10 Reasons Not To Get Chickens

This is not going to be a popular post. I know that. But I'm writing it anyway.

First off, I love my full-grown chickens. They are fun to watch, they give us an ample supply of ridiculously delicious eggs, and their daily banter adds a nice level of legitimacy to what we are trying to do here. And I don't mind cleaning out their coop...that much...but maybe that's because we're coming off of a winter of deep bedding and "cleaning" consists of a quick turn with the rake and a new layer of straw.

But on the whole, chickens are bit gross. They are like small, feathered toddlers with no care for where they poop, or if they eat said poop, or the fact that no matter what someone else has to clean up all of the poop. They don't play nicely and are known to draw blood. Sometimes they yell just for the fun of it. "Egg song" is a euphemism for a sound akin to a goat learning to yodel. And when you have to go somewhere and are running late, one of them is always hiding somewhere on the property refusing to join her sisters in the safety of the fenced run.

Again, I like chickens. I HAVE chickens. We have 12 in the coop and 6 in a brood box in the basement. But for all of the "OMG! Baby chicks in hats!!!" posts on Facebook, and the adorable fluffy butts posing in teacups on my Instagram feed, someone has to tell the whole truth about chickens, and it's not all lavender coop spray and gourmet omelets.

Top 10 Reasons NOT To Get Backyard Chickens

1. Baby chicks are only cute for 3 days. Then they lose their feathers and hit that awkward teenage phase that does not discriminate between species. We call them "punk rock chickens" at this stage, but my mom cut to the chase when she asked when they stop being ugly.

2. It takes between 6 and 12 weeks, on average, for a chicken to fully feather and be able to live in an outdoor coop. Our coop is insulated but not heated, and we got the babies early this year, so we have a minimum of 8 weeks with 6 chicks in the laundry room. Despite daily doses of fresh bedding and a full clean-out every 3 days, our laundry room reeks. Chicken shit smells terrible. I wish this article was scratch-n-sniff. 

3. When raising chicks indoors, prepare for a layer of yellow dust to cover everything in the immediate vicinity. If air can touch it, so too can this nuclear fallout of sawdust and (of course) poop particles. Our laundry room doubles as a storage room, and everything has to be cleaned and disinfected when the girls move out.

4. Baby chicks poop in their food. And their water. And your hand. Food (wasted) and water (now brown sludge) need to be changed multiple times a day. When you see a cute picture of a baby chick on someone's living room floor, or their kitchen table, you need to know that right after the picture was taken there was a person desperately googling "how to get chicken poop stains out of carpet." Dummies. 

5. Chickens aren't really pets. If you name your chickens and turn them into pets, take a few minutes to think about what becomes of them when they stop laying eggs. A chicken typically peaks in egg production at two years and then drops off. Backyard chickens who get a break in the winter (read: no artificial light in the coop to prolong laying) can lay strongly into their 5th year, but can live 8 years. So then what? Will you keep an ever-growing flock of geriatric chickens who don't produce? Will you harvest and eat the chickens? Will you really be able to sit down to the table and serve a bowl of chicken noodle soup starring the meat formerly known as Goldie?

6. Once chickens are outside, you still have to clean up their poop. Chicken poop is "hot" and needs to be aged before you add it to your garden. We built a $6 PALLET COMPOST BIN to house all of our poop and used pine/straw bedding before we mix it into the garden in the spring. Quick note -- the girls love digging through this mess of yuck when they are let out to wander, so the current bin is not even close to being as clean as it was in the "look what we built!" post. Thank goodness we hid this mess in the trees.

7. Chickens can only be left on their own for a few days, and that is if you have adequate, predator-proof space, a coop that doesn't require you to open and close the door, and a way to disperse clean food and water while you're gone. Or neighbors who don't mind helping out in exchange for eggs. It's not a deal-breaker, but it does add another level of planning to the family vacations.

8. Chickens will ruin your yard, if you have one. They will peck the ground bare. We have a 200 square foot run, and the prairie grass was gone, never to return, within a week. The 5-acre property holds up much better to the voracious attacks of a dozen hungry hens, but I will say that they have eaten more than their fair share of decorative plants and flowers and I'm pretty sure they gobbled up $100 in wildflower seed that I scattered in the fall. Bitches. 

