Molly Update

I got an email late last night with new pictures of Molly! She has grown and changed so much - still has big eyes and lots of hair. But she's still CUTE, CUTE, CUTE! And she looks happy and healthy.



It's been a bit strange today - it feels like I have to get to know a new baby. The only thing I've had these last few months is the pictures of her taken when she was 3 months old. It's an adjustment to see her at 7 months old.



These pictures came with no other information. I don't know if she is teething, if she can sit up, crawl or stand, if some of her medical tests have been repeated, or even if she is sleeping through the night. So I'm considering once again going early and waiting with her there.

I'm still here

I couldn't make all the arrangements to travel to Vietnam before Christmas, so I'm still here. Plan B is to wait for 'THE CALL', and hope it comes early in January. Things in Vietnam shut down for 2 weeks for Tet, which is their New Year celebration on Feb 14th. It would be nice to be there to see the celebrations!

I gave my bee hives the winter mite treatment today. It was a mild, dry day, so I took the hives apart and drizzled treated sugar syrup over the backs of the bees. They didn't seem to mind too much, although the Sophia hive is pretty agressive! I constantly had to back away from the guard bees that kept coming at me. I didn't get stung, though - thick clothing and the veil saved me.

The Sophia hive still has LOTS of bees. I saw some mold on the inner cover, and the bottom board was pretty wet around the edges. The Belle hive was drier, but they have a smaller ball of bees. However, I'm happy with what I saw today. I have comfort in thinking both hives will survive the winter. I have no idea how I'm going to be able to take care of the them once Molly arrives, but with a little help from my friends, maybe I can handle it.

The newest offerings from the hives are now candles. My bee club had a candle-making day last month, where I learned how to make molded and hand-dipped candles. I picked up a few supplies afterwards and made some tea-lights and votives for Christmas presents. I'm keeping the cracked and crooked candles for myself, but proudly wrapped up a bunch of tea-lights for my friends and family.

Baby Shower for Molly and Me

What a fantastic group of friends I have! A friend of mine offered to host a baby shower for me this weekend, and we had a wonderful time! There were so many great moments. I am really lucky to have such a great group of women supporting me, plus it was great to get together with everyone before I head off to Vietnam. Here are some highlights:

• Poetry was composed, and a song was sung about adopting Molly
• Gifts were passed down to me that friends had used for their children
• A hand-stitched baby quilt was made for Molly
• She now has lots of bibs and socks
• She will wear lots of pink!

I was very touched with the thoughtfulness of the gifts. Thanks to all of you for being part of this journey with me, for all your support, and your generosity.

And a big THANKS to Julia, Vera and Doug for hosting the shower in their lovely home!

Waiting for Molly

Well, it's been 12 weeks since I got my proposal for Molly, and I still haven't heard when I'll be able to go get her! I've been busy getting ready, but it's hard to plan my life with so much uncertainty. My family wants to know about Christmas, my friends want to know about New Years, and my employers want to know how long I'll be working. So, I think I'll just go to Vietnam and wait with her there. She is 5 1/2 months old now. I've missed so much.

I have invited my nephew to travel with me, and his parents will let him come if he doesn't miss any school. So we could leave a week before Christmas, land in Hanoi, kayak for a few days in Ha Long Bay, then go south to spend Christmas day with Molly in Vung Tau. I think it's a good plan. If the adoption order gets delayed for any reason, we are staying in a resort area on the South China Sea - stuck for a few days/weeks. It won't be terrible! I'll be with my baby and have family and friends with me.

People have been asking me what I need for Molly, and I find it hard to answer. I have picked up almost all the basics to take with me, and to have on hand for when we get home. It's been a lot of work finding items that fit with my lifestyle choices. I have tried to stick with products that are natural, organic or used. I'm conscious of chemicals and toxins that might end up in her mouth. I try to avoid products made in China, but it's nearly impossible. I'm also trying to avoid plastic in all forms, but that too, is almost impossible. So I compromise - plastic toys are OK if they are second-hand! I've been finding great children's consignment stores around town.

Molly's room is taking shape. I have a friend lined up to hang curtain rods and put in baseboards. I bought some material for the curtains, and will ask my Mom is she wants to sew them for me. After I painted the walls, I realized that I still have to paint the closet. The walls are a light bubble-gum turquoise color. The first coat was too dark, so I went back to the store a total of 3 times to get the color right. Anything for my baby!

