On Friday night, we met our friend Liz for dinner after work. Liz just got back from a 20 day trip to Nepal. Twelve of those days were spent trekking through the Himalayas. She said that they started at around 8,000 feet in elevation and got as high as 17,500 feet. She brought us back a beautiful copper hand-beaten Nepalese singing bowl. She's still sorting through the trip photos, so we'll see those another time.

Yesterday, Eric spent the morning at the dentist while I worked on my thesis. When he got back, I took a short break and we headed over to the Beez Neez in Snohomish- the local apiarist shop. Because the shop closes around 6 pm each week night and is not open on Sundays, it can be hard for us to get there. We chatted with Rachel (part owner) about when they're expecting to get their shipment of queens for 2009, and picked up a few small things. We also checked on prices and availability for the wood ware we'll need in the spring.

When we got home, it was warm enough that the bees were flying. I briefly popped the cover off of the hive that I had shaken in the spring and was surprised to see the quantity of bees crawling over the top of the frames. I had assumed that the bees had already reduced population to get ready for the winter, but apparently not. While we were up there looking at the hives, we saw a tiny worker bee pulling a struggling drone out of the hive. Prior to each winter, the girls (the workers) kick all of the boys (drones) out of the hives. Drones literally do nothing for a hive- their sole purpose is to mate with a virgin queen. The drones don't collect pollen or nectar, they don't make wax to store food in, and they don't help feed the baby bees (larvae). As a result, the workers kick all the drones out at the beginning of winter so that the boys don't sit around eating all of the stores. Because the bees can't fly and find food in the winter, what they put away in the spring, summer, and fall has to last until its warm enough for the beekeeper or the flowers to feed them. One way of doing that is to reduce the number of bellys that you have to fill. I still felt bad for the big boy. Although he was more than double the size of the worker hustling him out, she was successful and he buzzed around the entrance of the hive hoping to be let back in.

Eric finished canning up the last of the beets last night. We ended up with a total of 6.5 pints of chopped beets, 6 pints of chopped beet stems, and 2 pints of beet greens. This is in addition to all of the beet stems and greens we've been eating all summer. Other than the green onions, the garden is pretty much done. We'll pull the onions for dinner tonight (Chinese green onion pancake) and then the garden will be ready to be put to bed.