oh death

This is the time of year when things that are ready to die go ahead and check out. A friend's dog went from happily cleaning the breakfast dishes to dead in the span of a short afternoon. Another friend's cat, also not too long after breakfast, passed in a similar way. Healthy, then just gone. In body, anyway.

Here at the garden we've been cleaning out old bee hives that had died out over the summer. We discovered American Foul Brood in some of them, which we know two of our hives had died from earlier in the summer. To prevent its spread in our apiary, we must burn all the old wooden frames and get rid of the leftover comb. We've been keeping our little chiminea going for the past week, and have melted down much of the old comb into wax for candles and salves. We'll have to blowtorch the old boxes to be sure that the disease does not carry on, and we'll also have to remove the comb and frame from the three hives that are still living. These means destroying all the brood (baby bees) and honey and pollen stores. Not good. But the only other option is treating with antibiotics for as long as we keep bees here. Not organic, nor a healthy way to manage the hives, in my opinion. It would be similar to the sub-clinical doses that most dairy cattle receive. The colonies might survive if we successfully transfer the queen and a good contingency of workers to new equipment.

After clearing out the last of the old bee equipment, this raccoon stumbled out near the compost piles and collapsed as I was getting some worms out of the bins today. Probably infected with rabies, too weak to get back up, it curled up in the sun, eyed me frankly for a moment, and put its head down. Later, another garden visitor spotted it and called animal control. I was hoping it would be allowed to pass peacefully overnight, but by the time I returned from my after school program, it had been collected. Probably the safer option, but not a graceful way to go.

So we'll start this spring with fresh bee equipment, and one less raccoon. The chickens will be safer I suppose. I wonder if it's the same raccoon that leaves tidy little tracks in the sand by the creek?