My friends are giving me used clothing, accessories and toys that their kids have outgrown, which is fantastic. Everything is so cute!

I bought a car seat, diapers, cleaned the garage and got my travel shots. Here is the updated list of what I still need:

High chair

Sleepers

Diaper bag

Toys/books

Winter coat

Baby music

Bathtowels and facecloths

Not bad, with 4 weeks to go! I feel under control at the moment. If I get 'THE CALL' tomorrow, I'll be ready!

Sophia Hive

I realized I didn't have any pictures of the Sophia hive posted yet. This was my first hive, populated with a package of bees purchased from Vancouver Island, and installed on May 4, 2009.

I found a neighbor who's back yard was filled with vegetable plots, surrounded by fruit trees and bushes. I thought it would be a perfect spot for a bee hive. As the summer progressed, the garden thrived into a lush green jungle, blossoms and flowers decorated with bright color, and my neighbor harvested food for his dinner table. However, the bees didn't fare so well.

I still don't know exactly why the bees didn't thrive earlier in the summer, but each weekend I checked on them, their numbers were smaller, and they just didn't seem as vibrant as compared to my other hive. I conferred with other beekeepers who advised that they wre probably starving! In the middle of a thriving garden! Who would have thought? Anyways, I started feeding them sugar syrup and pollen patties mid-summer, came back a couple of weeks later, and BOOM! suddenly the population had exploded! Lesson learned - the bees will let you know what's wrong - don't assume they will eat what I think is a nectar flow.

By the time the bees had recovered enough to put on a honey super, it was late in the season. They started to fill a fresh box of frames with comb and nectar, but very little of it got capped over. We took only two frames off to extract, and got a really dark, coffee colored honey. It had a richer taste than the honey from my other hive, but a thinner consistancy. Here is a picture of the Sophia honey next to the Belle honey:

The hive is doing very well now. It has a strong population, no diseases, and no varroa mites. I have finished all my fall management treatments, and can only hope that they are healthy enough to survive the winter.

Adoption Update

I was out of town for a few days this week, and came home to lots of great news! Two families have come home this week with their daughters, another one will be home soon with a son. And a waiting mom just got word she can travel at the end of this month.

Things seem to be moving fast. Not nearly fast enough for me, but I know my file is in process. Here are the things I have to do before I go to Vietnam:

Paint Molly's room - I have the paint, a light turquoise color.
Steam clean the carpet
Find and hang matching curtains
Buy a dresser
Buy a carseat

Buy a highchair
Buy cloth diapers
Buy a diaper pail
Buy a baby bathtub
Clean the garage - I need room for her stroller!
Get my travel shots

I'm sure there are many more things I haven't thought of, but it will all fall into place sooner or later.

Seasonal Management

The season is coming to a close - the honey is off, flowers have stopped blossoming and preparation for over-wintering the bees begins. I have noticed a large number of drones sitting outside the hive on the landing pad, and an uncomfortable number of wasps hanging around eating them. The drones get kicked out of the hive to die at this time of year - they have served their purpose and become unnecessary.

I treated the hives for varroa mites and nosema, and am feeding pollen patties and sugar syrup again. I left a fair amount of honey in the hives for the bees to eat over the winter. I could have taken it off, but I would rather they eat honey than syrup.

I found that the Belle hive had a HUGE number of dead mites drop onto the bottom board after the varroa treatment. However, I couldn't find any on the Sophia hive - good news. I'll keep an eye on them though, as they had a rough summer.

Introducing Molly Hoang Minh Sanh Jones

Edited note - I had pictures of Molly posted, but my agency asked that I not post her image on the internet until after the adoption is final. Therefore, her pictures have been removed.


Here she is - my daughter! She is 3 months old, and is living in in Vung Tau 3, an orphanage in the south of Vietnam. I don't know when I'll be able to go get her yet, but I expect I might be spending Christmas in Vietnam this year.

I spent most of the morning talking on the phone with another adopting mom who received her proposal at the same time. We have become close friends in these last couple of years, so it was really good to be able to share this day with her. I was on the phone with her when I opened the pictures and saw my baby for the first time. My computer was working very slowly this morning - the picture opened one line at a time. I saw a little fist, then the hair (!) and then her adorable little face! She's so sweet.