9. Some chickens are cleaner layers than others. Again, the multi-colored pictures of glossy eggs that people love to post on social media have been rinsed of mud, straw, small feathers, and our ever-present pal, poop. A chicken only has one exit hole, and sometimes she'll multitask. 

10. If you are able to free-range your chickens, which I fully recommend, you may lose a bird to a hawk, or a loose dog, or a fox. So far we've been lucky and we only let the girls out for a few hours a day when it's full light, but I know it's a risk. Less risky, but more probable, is the appearance of chicken poop, that ever-present through line of raising poultry, all along your driveway, in the yard, and (inevitably) on the bottom of your shoe and tracked throughout your home. Good thing I've already googled how to get chicken poop out of carpet.

********

Still want chickens? Then congratulations! You made it through the shit list (ha) and are ready for the reality of backyard chickens. If you're now questioning the endeavor and want to go back to a time of ignorance, skip the real baby chicks and bliss out HERE.

Either way, happy chickening. 

Our first baby goats

Nothing prepared me for this hobby farm adventure as well as becoming a mother. Long before I was spreading goat poop in my garden, shoveling chicken poop into the compost heap, or tracking the heat cycles of a doe (yeah, dwell on that one for a minute), I was wiping secondary boogers out of my hair, cleaning vomit from my bra, and changing pee sheets in the middle of the night. The days of reading a book in a park and getting my nails done were long gone before I found myself breaking an amniotic sac and freeing a baby goat.

Which I did. 99.9% of the nation was watching the Seahawks lose the Super Bowl and I was given a reprieve by the arrival of the two tiniest, most perfect baby bucklings I've ever seen.

I'm getting ahead of the narrative a bit. Per the previous prep post, Ella was in the garage pen and we were ready. The night before her due date I spent a few dawn hours with her in what I can only equate to the caprine version of Braxton Hicks. Faker. Going into Sunday morning, February 1st, the birthing accoutrement was prepped, I had a nice pile of animal husbandring clothes ready, and we had a set schedule of checking Ella every hour on the hour. And then the stupid game started and family arrived four doors down for the party.

Who can guess where this is going?

1 pm - Ella obviously stretching but not otherwise uncomfortable.
2 pm - Ella still stretching, tail erect, visible tightening but nothing too intense.
3 pm - Checking on my own kids, making sure they are fed and fine, visiting with family and friends; Gabe is on his way home from errands and promises to stop by the house to call in an update.
3:20 pm - A call comes in to my parents' house. My dad answers. All we hear is Gabe yelling "Baby goat! Baby goat!"

I race home and there in the hay is our little Finn, being cleaned up by his mama.

All this prep and I'd missed it! But joy -- another one is headed out! Appropriate clothing be damned, it's me in yoga pants and a sweater, body-deep in bloody hay, breaking open an intact amniotic sac and wiping fluid from our little Archie's nose and mouth before placing him in front of his mama. Ella was a champ, delivering quickly and efficiently on her due date.

Then, it was time to teach them how to nurse. A quick aside for humans and goats -- this is not a process that every animal just naturally knows how to do and takes it up with aplomb on the first try. I may be anthropomorphizing, but Ella's expression was an easily readable "WTF?!" as I made her stand and subject herself to the head-butting and weak attempts at suckling exhibited by her babies. Gotta say, after two rough starts of my own, I was pretty patient during this potentially frustrating process. Babies and new moms are so dumb!

We took some extra time with Finn because he was so much smaller (1 lb, 10.1 oz to Archie's 3 lb, 1.9 oz), but even he eventually made his way from Ella's collar to her udder and got the hang of it.

We finally gave Ella some molasses water and grain, put iodine on the babies' umbilical cords, and then left the new family to get to know each other without the presence of our paparazzi. Superbowl schmuperbowl, it's Pare Down for the win.

Getting ready for the KIDS!

