Bees and such

I worked 5 of the 6 hives yesterday - one of the old ones got honey super, one of the new ones in a deep got more frames (fixing an oops on my part), one new one  got its second deep, and one of the new ones in a nuc got moved into a deep (doubling its space).  Then there was the last one in a nuc.  You know you are in trouble when 5 seconds after you open the cover, you smell bananas.  Wow, those bees were mad.  They had drawn wavy comb, not straight.  They had capped brood, but they hadn't bothered to draw out the last two frames at all.  And they stung my suit and gloves a lot.  I very quickly shut them back up and wandered off to do something else.  I'll take care of them later today, but I can't say I like them much.  If they don't calm down, they might just get their queen's head popped off and replaced with a new, calmer mommy.

Ha. I'm not new, but I'm slightly calmer now than I was at 5AM this morning when I was hearing bad noises from the chicken coop.  I grabbed the shotgun and investigated.  Discovered what better be the last egg sucking raccoon in the coop.  He is no more, but he destroyed all the eggs my setters were on before I could get into a position where I could kill him without potentially killing any chickens.  In the process I realized I might just have to attach my ear protection to that shotgun, because I didn't have it on this morning, and I couldn't leave the coop after I got there to go get them, because the coon would have escaped.  So my head is ringing.

Today I'm going to fix all the automatic crap (doors, waterer) down at the coops, in the hopes that there will be no coons or possums to trash them (just in case I actually get to go on vacation).  I've been trying to get this down for weeks now, but something part is always missing, or some other emergency comes up that must be solved sooner.  My only emergency for today better just be catching the duck and getting more antibiotics into her eye.  Because I'm about out of energy and it's only 6:15AM...