I love the hair that stands straight up! It's just like a friend's daughter when she was born - it took 5 months for her hair to grow long enough for it to lay flat.

I have spent the rest of the day talking on the phone and emailing pictures out to everyone. I had to re-charge both phones and my ear is sore, but I'm so happy!

Bottling the Liquid Gold

We took the honey off the Belle hive on the weekend! I had a couple of friends come over to help - a big thanks to both of them, as it turned out to be a bigger job than I expected.

We first had to brush the bees off each frame that contained capped honey. These frames are heavy, the bees do not want to leave, and we only had one bee brush. It took much longer than we thought it would. I was pulling frames out of the hive, passing them to one friend to brush the bees off, then she passed the frame of to my other friend over the fence, who put them in my kitchen. When we were done, I had 11 frames of honey to extract. There were bees flying all over the yard, trying to get into my kitchen to find their honey!

I set the extractor up in the middle of my kitchen. It was a two frame extractor that was spun by hand. Again, one friend took the cappings off, another friend took pictures, and I spun the extractor. The neighbors from next door came over to watch for a while - it was hot and stuffy, as we had to keep the door and windows closed to keep the bees out. However, a couple of tiring hours later, I had about 40 pounds of honey.

I spent the next couple of evenings straining the honey and putting it into jars. We are still working on the labels, but my plan is to label the large and medium size jars and sell them. I'll keep the small jars to give away as Christmas gifts, and have kept a couple of kgs for myself and the neighbors.

Summer holidays

I spent a week with my family on Quadra Island, which is my favorite place in the world. We camped (rather luxuriously) at Taku Resort, a beautiful spot on the edge of the water. We spent time beachcombing various beaches, cycling, exploring, relaxing and eating.

I took some of my family members kayaking out to the Breton Islands to show them the seals. We got all the way out there, and I couldn't find any! There should have been hundreds - sunning themselves on the rocks and bobbing in the water, keeping an eye on us. I almost cried! Then we paddled around the back of the large island, and I spotted a few on another small rock-island nearby. We drifted close and scared some into the water. But my niece and her husband continued to drift around, and watched a mother and baby climb back onto the rocks. The baby started nursing, and they were close enough to hear it suckle! So the kayaking trip was successful after all.

I took my family to Rebecca Spit Park, to Tsa-Kwa-Luten Lodge, to the Museum on the Native reserve lands, and the guys rented bikes one afternoon to cycle to Village Bay Lakes. My poor brother was riding my bike - wasn't used to the toe cages, and took a tumble into the ditch! He was fine, but wouldn't ride it back to camp.

I had a chance to visit with friends I haven't seen for quite a while, met another adopting mom who lives in the area, and visted Quadra's resident beekeeper. It was wonderful to spend a whole week there, showing my family why I love Quadra so much. However, a week just doesn't feel like enough time - I would like to live there one day with my daughter. I dream about her running around our property with pet dogs, baby lambs and chickens. Maybe one day...

View of Taku from the dock

Beachcombing

Setting up camp

Looking towards the Breton Islands from Taku

Can you spot the seals?

Kayaking back to camp

The beach at Tsa-Kwa-Luten on a stormy day

This beach is on the southern tip of Quadra Island

A Totem pole near the Native band's museum

Bee pictures

I thought I'd post some pictures of the bees:

This picture shows how much bigger the male 'drone' bees are, compared to the female 'worker' bees.

This picture is courtesy of another beekeeper. It is a mason bee on his wisteria blossom.

This is a bee drinking nectar from a borage blossom in my garden.



On the hottest days of the summer, the young nurse bees clear out of the hive to regulate the interior temperature. Some bees will stay inside to flap their little wings to create an air flow. The rest hang out on the face of the hive. They cannot fly yet, so they just crawl out and form a 'beard' on the front. Notice that they do not cover the sides - they stay near the doorway so they can find their way back in during the night.

Girls Weekend!

I just got back from a couple of days at Yellow Point Lodge, a rustic resort on Vancouver Island. A friend of mine books a few days every year, and I got the invitation to join her last year, then again this year.