We are in the crazy final days of prep before our first kidding. I haven't been this beside myself since I cranked out my own kids! I've dreamt goat births for the last three nights, with last night being the best - a perfectly beautiful Nubian doe (weird that I am dreaming the wrong breed) stepped out of her mother and into my lap, ready to play. If only.

In an effort to offset my fears, I've decided to do what I do best - rely on my inner nerd and do some research. A lot of reading, and asking questions, and then more reading.

The best resources I've found:

• My goat breeder and vet. I'm so lucky to have gotten these goats from Lil Bleats, and a breeder who is so willing to share her knowledge. I'm equally lucky that our vet doesn't mind working a goat lesson into every visit. 
• The Fias Co Farm website. This is the absolute best source of information on the web, and I encourage you to donate to the site if you find it as useful as I have. 
• Real books. From the store. Books you can read, mark up, and then have on hand during the kidding, even if all you can do is hug them to your chest and feel more capable by way of osmosis. "Raising Goats Naturally" by Deborah Niemann is my favorite text, along with "Storey's Guide to Raising Diary Goats." Brad Kessler's "Goat Song" is a moving memoir about embarking on a life with goats - such beautiful, candid writing; it made me love my own goats even more.

Speaking of my own goats, let's get to the nitty gritty here at Pare Down.

This is our pretty Ella before she lost that girlish figure. She's still a little wild, but has reached the point of tolerating us and will love us soon enough. She was bred on 9/2 and 9/9, so with a standard 145-day gestation for miniature goats, she is due 1/25 or 2/1. I'm pretty sure that this will be our first and last winter kidding - everything is harder in the snow.

(Side note: After sliding around our icy, hilly property for a few weeks I just discovered YakTrax for my muck boots. How did I not know about these? Google them if you don't already own a pair!)

Next, I needed to assemble my own Goat Kidding Kit for the big day.

We have the following on hand:

• Surgical soap wash for hands and instruments, if needed
• Iodine replacement spray for sterilizing (haven't decided yet if we are dipping the navels)
• Old bulb syringe from my babies, in case we need to clear noses of birth gunk (it's a technical term)
• Surgical scissors (please, dear sweet baby universe, don't make me have to use these for anything)
• Emergency tubing and colostrum replacer (ibid)
• Old feed bags and pee pads to catch the goo (things are getting real now!)
• Clean towels, paper towels and tiny hairdryer (to help mama clean and dry these babies in the bitter cold) 
• Kid coats made of second-hand sweatshirt sleeves

I'll have warm water with molasses and grain on hand for the Ella when she's done, and a shot of something stronger for Gabe and myself.

Now, where to kid? 

Our goat shed is small, with most of the space being taken up by hay bales for winter insulation, so Ella will be kidding in the milking barn (formerly known as "the garage"). We've set up a pen using a dog exercise kennel and fresh hay. 

This is the cleanest it will ever look. We've also tricked it out with a small space heater for super cold nights. No need for a baby monitor - we'll be able to hear Ella AOK, as our bed is directly above the garage...which is equipped with excellent acoustics.

Scout and Rascal are looking forward to having a visitor to keep them company at night - Ella is their favorite goat since she's the least likely to head butt them when they want to hang out.

So...Ella will start sleeping here this weekend to make sure that she's used to it. It's tricky, having 3 goats. If she can't stand being by herself, we may bring little Tess up as a sleeping companion and leave Lucy alone in the shed.

Nothing to do now but wait. This will get easier each time. Um, right?

Goat Milk Cajeta. Oh yes.

So, are goats a little louder than we'd planned on? Sure. More trouble than we'd anticipated to catch, collar, and milk? Yep. Do they poop a crazy amount and waste more feed than even the chickens? Yes again.

So why on earth, you may be thinking, would someone willingly keep goats? Well aside from their inherent sweetness, a frisky take on life, and personality galore, the only logical answer is cajeta. And what is cajeta? Only the most glorious thing that goat milk can achieve; a caramel sauce that by its sheer perfection will put all others to shame. And, you only need 4 cups of milk to make it, so even our tiny haul was more than sufficient after a few days of hoarding.

