This next picture is the flip side of the water meter cover. The tiniest hive ever.
James looking preppy, beekeeping cool and the bee vacuum (The clear tupperwear container on the left). I tweaked with the vacuum and it actually worked on this one! As opposed to the last time, when we kept sucking at those bees and they kept on holding on to each other's legs 'n junk and I vacuumed up maybe 1 bee. The bee vacuum works by sucking the bees into an inner chamber that has lots of breathable mesh sides so they don't overheat. I can remove the inner chamber and put in a new one if there are gobs of bees and they don't fit. There wasn't a power source nearby so were able to borrow an emergency battery operated vacuum from our friend Michael, who is practically his own Home Depot, with all the power tools he owns.
We sucked up the bees, drove them to Bosque Farms and joined them with a weak beehive, Canada. I joined the 2 hives because I didn't think either of them could raise a big enough workforce to survive next winter. To join the hives, I took a wet piece of newspaper and completely closed off 1/2 of Canada's hive box. I then emptied the water meter bees into the back, empty part of the Canada hive. Within the next 2-3 days the 2 separate hives will chew their way to each other through the newspaper. Guess what happens next? The queen bees fight to the death. This seems to be the way every story I tell ends these days.
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