Jen and I went up today to pick up our two new cats (since named Willow and Pippi after will-o'-the-wisp and Pippi Longstocking). Willow is the mother and Pippi is her 3-month-old daughter. Their very-short biography is that last fall, somebody abandoned Willow, an indoor car, on my parents' farm and she wintered outside in the extreme cold. There is already a growing family of quasi-feral red cats who weren't that friendly to Willow, but the old Tom was friendly enough with her that she had a litter of 6 kittens in March (see picture). Willow is the big white one with the frost-bitten ears (poor thing) and Pippi is the kitten looking up at the camera.
Five of them went to the kitty-adoption at the vet and we took on Willow (since we worried nobody would take her) and to help her adapt to being here and to getting along with Biggio and Gracie, our current cats, we also took Pippi, and I'm pretty sure we won't regret it ... at least in the long run! :)
As for the bees, they were bustling! I didn't take any pictures, but it was a beautiful sunny day and they were taking advantage of it. I brought up the new telescoping lids and inner covers and a can of paint. Dad will paint the trim of exposed wood (they've aluminum tops and wood sides) and place them later next week. I also brought the other items, the frame holders and hive tool, although Dad did in fact find the old (formerly-missing) hive tool. Well, we'll need it sometime, I'm sure.
As you recall, we removed the queen excluder from the east hive. While there are definitely more bees in the east hive's super than in the west, they don't APPEAR to be doing very much. We only glanced in the top, without veils or smoke so we didn't look too close. They're definitely not in danger of needing a second super.
We were also hoping to pick a lot of black raspberries, but alas, I think we were a week too late.