For the duration of this demo, picture me with the air conditioner cranked (we're having a heat wave) and a nice mix of alt country power ballads blaring over my stereo. Or maybe I'm belting out the lyrics to "Let It Go," Eddie Vedder style...My secret is safe with me.

First, gather your 4 cups of goat milk.

Then, place milk, a scant cup of white sugar, a pinch of salt and a teaspoon of vanilla into a 2.5 or 3 Qt pan over medium high heat and bring to a boil, stirring to prevent scorching.

When the milk boils, remove from heat and add 1/4 tsp of baking soda that has been dissolved in a TB of water. Stir stir stir - it will foam up. Then return the pan to the stove over medium heat and prepare to cook and stir for the next hour or so. Earn that cajeta!

At roughly 40 minutes, the milk started to take on a caramel color.

At about an hour, the milk had reduced to roughly under 2 cups and it was getting close!

And then, glory of glories, it was done. The milk had reduced to about one cup. Rumor has it that the longer you cook the milk, the sweeter and thicker it will be, but my arm gave out at 75 minutes, and it was damn good. Carefully pour the cajeta into a glass jar and let it cool.

While the cajeta cools, keep singing along to Idina Menzel...or someone more adult since the kids aren't home...and scrape the cajeta from the bottom of the pan and put it in your mouth.

The cajeta will thicken as it cools. After a few hours in the refrigerator, you will be rewarded with this. Well done, you. You deserve it. Cajeta is delicious heated over ice cream, as a fruit dip, or you can rely on my favorite pairing, a spoon. Dig in. 

Easy summer dinner: New potatoes and peas

We all have a button, some kind of trigger, that immediately catapults us back in time to a moment from childhood. One of mine is peas.

For two glorious weeks in the summer, nature aligns and a garden will give you all of the sweet peas and new potatoes you can ask for. As a kid, this occurred during summers in Idaho at my grandparents' house and all I have to do is see a pea on the vine and I am transported. Nothing tastes like a young pea, straight from the pod.

When we put in the garden four doors down, my mom's sole request was to plant peas and potatoes. She's making memories with my boys, much like her own mom did with my brothers and me, teaching them how to pick the fattest pods and split them down the seam with their thumb to reveal the perfectly straight row of plump peas hidden inside.

And this weekend, we finally sat down to a meal of new potatoes and peas. What was once a staple on my Grandma's summer table has made it to my own weekly menu.

It's a great option for Meatless Mondays and a simple way to show off produce from the garden or farmer's market. And, if you're lucky like me, it will take you right back to being a kid.

New Potatoes and Peas - a loose recipe (the kind I hated when I first started to cook)

To serve a family of 4 with leftovers I dug up roughly 30 new potatoes of various sizes, and as many peas as were ripe. You can never have too many peas, so pick more than you think you'll need.

Wash the potatoes, quartering the larger ones, cutting some in half, and leaving the littles whole. Boil in a pot of heavily salted water until easily pierced with a fork. While the potatoes cook, shell the peas.

When the potatoes are done, turn off the heat and add the shelled peas to the hot water.

Make a roux. I used 4 TB butter and half a cup of flour, mixing over medium heat until it was a golden brown. Then whisk in whole milk - taking care to smash the flour chunks - until you have a thin gravy. There should be enough liquid to act as a sort of soup when combined with the potatoes. Liberally salt and pepper the gravy to taste.

Drain the potatoes and peas. Put in a serving dish, pour the gravy over the top, and serve.

Happy eating. Let the memories begin!

Goat Yoga

The goats are here! The goats are here! And guess what??

Goats are hard.

Okay, goat milking is hard. Especially when your milk stand doesn't arrive before the goats do. But once again, I am getting ahead of myself.

We picked up Lucy (black) and Tess (bebe) on our way back from a wedding in Taos (congrats, Mark and Jill!!) this past Sunday, thereby ensuring that the goats trumped the papas on Father's Day this year. Whoopsie. (Sorry Dad and Gabe!!)

This is me, making kissy faces with Tess:

And me again, full gum smile, as we both bleat our hellos.

Twins!

