have faced in a long time. Drought combined with high temperatures are making things challenging enough. For novice beekeepers such as ourselves, all we can do is rise to meet that challenge.

Red flags, blue herons

This morning when I released the chickens from the coop, I noticed they didn't immediately rush to the compost pile or the barn or any of their other usual haunts. In fact, they all stood stock-still under the awning by their chicken coop, utterly silent.

Their heads were cocked upward. I scanned the skies for a predator but didn't see anything.

Aha. I was wrong, the chickens were right. Perched way atop a dead tree was a great blue heron. Not, I will add, the usual perch for a heron. No wonder the chickens were wary.

A heron is a carnivore, but its usual prey is fish, frogs, etc. It would certainly never attack a chicken -- not so much because it wouldn't mind a nice juicy little chick, but because its body is not suitable to a swoop-and-catch like a hawk or eagle.

In a few moments the heron flew away, and the chickens relaxed.

This short and seemingly trivial incident actually has some deeper implications for people.

Modern humans living in modern society with modern conveniences have learned to ignore the internal red flags that all creatures possess by instinct. In the kill-or-be-killed crucible of nature, to ignore a potential threat may be the last thing an animal ever does.

Yet people will do it all the time. In fact, most modern Americans have cultivated an amazing ability to disregard warning signs, both internal and external. We still have the instincts, but we're often too "civilized" to pay attention to them. But I figure instinct is there for a reason, and that reason might be very important.

This is some of the advice I gave Older Daughter as she prepared to leave the nest: to listen to that still, small voice inside you saying something is wrong. It may be saying something important. God gives us those little red flags now so we can avoid big problems later.

Portrait of a nanny

Older Daughter just sent us a formal nanny school portrait of herself and her classmates, decked out in full dress blues (well, dress blacks).

(She's front, right.)

Cash under the mattress or chickens in the yard?

We've been watching the situation in Greece with great concern. It seems the instability in the Greek banking system has reached crisis proportions, and the EU itself is threatened.

And it is the ordinary Greeks who are suffering. Anyone drawing a pension is limited to taking out 120 euros per week, and others are limited to 60 euros per day (in some places it's 50 euros, since apparently Greece is running out of 20-euro bills).

Yesterday I saw an interesting article entitled Greek villagers' secret weapon: Grow your own food. "Ilias Mathes has protection against bank closures, capital controls and the slashing of his pension: 10 goats, some hens and a vegetable patch," starts the article.

It goes on to say that while rural villages are by no means immune to the financial crisis, at least they're not in imminent danger of starving.

Meanwhile in urban areas, grocery store shelves are being stripped bare as people desperately stock up. At the moment grocery stores are resupplying from their own storage areas, but the cash crunch means incoming supplies are slowing down. I doubt anyone is going to let Greece starve, but it's not a fun situation for the ordinary Greek citizen.

Now consider this article I tucked aside from a couple weeks ago in which one of Britain's most senior fund managers urges people to "hold physical cash" (euphemistically referred to as putting money under the mattress) to prepare for a "systemic event." I'm sure Greece was on his radar when he said this.

Quoting the article: "'Systemic risk is in the system and as an investor you have to be aware of that,' he told Telegraph Money. The best strategy to deal with this, he said, was for investors to spread their money widely into different assets, including gold and silver, as well as cash in savings accounts. But he went further, suggesting it was wise to hold some 'physical cash,' an unusual suggestion from a mainstream fund manager."

As as the Greeks are discovering, cash metaphorically under the mattress is great, but you can't eat it. The rural Greeks who have chickens, goats, and gardens -- even if they have no cash whatever --

are in a better position than those who are facing bare grocery store shelves and riots in the streets. If nothing else, it gives them goods to barter.

This is why I urge people to consider what we call tangible investments. Some interpret this term to mean gold and silver. That's fine and dandy if you can afford it, but we've taken a different route. We're "investing" in our farm and its infrastructure and livestock.

As the Greeks are discovering, it's not a bad investment tactic in the long run.

Home from Ohio

Sorry for the silence of the last couple of days. It's been an intense time of traveling and catching up on chores at home. As you may have gathered, I'm back from Ohio.

Before I left, Older Daughter had just started her classes and showed me some of the books she would be using.

She was particularly taken with how thick the etiquette book is.

Proper etiquette is an integral part of a professional live-in nanny's life, particularly since she'll be placed with a wealthy family.

Then came the difficult moment of saying goodbye. It's time to let Older Daughter soar on her own.

Speaking of soaring, I took off the next day and left Cleveland behind. Here's the shoreline of Lake Erie as the plane gained altitude...

...along with some of the clouds that have bedeviled the area.

I always request a window seat for the few times a decade I fly, since the views are always a novelty. (The spots you see are on the plane window, not my camera lens. Well, most of the spots.)

The further west we went, the drier the terrain became.

An unknown and isolated little town.

Eventually we passed over the more forested portions of western Montana where things got more interesting.

We flew right over Coeur d'Alene. "Hey, stop the plane! Parachute me out! I'll walk home!"

Here's a glimpse of Spokane. I believe the main thoroughfare is Division Avenue.

I think this is the Columbia River, but I'm not entirely certain.

We approached the Cascade Mountains, and this mighty peak reared upward: Mount Rainier.

At last we landed in Seattle.

On the way to claim my bag, I was amused by this sculpture of skewered luggage.

After negotiating the highways out of the city with surprisingly little trouble (it was about 8 pm by this point), I headed east toward the Cascades. I was actually feeling pretty good and planned to get to the other side of the mountains before stopping for the night.

(How's this for timing? The mountain peak just touching the full moon rising.)

However the pass -- that would be Snoqualmie Pass -- was closed. Yes, closed. Why? It couldn't possibly be weather-related...

So I was forced to turn around and find lodging for the night. The first motel -- I emphasize motel -- I stopped at wanted a staggering $220 for the night (and had a sourpuss proprietor to boot). Um, NO. Driving on, I came to the town of North Bend and stopped at this plain little motor court motel.

I'm not exaggerating when I say the room had not been updated since the 1970s (with the exception of a flat-screen TV mounted on the wall), complete with one of the first push-button telephones.

But it was squeaky-clean and decently-priced, and the friendly proprietor told me they closed the pass once in awhile for "blasting."

I wondered what they were blasting, but the next day as I drove over Snoqualmie Pass, I saw they were doing major construction, so presumably it was associated with that.

I crossed the pass and headed east, descending down the mountains. Here's a final glimpse of Rainier in the sideview mirror.

I thought about searching for an alternate route over the Columbia River after seeing the massive traffic jam the Friday before, but the only alternate routes were several hours' drive out of my way (either north or south). I figured it was better to tough it out in the traffic jam.

But I sailed right through. They were still doing construction on the bridge, but there was no back-log at all. Phew.

Then it was hours and hours of boring solitary driving across a desert-y landscape.

I was never so glad to see Spokane. I had already called ahead to Don, who was meeting me at the car rental agency in Coeur d'Alene. The trip was almost over.

We came home to hot hot hot temperatures -- it was 98F today -- but I slept like a baby in my own bed once more.

I'm glad to be home, though we're missing Older Daughter something fierce. But she called last night and we put her on speaker phone, and she talked with great animation for 45 minutes, telling us about her classes, instructors, and job prospects. Yes, it was the right decision for her to attend nanny school.