We stay in the barracks, a line of rooms with 3 walls and a curtain. This is my view from the room, every morning:

Here are a few more pictures of the same view - and one of the barracks, from the beach looking back:




The Lodge is built on a point beside the ocean. They built a gorgeous 50 meter salt-water pool into the natural rock on one side of the beach:

We went swimming, cycling, kayaking, ate a lot, and relaxed on the porch with a good book one afternoon. Saturday night there was a dance with a fantastic live band, plus a freak summer thunderstorm at the same time. The thunder and lightning lasted about 2 hours. A bunch of us ended up dancing on the patio outside in the rain to watch the lightning.

There is a lot of wildlife in the resort property, rabbits, quail and deer:

A very large tree:



And all good things must come to an end eventually. Here is an incredibly beautiful shot at sunset on our last evening:

Woo- hoo!!!

There's been another proposal!

Family #4 got a proposal of a 2-month old baby girl! I talked on the phone with the new Mom for over an hour this morning - she emailed pictures of the baby while we spoke. The baby is beautiful! Bright eyed and strong, like she might have quite the personality! All of a sudden, I'm realizing how big this is! So many questions, worries, so much faith we have to trust in. Wow.

I had an email this week saying that I would receive a proposal in August or September, but in April, I was told I'd have a proposal in 3 months. In May, they told me 2 -3 months. Now, they are saying in 2-3 months. This is what international adoption is like.

Then someone close to you gets their proposal or comes home with their baby, and I yo-yo between doubt, frustration and elation!

So I should be next - I'm family #5. However, another family asked for either gender, while I'm waiting for a girl. If a boy becomes available first, family #6 might get proposed before me. We will see what happens next.

Lunch in Penticton

I had a great day yesterday! One of the partners at work is a pilot, has a small plane and offers to take the employees up for a ride in the summer. But yesterday, he wanted to fly to Penticton to take one of his clients out for lunch. So two of us met him early in the morning, drove to the airport, and hopped in. Here are some pictures taken from inside the airplane:

The plane is a Piper Warrior, 4 seater single prop airplane.

This is a picture of Mount Baker, with Chilliwack in the foreground.



This is Hemlock Valley, a small ski resort that we stayed at for New Year's a couple of times. The picture doesn't do justice to the coastal mountains behind Hemlock. Incredible views of sharp black peaks still frosted with snow.




Both these pictures are the same mountain. We passed this peak within 200 meters on the way to Penticton, but were much further away on the way back home.



And this is a picture of Harrison Hot Springs. The loop is the man-made lagoon the town built on the beachfront. Harrison lake is very cold, so this shallow lagoon warms up in the summer, and is much more pleasant for the tourists to play in.


The last picture is the lower mainland, in the afternoon. It was clear when we left in the morning, but was filled with marine haze by the time we got back.

We had a gloriously sunny day for flying, and giggled with the novelty of it all. Thanks for the invitation Jack!

Adoption Update - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The Good: Another one of our 7 families has received a proposal of a little boy! This is family #3, and I'm #5. Family #4 has been told (for the last 6 weeks or so) that a proposal could come any day now. I should get my proposal sometime this summer.

The Bad: Today is my 46th birthday. I have had a lovely day with my friends and their kids, but I was the only one there that wasn't a parent. I will be 46 years older than my child. My daughter isn't here yet, and I'm not getting any younger. Wahhh!

The Ugly: I'm not getting my daughter soon. We just got the news that Vietnam is changing some of their procedures, which will add 4 - 6 weeks to the wait between the proposal and the date to travel to Vietnam. I have estimated that I would be travelling in October, give or take a few weeks, but now I'll be lucky if I can go before the new year.

The waiting and uncertainty is the hardest part of all of this. I have read other people's blogs and found that the postings before proposal and travel are often depressing and maudlin. I thought I'd try and avoid doing the same, but forgive me for a little bit of whining. I was hoping to get a proposal for my birthday present - not bad news!

Liquid Gold

Last night I took a frame of honey out of the Belle hive. I wanted to send some honey home with my friend Ron, who is off to a holiday at his family's cabin on a lake. A bee got caught in my hair and stung me on the scalp! Yow-ee, it really hurts!