After a quick milking/hoof trimming lesson from the incomparable Elizabeth Ahola of Lil' Bleats Farm, we loaded up the car with Lucy in a crate in the back, and Tess in my lap wearing a baby diaper. The front seat looked a lot like this, with Lucy chiming in from the back:

You can tell it's early in the trip, as I am smiling and the diaper is fairly intact. The inside of our car sounded much like this:

You can't see Gabe, but he looked a lot like this:

Somehow, we made it home alive, with at least 87% of our hearing. Win.

And then it began. What was so easy with Elizabeth coaching, in the barn Lucy knew, with hands that were skilled, on a milk stand created to make this task easier, was suddenly a barnyard version of WWF. But no one was faking. These wounds were real. After MUCH trial and error, Gabe and I came up with a system whereby I was the human milk stand and Gabe found himself playing the role of champion milkmaid.

I give you, Goat Yoga.

Gabe demonstrates Crouching Teat Squeeze while Danielle masters Goat Stanchion One. Namaste.

We hold this position for 5-8 minutes on each side, while Lucy bucks, yells, kicks and bites. Who can blame her? We are farmers in training...with no training...which basically makes us idiots. Lucy sports a constant WTF/FML expression from the moment we enter the pen.

But we are making progress! What took over an hour the first time now, on day 5, only takes 20-30 minutes.

Tell me the truth - does this goat make my butt look big?

And what do we get, for all of this work? For all the angst we are causing poor little Lucy? For the thigh cramps (me) and achy crabbed milk hands (Gabe)? Milk! Fresh, raw, healthy goat milk.

This is a 2 Qt milking can. For those who failed Math 101, that is 8 cups. 

Yep. Tablespoons and tablespoons of milk. That we can't even drink yet as it's so full of dirt and goat feet that it isn't worth it.

But the milk stand arrives today (come on UPS guy!) and we'll start sanitizing the equipment so that we can drink the milk. And increase Lucy's production since we'll be in a better position to actually milk her out before we all just give up and poop in a corner (Lucy, not us). And when we're not milk wrestling, the girls are really adjusting well. Lucy is a little more reticent (wouldn't you be?) but warming up, and Tess loves us all. The boys are enchanted and the neighbors are supportive, so what more could we ask for?

Hell yeah, we are farmers! (But don't tell any real farmers I said that.)

Musical Bees

There was a brief moment yesterday when I thought I was going to die.

Let's back up. Go grab a cup of coffee, this is a long one.

It has been an odd bee season for us, to say the least. Of my two colonies - which we'll now just refer to as Green and White for ease - one made it through the winter and one died. So my brother Kris and I did a split and thought all was grand. Moving on.

Next on the docket, my bro and I installed a package of bees four doors down at the parents' place. It was an odd package that I am 90% certain had an extra rogue queen (it happens, apparently) and those ladies split themselves on day one...wouldn't take to the new hive...half wanted to live in the package box and the other half took up residence in a fence post...I was stung for the first time as a beekeeper and the 2 bees got stuck in my pant fabric, so it was a doozy...and just when we thought we had it all fixed, a mid-May snow storm swooped in and froze them all. Poor ladies didn't stand a chance.

What to do? Why, email Don the Bee Mentor of course! He pulled a Hail Mary late in the bee season and hooked us up with Prairie Wind Bee Supply out of Cheyenne, who happened to have some extra nucs on hand for a May 31 delivery. Winner winner.

Have you ever picked up a nuc, when lots of nucs are being picked up? It's not like your average package bee pickup, with a bunch of bees flying around but all the girls are a little confused and stoned. Nope. This was different. This was thousands of pissed, angry bees flying around defending their 5-frame homes and wondering what the hell just happened as they traveled from Wyoming to Colorado on the back of a flat bed trailer, through crazy rain and killer heat, for a few hours. Add to that a handful of novice beekeepers trying to prove their beekeeper-ness by standing in the middle of all this, not swatting (Just like they were taught! A+, idiots.), and doing their best to hold the panic on the inside.

