Two Delays

So Friday was suppose to be a day of light cleaning and getting ready for the wedding rehearsal.and rehearsal dinner.  But we live on a farm.  Nothing ever goes as planned.  The problems started off in the morning after J had checked the cattle at our farm up the road.  There was a cow that was just starting to think about calving the evening before.  When J checked on her Friday morning she was in the same location, no calf and no apparent signs of labor.  In our experience this is usually trouble in the form of a backwards calf.   We got her up and I check and sure enough, backward but the legs were extended back which made things much better than if they had been forward.  I got the chains on while J went to get the truck.  We had left it where the cow started out because we had to drive her to the working pens on foot.  By the time he got back I had the calf 1/2 way out.  He jumped in and we got it pulled.  There was still a heart beat but we never got it to take a breath.  I even tried mouth to mouth to no avail.  We did have a twin we were bottle feeding so we drove back to the house to get it, skinned the dead calf and tied the hide to the graft.  Usually the cow will accept a graft better if it smells more like her own.  She ended up taking it but it was several hours later.   Anyway, after all of that it looked like I was the one that had been pulled out of the back of the cow. 

 Next up was J mowing the yard.  We were still trying to spiff up the house and yard since 40 family members would be coming over after the reception the next day.   The cypress trees are right next to the bee hives and so far that is where they have always swarmed to.   J, unfortunately, didn't see the swarm until he ran into it with he face while mowing with the riding mower.  At first he had no idea what happened.  Then the bees started stinging and he started swatting, finally jumping off the mower and running to the house.

 Since I had a hive body ready, we went ahead and tried to catch the swarm.  I thought the box was too far from the branch for a good shake so we raised it up with some buckets and a board.

 That worked much better and J got a good shake on the branch and most went in the box.

 And while he had his suit on he went ahead and added a honey super to one of the other hives.

After a few hours and some more flying around the bees finally ended up in the hive.  So if everything works out there, we will have 3 hives.
Not quite what we had planned the day before V's wedding.