My Day As A Zookeeper

Wednesday, September 18th, 2013 @ 7:48 PM Anna Blankenheim Critters, Volunteer animals, folsom animal sanctuary, folsom zoo, work

There are many things I love about my company (helloooo sabbatical!), but today exemplified one of the major ones. Each year my entire organization (hundreds of people across North and South America) take the day to do community service. We do community service throughout the year, but this is one day that everyone does it all at once. There were several options – this year I chose the Folsom Zoo Sanctuary. We had a couple different projects that we worked on while we were there – I chose to help out with cleaning some of the cages and enclosures.

Here are a few pictures from the day – all of these are animals that I was in the cages with! This is Gus, a horse whose mother was a horse in Canada that was bread for her urine – apparently the urine of a pregnant mare can be used in some menopause medication. She was constantly kept pregnant and the male foals were sent off to the glue factory. Gus was rescued. He’s a sweet guy who was very happy with his hay.

This is a Barbados Blackbelly Sheep… there were two in the pen and they were both a little shy, but eventually ate some hay I gave them.

We also helped clean out the wild pig enclosure, where we met Wilbur and Templeton. Seriously, how cute are those names? Great Charlotte’s Web reference, for those of you who didn’t pick up on it. While in there, the pigs sort of kept to themselves, but we did get to see a bunch of peacocks!

Seriously, it was a really great day and I’m so glad we had the opportunity to go help!

Chicken

Wednesday, September 11th, 2013 @ 7:03 PMWednesday, September 11th, 2013 @ 7:04 PM Anna Blankenheim Critters dogs, mike, shadow

Cutting chicken is serious business.

Nine

Saturday, August 31st, 2013 @ 4:16 PM Anna Blankenheim Critters, Exercise clif, gu, llama, power bar, running

One of my favorite things about running near my house is that it’s a little bit off the beaten path. One of my favorite areas to run is this great little road that has some hills and winds through the country. Normally I see all sorts of fun animals… horses, cows, deer, etc. This morning I was treated to a rare sight… the llama. They’re used to guard sheep around here as they’re apparently very protective and effective against coyotes and mountain lions. This “little” guy was just hanging out by the creek watching me run on by.

All in all, today was a good run – nine miles. I tried a new fuel since I seemed to have some “tummy troubles” the last time I trained for a marathon. I have always used Gu to refuel, but decided to give something else a go. Today’s experiment was with Power Bar’s Energy Blends. This one was banana and blueberry. I was a little bit leery, but it actually tasted really good – they use real fruit, so you don’t end up feeling like you’re choking down frosting. It was more like a smoothie than anything. I took it at five miles so that I would have another four of running and could see what it did to my tummy… no troubles here! Next week I’m going to try Clif’s Shot Bloks. Fingers crossed!

For those of you that run or do endurance activities, what’s your favorite way to refuel? What works and what doesn’t?

The Hive Is Dead

Sunday, August 4th, 2013 @ 9:03 AM Anna Blankenheim Beekeeping, Critters apiary, bear, beehive, bees, honeybees

Well folks, today I bring the sad, sad news that the beehive is indeed dead. I had put it all back together after the bear attack and there were a few bees hanging around. I was holding out hope that maybe they had escaped and flown away for safety. Alas, it appears Queen Latifah was slain along with many of her protectors.

I did some research this morning and it seems like once a bear finds a hive it’s pretty hard to keep them away. Electric fences help some, but often they begin to head closer to the house in search of yummys (ie. garbage cans). As fun as that sounds, I really don’t want to have a face to face meeting with a bear, so I’ve decided to give up beekeeping.

Fortunately my brother-in-law and sister-in-law are also beekeepers, so at least the hives can be put to good use.

It was an adventure little honeybees…

A Bear Ate My Bees

Thursday, August 1st, 2013 @ 7:53 PM Anna Blankenheim Beekeeping, Critters bear, bees, honeybees

Disaster struck Blankenheim Orchards sometime between last night and this afternoon… a bear ate my bees. To be clear, he tore down the orchard fence and then decimated my beehive. This was the scene I came home to:

Up close, there were still some bees buzzing around, but it honestly looked like a bee battlefield… little bodies were everywhere. I hope most of them got away and so I put the hive back together as best as I could. Four frames were completely destroyed. I didn’t find the queen, so the bees might not even come back, but the few that were around seemed keen to the idea of going back into the hive. I honestly did not expect this to happen… I thought my fence would be enough deterrent!

Apparently this is why people in the mountains don’t keep bees. I hope they stung that bear on his nose! Hopefully Queen Latifah is cruising the neighborhood not ruling the big hive in the sky.

Thriving

Saturday, June 29th, 2013 @ 7:26 PMSunday, June 30th, 2013 @ 10:03 AM Anna Blankenheim Beekeeping, Critters bee chronicles, beehive, bees, honeybees

Today I did my first inspection of the hive… it was so amazing! The bees were not upset at all that I was checking them out – in fact, they just went about their business. I did use a little smoke to mellow them out, but I probably could have done without.

I did find that they had eaten all of the sugar-water, leaving a void in the top of the hive. They promptly filled that with honeycomb! Go little bees go! I’m not sure if I was supposed to, but I scraped that bit of comb out – I want them to focus on building on the frames (which are not all full).

There’s definitely some honey production going on, but they will continue to need more sugar syrup to help build it up. I think I found Queen Latifah – I didn’t want to spend too much time in the hive today, but they had broke her out of her cage and I thought I saw her on one of the frames. I’ll look a little closer the next time I go in, but I figured if they were happily building comb and working, she was probably there.

Yay for the bees!