What did Kris and I do? We got out of the damn way. And still got stung! This was a mad house. The poor guy running the deal was probably stung a dozen times while we were waiting for our bees. It was crazy times. I'm sure he went back to Cheyenne and contemplated a new career...perhaps breeding dogs? Yeah, puppies are a great idea.

FYI - this is what an average bee sting does to my hand. My hand is that thing that looks like a plump, smooth foot. My pinkie finger turned into a baby sausage. I didn't get stung once in the last 2 years, and now I'm two for two on the new hive. Bitches.

But we did it. We got our bees, my brother and I, jumped into my Outback, and started our hour plus drive home.

At first there was only one bee in the back window, where the nuc was.

And then there were four.

And then we hit a bump, and suddenly there were 20 or so. I sent Kris back with the camera phone while I calmly sped along the highway doing 80 mph. This is what he came back with.

Oh shit. Ohshitohshitohshitohshitohshit. Hey Prairie Wind, maybe next time, don't skimp on the duct tape? Hundreds of bees spilling into the back of the car, half an hour to go, repeating "Bees and dogs smell fear" over and over in my head. Nothing to do but turn up the radio - thank you, Bob Marley - and drive on.

And we did. And we made it. And the bees were housed.

Kris runs that hive, so we'll call all iterations from here on out KBees. They were transferred into their deep, surrounded by friendly scrub oak and pines. They have a running stream in the yard (fake, but it looks real), and plenty of blossoms to nosh on. All was well. We planned to check them in two weeks.

Meanwhile, back on the Pare Down farm...

Something was amiss with the green hive. It went from bustling to dwindling, while the white hive continued to act as the Grand Central Station of bees. A previous bee check a few weeks back looked fine: queen cups in the green hive, eggs and larva (and the old queen) in the white hive. But that new queen was either poorly mated or eaten by a bird, because when we popped the top yesterday all we saw were drones and a scatter shot of drone cells.

Ruh-roh. It was like LoDo on a Friday night. (A little Men-ver humor for you locals.)

Well poop. Suddenly we were back to 2 living colonies. Can we not catch a break, bees?

Then, miracle.

Kris and I went to check on KBees. They were fine that morning. We had an extra super in hand since we're down a deep and need to buy another, and were planning on a quick peek, add the super, call it a day. We were three days past our 2-week inspection deadline. So what did those girls do, only moments before we arrived? They swarmed! Nature called, and 40% of the bees stayed in the hive with the new queen, while roughly 60% of the bees were now bunched around the old queen on a very tall stand of scrub oak in my parents' yard.

Ha! We bounced those drones out of my green hive (sorry fellas) and decided to catch our first swarm. This looks like a promo for a Jackass movie.

Keep in mind throughout this process that my mom ("I never even wanted these bees!") is taking pictures on my iPhone, and my two kids are watching from the balcony of my parents' house. Our plan, since I am short and weak while Kris is big and brave, was to put the deep on the top of the ladder, Kris would climb up while I held everything steady from below, and he'd shake the bees into the box. What could go wrong?

Ready. Steady. Shake down! And bees went into the box according to plan, but the rest of them EXPLODED around us.

This was the death moment. As I felt the nuclear rain of bees upon my whole body I had the slow motion time to consider the following:

"This was a dumb idea. This was your worst fucking idea ever. You are about to be consumed by the sting of a thousand bees while your mom takes pictures and your children watch you die from a safe distance. Save the bees? Save yourself next time, you dumbass."

But we didn't die!

I wish there was video of Kris jumping off the ladder (like a little girl) and me catching it as the whole shebang almost toppled into the bushes before we both fled to safety. This picture does not do it justice. (Run, Forest!)

We (Kris, me, the bees, my mom who thought she would see 2 of her 3 kids die that day) all recovered quickly. The ladies were confused but just as docile as all the blogs of experienced beekeepers claim. And now that we knew what to expect, the process finished up pretty quickly. 2 more rounds of Operation Shakedown resulted in all bees being successfully caught!

And ten minutes later, the newest version of the Green Ladies were at home and happily exploring their new surroundings. This morning, all is well in the bee queendoms.