So, then we had to get the honey out of the honey comb. It's quite a challenge! I heated up a knife and started to cut the cappings off, and the honey spilled out, so Ron scooped it out with a spoon. It was quite tedious, and lots of bits of beeswax ended up in the honey. Then I thought that we could scoop the wax and honey into cheesecloth, and squish the honey into the jar. It worked well, but honey oozed all over. I got Ron to pull out a plastic bag, cut the corner off, and I thought I'd put the cheesecloth in the bag, then put in the honey comb, and squeeze that into the jar. Its a brilliant idea, and would have worked, except I lost control of the cheesecloth, and the mixture poured out of the bottom, all over the counter, then into the jar, without being filtered, so we were back at square one!

Hours later, there was honey all over us, the counter, the sink, inside the jar, outside the jar, and dripping onto the floor. I sent Ron off with a jar that looked like 60% beewax and 40% honey. I told him he could deal with it at the cabin. He thought it would be a good story to tell his family!

They honey is amber colored, fragrant and floral. It's the best tasting honey ever!

This wasn't the first frame of honey to come out of the Belle hive. The first honey came out last weekend and I gave it to my host family. They too, struggled with getting the honey out of the comb. Today, she came over with a little dish of spiced almonds that she made with the honey! They were really good, so I ate them all for lunch.

I purchased a commerical honey extractor - used - from another beekeeper. I need to figure out how to repair and clean it, but it will be so much easier to use. It works on centrifugal force to extract the honey, and doesn't damage the comb, so the frames can go back into the hive.

Introducing Sophia and Belle

I'm happy to report that my weak hive is making a come back. I went over to see how they were doing yesterday, and saw some good things. There were about 4 frames of bees, stores of pollen and honey, the queen is still laying, and they had eaten the whole pollen patty and drunk the sugar syrup dry. Plus, they looked a little more active. It was interesting to notice that I now have two different colored bees in the hive. The original bees are golden/orange colored, while the bees that have hatched from the frame I brought over are much darker. It's really obvious - I will try to get a picture the next time I open the hive.

I have been having a hard time describing which hive I've been writing about, so have decided to name them, to make it easier. My first hive was given it's name last month by our host. So the Sophia hive is my first one - the package - and the one that needed rescuing.

My second hive came from the nuc, and I have decided to call it the Belle hive. The picture above is Belle.

Her Majesty the Queen

(Click on a picture for a close-up view)

We took a bunch of great pictures today when we opened up the hive. We found the queen in the 'nuc' hive today. Can you see her? She is in the center of the frame of the first picture, much longer than the other bees, and almost completely black. She was dipping her rear end into the cells to lay eggs. You can see how white the comb is - it was just built fresh on a frame with plastic foundation. The bees have not lined the inside of the comb with propolis yet, but the queen is laying it it anyways.

The second picture is a great example of a typical frame inside a hive. At the top of the frame the cells have been capped over - there will be baby bees in the pupa stage growing inside. Right beside them, if you look close inside each cell, you can see little white grubs curled inside. This is a baby bee in the larva stage. This larva is mature, and is being capped over. Along the bottom of the picture, it's hard to see what's inside the cells, but I saw smaller larva covered with royal jelly. You can see a bee in the bottom right corner that has dived into the cell. Just her bottom is sticking out. The worker bees secrete royal jelly from a gland in their heads, so this one is probably feeding the larva. The eggs hatch into larva within 3 days, get fed royal jelly for 5 days, then get capped over. Two weeks later - new bees!

The third picture is a frame that I put in the hive with no foundation. I had read on the internet that the bees would naturally build comb on an empty frame - plastic foundation is not necessary. In addition, the plastic foundation forces the bees to build comb that is a fraction larger than what is 'normal' for them. So I put the empty frame in to see what would happen. Instead of the smaller comb I expected, the bees built a beautifully straight frame with noticeably larger comb, and rounder, rather than the octagonal shape! Today, I saw that they used this whole frame to raise drone bees. The drones are the male bees. They are larger, so the comb is built larger, and when the cells are capped over, the cappings are raised like a bullet, to give the drone room to grow. They take an extra 3 days longer to hatch than the worker bees. If you look closely at the top of the picture where it's out of focus, just right of centre, there is a drone bee emerging from it's cell. It looks bigger than the worker bees, and the eyes on a drone are huge - they take up his whole head. I'll try and get a better picture later, to compare a drone with a worker bee.

The last picture is... HONEY!