Just Like That, We Have A Hive

Friday, June 21st, 2013 @ 8:37 PM Anna Blankenheim Beekeeping, Critters bee chronicles, beehive, bees

Today we had a bee installation party. Well, sort of. Apparently various branches of my family wanted to come over to see if I would pull this off or end up like the boy in “My Girl”. And we had food after.

First things first, I geared up:

After that, it was time to spray them down with sugar water (apparently that makes them feel like I do after a pint of Ben & Jerry’s). From there, I had to go through the process of finding the queen. Being a first time beekeeper, I was not entirely familiar with how these bees were packaged – I knew somewhere in the mass of three pounds of bees was a little cage with a queen. There were a couple different little lids to pry off and eventually I found the right one.

Yes, I named her Queen Latifah. She’s a classy broad, after all. I had planned on naming her Queen Elizabeth, but Mike’s suggestion was way better. She had a couple of buddies in there with her (I think they’re supposed to help feed her), but she was alive and kicking. I stuck the cage in between two of the slats and proceeded to dump a few of the other bees on top.

After that, it was time to give them some food. I did some research on this and the easiest way was using a 1:1 sugar syrup and a gallon Ziploc bag. You lay it out on top of the frames and then cut some slits into it to give the bees access to the syrup.

After that began the scariest part for me… releasing the rest of the bees. Sugar-induced haze or not, those guys got a little agitated. The hum of that many bees (especially all over/around you) was a little nerve wracking. My brother-in-law Tim had warned me that they sense your mood, so I tried really hard to stay calm. After what felt like an hour I finally had all of them out of the box in front of the hive.

This was seriously quite the process. I was a sweaty mess by the time I was done, but I had no stings. It was such a cool experience! I walked down after dinner and all of the bees that you see on the ground in the above picture were gone… I’m assuming into the hive since they had been moving in that direction. I could see some flying around, but hopefully they’re all getting settled in for the night. This was so much fun!

Now for the hard part… no peeking for a whole week! If you do, they can sometimes turn on the queen!

Shout out to my brave mama for standing in the orchard with me, sans bee clothing, to take pictures! Love you!

Bee Prepared

Thursday, June 20th, 2013 @ 8:18 PM Anna Blankenheim Beekeeping, Critters bee chronicles, beehive, bees, honeybees

They’re here! They’re here! When I got home from work today, I discovered this lovely package on my doorstep:

Yeah, I’m 99% sure that my UPS guy hates me. I checked the online tracking and these were loaded into his truck at 7am this morning… and delivered at 3:30pm this afternoon. I’m not gonna lie, the buzz of thousands of bees is a little unnerving… driving around all day with them in your car must have sucked. I haven’t been able to find the queen yet – she’s somewhere under there in her own special cage.

It was a little too late in the day to install them in the hive, so instead I set to getting the hive completely ready. Tomorrow is the big day! Here’s what the hive looks like in it’s permanent location:

I can’t wait for tomorrow! The best time of day to introduce bees to the hive is in the late afternoon – apparently they’re a little sleepier and less likely to “drift” (seek out another hive). More to come!

To Bee Or Not To Bee

Wednesday, June 19th, 2013 @ 7:52 PMWednesday, June 19th, 2013 @ 7:56 PM Anna Blankenheim Beekeeping, Critters apiary, bee chronicles, beehive, shadow

Well, I have a new hobby and I’ll give you one guess as to what it is:

Yup, I’ve decided to become a beekeeper in my spare time. My sister-in-law and brother-in-law are currently raising bees and love it. I thought it’d be good for a variety of reasons including fresh local honey (hopefully it helps with my allergies!) and pollination of my orchard (that’s where the hive is going to go). The hive was delivered today… I’m totally geeking out over it.

The hive came mostly assembled (thank goodness, because for as simple as they look, I don’t know that I would have gotten it all together). Here’s what the final product looks like:

The inside is a little more complicated – this hive contains ten frames, an inner lid, and an outer lid.

The frames have an artificial honeycomb built-in to encourage the bees to build theirs around it (and to keep them from building between the frames, making it hard to pull them out and access the honey).

Finally, there’s a very important piece of gear – the smoker. This basically makes the bees sleepy/lazy/less prone to sting when you want to either check the hive or harvest the honey.

Even Shadow got all excited about it:

I am seriously geeked out right now. I asked Mike if he thought it was as cool as I did… his reply was “It’s interesting…” At least he’s humoring me! The bees are scheduled to arrive tomorrow – between now and then I need to get the hive down to the orchard and up on cinder blocks (so it doesn’t get rot and isn’t as accessible to critters). Stay tuned for the next chapter of the Bee Chronicles!

Saturdays With Shadow: The Snake Edition

Saturday, June 1st, 2013 @ 11:46 AM Anna Blankenheim Critters, Saturdays with Shadow california racer snake, dogs, labrador retrievers, shadow, snakes

Living in the foothills has it benefits – we have land, few neighbors, lots of cool critters. Well, today I had my first run in with a snake without Mike. I have plenty of run-ins with lizards all the time and my first thought is generally “Whew, thank goodness that wasn’t a snake”.

I knew right away it wasn’t a rattle snake, so I ran inside to get my camera so that I could share with you folks. And, I knew once I got inside I would get super confused when I started Googling. Fortunately, a squirrel made a noise and Shadow ran off to chase it, so I was able to poke at the snake with a long pole. Unfortunately, that sucker turned and took off back into Shadow’s pen (not sure if it came from there to begin with). For once is his short little life, Shadow actually listened to me and came to me instead of chasing the snake. Maybe I actually sounded authoritative.

As it turns out, this is a California Striped Racer. They are known for their speed, their daytime activity, and they sometimes eat rattlesnakes. I’m kinda glad I grabbed the pole rather than the shovel I was thinking about.

Happy Saturday everyone!

Down The Road I Go

Thoughts from my little corner of the world.

Critters