So what did we learn today, fellow and future beekeepers?

1. Don't beekeep in yoga pants. Yoga pants are for in-home drinking and the occasional bout of actual yoga.
2. Cardboard nuc boxes are lame. 
3. Always have a roll of duct tape on hand. Always. Wear it on your belt if you have to.
4. Don't procrastinate, as bee life waits for no man. But if you do, you may end up with a swarm miracle that fills an empty hive. So...do procrastinate. 
5. Don't do potentially deadly things while your kids watch, even if they are not as deadly as they seem, because your screams of panic will scar your kids regardless of the outcome.
6. Wine is great (duh), but after an exhilarating bee experience, I recommend a small batch gin and some good lemonade. 

Happy beekeeping.

Spring Beekeeping...or, Crazy Little Bug(ger)s!

Bees. I'm finding them to be like children - just when you think you know something they pull the rug out and you're back at square one, doing your best and putting money into the therapy jar for their future.

Remember when I wrote the Cherokee Girls off as dead? Well, somehow they survived the bulk of the winter. Two weeks ago, there were signs of life in the hive, and their fuzzy brown bodies were all over the place. I think that by giving them only one full deep to heat throughout the winter, I inadvertently helped prolong the life of this tiny colony.

So it was with great sadness and dismay that I opened the hive this past weekend only to find the colony clustered in a small, fresh-dead bundle. The most recent freeze did them in.

And I couldn't even steal the remaining honey because the EXPLODING population in the neighboring hive was already busy with the same idea. (Note to self, figure out how to harvest the vast amounts of leftover wax.) We cleaned the hive, and moved on. And by "we," I mean my little brother and beekeeping buddy, Kris.

Next, Kris and I popped the top on the Great Grand hive, and the bees who weren't out foraging for the day filled 3 deeps. It's always been easy to tell the two colonies apart, as the Cherokee Girls were light brown, and the Great Grand Girls have a brighter orange body. And those orange bees were everywhere!

The top deep was 90% full of capped honey. And bees. The second deep had capped honey, larva, and capped drones. And bees. The bottom deep was so packed with bees that we didn't pull any frames. The ladies were calm (initially), but the volume was high with that many residents packed into such a small space.

Next came the tricky, hope I don't regret it, hastily made decision. There were a lot of bees, loads of capped honey, and the nectar flow is officially on. Conditions were ripe for a spring swarm. Why wait and recapture half the colony when I had a perfectly good hive that was now clean and empty? So we did a split. A winging-it, didn't plan it, Googling-as-we-go split. I'd done one before, but that was with Bee Mentor Don and over a year ago.

First, Kris moved the Grand hive over a few inches to confuse the returning bees. Then we set up the vacant hive right next door.

We left the bottom deep on the Grand hive alone, and took most of the second deep - keeping the brood frames in order - and gave them to the split. Honey from the top deep was divided, and a 5 new frames with no honey or drawn comb were divided between them. Why did we not just put the second deep, as is, onto the bottom board of the empty hive and call it good? Well, that's a really good question in hindsight, but the bees were crazy mad, the frames were already out, and shut up. Live and learn.

Finally, since we were still really close to the 7/10 threshold of full frames in both hives' upper deeps, and since there was plenty of honey in both hives, I added excluders and a super to each hive. Maybe a misstep, but one that we risked. This is the year for honey, dammit!

So now we wait. I'll check the ladies in a week or so, weather allowing, to look for signs of queen cells and determine where the resident queen ended up. All things considered, it was a good day. No stings. Potential for a new colony. And the imperfect forgiveness that is nature. Even with all of our blunders, both hives have food, brood and bees. Come on girls, do your thing!

***

Six days later, and things are looking okay from the outside. I am seeing activity in both hives, but the original is definitely busier. I am doing my best to chill out and follow the advice on Honey Bee Suite:

• You can put splits side-by-side, no problem. Just remember that for a long time, the part without a queen will look like no one is home. Gradually, as nurses become foragers, the discrepancy will decrease. Don’t let the number of foragers in the one part freak you out. If the split is raising a queen, everything is working according to plan.