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We are just returned from a trip to the Pacific Northwest- San Juan Islands and Vancouver Island, specifically. All that water and sky was a sight to behold for these forest-dwellers, and we reveled in the lavender and salt-scented dry air. We arrived home unprepared for the humidity and mosquitoes, the muggy, buggy, ides of July. The wee one's little face is swollen with bites, and is freshly out of a baking soda bath with calamine lotion covering his forehead and neck.

Two ducks were lost while we were away; several injured. We have a gaggle of limping waterfowl. Jake discovered a hole in the run and last night he and the dog were out in the dark chasing away a family of raccoons, after having been startled awake by quacks and crows. A small raccoon was trapped and relocated to the nearby conservancy, and the trap is baited yet again for tonight with old salami. We'll see what comes.

We also came home to these, however!

And even more excitingly, these!

Both our colonies died out over the winter, of one or more of many causes much read about and discussed and shared with neighboring beekeepers. Given the other commitments and diversions we engaged in this spring and early summer, we had yet to clean the boxes, but some swarming or wild colony has moved in, and is very busy, as bees are wont to be. 

We are happy to have had room for them.