One: I can’t get over how cute these bees are. Fanning off their hive to stay cool.
Two: Taking my son out of school early to get a treat!
Three: The tasty treat! The most delicious brownie ever made!
Four: My favorite place to run. A few hills to keep it challenging, paths without traffic to keep it quiet, and bridges to keep it interesting.
Five: Crusty bread right out of the oven with fresh honey creates a perfect side for dinner.
That’s our favorites of the week!
It’s getting cooler in the mornings, but it’s still pretty hot out during the day. A few weeks ago when it was consistently 100′ during the day we were worried about the bees getting too hot.
I guess we don’t have to worry too much about them, the bees seem to take care of themselves. When they get too hot in the hive, they hang out in the front of the hive. It’s called bearding. Because it looks like a beard, Ha! Crazy to see.
Why do they do that? It gets so hot inside with thousands of bees they need to relieve some of the body heat. Several bees move to the outside to cool off the hive.
Bees also blow in cool air by fanning at the entrance of the hive.
This is the cutest thing.
Who knew? 🙂
Today was a fabulous run for me.
Ran around my usual course.
The weather was beautiful. 70′. Cooler than it has been so it made the run easier and very enjoyable. I’m at a 11 minute mile and still working on getting my speed back!
For lunch we went to Shake Shack. A new restaurant in town and we had to try it. They were packed with a line out the door! I guess everyone needed to try it as well.
I wasn’t going to take a picture of my lunch, but it’s memorable. This place doesn’t have a selection for a vegetarian. The only sandwich without meat was a ‘shroom burger. It’s a cheese filled fried mushroom. I’m not into mushrooms so I I told my brother I’m good with fries and part of his shake.
He ordered me the mushroom burger anyway. Which was very nice of him. When he ordered, the cashier warned him two times this sandwich doesn’t have meat 🙂 I thought that was funny!
I should have taken pictures of our lunch. My brother said his hamburger was just ok. All the burgers were a little larger than a slider 🙂 He said the french fries were ore ida fries, and the shake…. This is what I should have had a picture for. The shake was 3 inches tall! The cup was three inches tall and the shake did not go over the rim.
We had a good time and lots of laughs at lunch as always.
I asked Aaron if he would go back. This was his face. I don’t think he will be back. It was fun to try something new.
With only a 3 inch shake we needed something sweet. We picked up Eli early from school and went into Provo to my favorite dessert shop, Taste.
I love their bathroom faucet 🙂
We are back together! I miss my little boy when we do our Monday lunches.
This place makes their own chocolate. Eli is looking at the chocolate production next door.
The menu. All the chocolate items are made with their chocolate.
We ordered molten lava cake with raspberry sauce.
S’more Taste Style. Layers of cake, graham cracker crumble, chocolate custard, strawberries with a toasted home-made marshmallow. Arron was so impressed he wants to recreate this one! This one was excellent!
Brownie with ice cream. The brownie is why we frequent this shop. I think it’s the best dessert on the menu. Making their chocolate next door makes a huge difference in the taste and it is truly a wonderful brownie.
As always it was a fun Monday and a great start for the week!
It’s been a while. Time to taste our hard work….ok, the bees hard work!
We removed a few frames from the big hive.
Cut around the frame.
Put it in a zip lock baggie. Zipped it up and cut a TINY hole on the bottom for the honey to drain.
Moved a table into my family room 🙂 Taped the bag of honeycomb to a computer monitor stand and let it drip.
Give it a few days and it will leave the wax in the bag and pure tasty honey in the jar.
Mmm… crusty bread right out of the oven. Honey out of the hive. Very tasty dinner!
Did it work? Are they dismantling the “broken” frame and moving the wax to another part of the hive?
The bees were on it! Looks like the experiment so far is successful.
Before…
After…
We will check on the frame at the end of the week to see how it’s doing.
Albert from Eco Bee Box gave us a frame with three layers of wax. A normal honeycomb that is built by bees only have 1 layer.
Albert wanted to know if the bees would dismantle this frame of “broken” wax and rebuild the wax elsewhere in the hive on other frames.
We decided this would be a great experiment for the large beehive.
The purpose of this experiment is to give bees wax so they don’t have to waste their time and energy on making wax. This will be good for a smaller hive to build up quicker by letting the bees concentrate on making honey and taking care of their brood, instead of making wax.
This is a close up of the three broken layers.
This is how I dress 🙂 I’m so going to get stung one of these days.
What does a 4 year old do to keep busy?
Soaking himself!
I am getting brave. I touched a few bees!
Putting the experimental frame in the hive.
We will give if a few days and see what the bees do!
We went for a hike to Crystal lake with some friends.
We had a wonderful time.
Giving a thumbs up with his HUGE walking stick.
Eli picked a wildflower for me. I so love this little boy!
My cute little boy!
Eli and Emilia wanted to build a raft.
It was an easy hike and enjoyed lunch at the beautiful lake.
We had a fun time and will be back to hike a longer hike next year!
A week or two ago we added a frame to the big hive.
This frame. To see if the bees will take a “broken” frame and move the wax to another part of the hive to save energy instead of having to make all that wax.
Looks like the bees are not moving the wax and they are just adding on to the wax.
It was a good thought, but I’m sad to say the experiment failed.
The hive in our yard is growing. The queen is there and making her brood and her worker bees are doing a great job building up the hive.
Little hive is growing. The queen is making brood and we have lots of baby bees. Time to expand.
The little hive with a second box.
The rose of sharon bushes are in full bloom and their flowers are looking good.
I’m sure the bees are loving them.
The last day of our min vacation.
Breakfast: Eggs, hashbrowns, fruit, and strawberries with clotted cream. Mmmm..very tasty!
We didn’t do anything today except eat 🙂 and watch movies.
That evening we went to the rodeo. We sat on the front row. So much fun!
See how close we were!
Eli had a LOT of fun!
Eli had a lot of fun at the rodeo. We will definitely be back next year.