Chicks Arrived

I received a call from the Greenbank post office yesterday morning at 7 am that they had our box of 67 two day old chicks.  I finished the chicken brooder the night before so was all ready for them.  Off to the post office I went.  Of the 67 we ordered, one chick died.  It was a sex-linked layer chick - we order 15 of them but after I released them all and counted, I still had 17 live ones.  The hatchery must have shipped an extra three.

The Greenbank Post Office with my new chicks insde

The yellow chicks are our new meat birds, Red Rocks, the black our our new layers, Black Sex-Linked

The chicks in their new home

On Tuesday afternoon I opened the bee hives to get all of the new bees out of their boxes and get the queens ready to be released.  I put on my bee suit and had work gloves on but didn't smoke them before starting to work.  Two mistakes!  The bees were not happy with me and I got stung three or four times through my cloth backed gloves.  I put everything down, went to the house and got my heavy rubber gloves and then fired up the smoker.  I started again, first smoking the bees and it was so much better.

Per Wikpedia: "Smoke is the beekeeper's third line of defense (what are the first two?). Most beekeepers use a "smoker" — a device designed to generate smoke from the incomplete combustion of various fuels. Smoke calms bees; it initiates a feeding response in anticipation of possible hive abandonment due to fire. Smoke also masks alarm pheromones released by guard bees or when bees are squashed in an inspection. The ensuing confusion creates an opportunity for the beekeeper to open the hive and work without triggering a defensive reaction. In addition, when a bee consumes honey the bee's abdomen distends, supposedly making it difficult to make the necessary flexes to sting, though this has not been tested scientifically."

 The queen is in a little wood tube.  I removed the cork and inserted a stale marshmallow in its place.  In two days or so the queen will eat her way out and then mate with a drone and begin laying eggs to build up the hive.  I just signed up for a beekeeping 101 class being put on by WSU Extension Service and taught by Timothy Lawrence, one of the nations leading bee experts.