Well after a slightly busier than normal spring, summer finally arrived and with it even more fun! After our excitement with Anna things finally settled down somewhat as we got used to having another little one to watch after. The picture below is of my brothers and my children. They are all pretty close in age and when they get together they have a blast. This summer we have had lots of opportunities to visit - on the farm, at the pool and on the lake.
One would probably think that with all of this excitement, all of the extra family activities and the wet, cold spring I might have just said, "maybe I should just skip the farmer stuff this summer and give Farmer Dan a rest". Well that didn't happen and although my crops don't look all that wonderful, this terrible heat wave that I keep hearing about in the news seemed to have caught up most things. I guess I've never thought heat was that terrible - I don't have a full time job where I have to spend all of my time out in it, but I never let it stop me from doing things outside that need to be done.
One thing that has come out of all of this heat has been storms and while the Stewart area has gotten by with just minor problems MN in general is looking pretty ragged in a few places. My brother and I drove through Tyler, MN about an hour after an F-2 tornado hit and I have never seen anything like it. We drove and drove and drove for about 60 miles through the area and the amount of trees uprooted, power lines down on the road and damage to farm sites was unreal.
As you can see on the picture below there is a rope going around my hive - I'm still thinking if this would really help, but two weeks ago a storm blew through here around 10pm. Since the power was out I thought I would take a walk to see what things looked like after the wind calmed down and I found one of my beehives was toppled over. I wasn't really sure what to do, but since there was more rain coming I thought it should be righted ASAP. So I put on all my gear and went out with my flashlight. Little did I know that the bees thought that I tipped their hive over! Saying that they were unhappy about their new horizontal position was as big as an understatement as saying that the people of Minnesota were happy their government shut down.
I thought I had seen mad bees before but this was something off the charts. I only wish I would have been able to capture this to help reinforce my words, but since it was midnight and there was another round of storms coming I wasn't going to stop and get my camera and floodlights. I think I was stung between 20-30 times right through all my gear! I was covered in bees, but I managed to stick it out long enough to get things mostly righted before the rain started again.
I've asked a few people what they thought about this and most seem to think the bees would be able to recover from this. I'm not sure what will happen, but after a few days things calmed down and below is what you will see today - pretty normal. Just to give some perspective - the hive as it stood that night weighed probably close to 300lbs - just imagine how much wind it would take to blow over a 300lb person. I'm lucky that was all that happened that night - aside from a few branches being down.
Keeping bees has been one of the most rewarding things I've ever done, I've learned so many things in the last 4 years. So far I have not repeated most of the mistakes I've made. But just watching their organization and how they operate is amazing. I took this picture at 9pm so it's pretty safe to stand this close. The bees are starting to make their way home and are pretty calm. When it's warm like it was today there are always a bunch of them sitting with their butts towards the hive and their wings at a strange angle and they just sit and fan. With a few hundred of them doing this (you can see a few doing it in this picture), they create a draft in the hive. Other bees are bringing drops of water which they leave at the entrance for some to blow. Essentially they are air conditioning their home. They do this for two main reasons - one is to help dry the honey down and the other is to keep their wax from melting.
So I'll conclude with another sunset picture. It seemed like for a few months I had been missing them, the last few weeks there are very few that I have missed. Say what you will about living in the middle of now where, but I'll take my sunsets and sunrises that are as close to perfect as you can watch aside from being on an ocean. One thing about this location is that I get to see both! Those living on an ocean usually only get a good sunrise or sunset. Most of the time the other is blocked by city, mountains or something else and they will never have a clear view both ways.
