The short version is that I did get some bees and I put them up on my garage. They seem pretty happy up there, but unfortunately there is no queen in the hive. No queen means they will all die off pretty soon, so I had to find a new swarm with a queen that I could combine with my queenless bees. Tomorrow I'm going to get some bees out of a fence, and hopefully I will get a queen this time. Cross your fingers for me.
The chickens were acting extra fussy, so I picked up Molly and inspected her. Blech, she was covered with creepy crawly critters, and so was Blackie. I was relieved to see that they were chicken lice rather than mites. The lice are way easier to get rid of and they aren't as harmful to the birds. They don't feed directly off the chicken, they eat the dead flaky skin. They cause irritation so there is plenty of flaky skin to go around.
The poison that is most popular for treating the lice is poisonous to cats, so I did some investigating and found out that a bath in soap and salt water will kill the lice. Then you have to do it again in 10 days to kill whatever hatches later. So, I cleaned out the chicken house really well and dusted it thoroughly with diatomaceous earth to help kill any stragglers, and settled in to give my poor chickens a bath. I've never done it before, and I don't think the chickens have ever been given a bath either.
I filled up a bucket with warm water and then added salt and some Dr. Bronners. Then poor Molly got stuck in the water for about 10 minutes. She did not take it well. She tried to get out the whole time but when I took her out of the water she just stood there dripping, and didn't go anywhere. She was very subdued for the rest of the day. Blackie didn't like it either, but it didn't bother her nearly as much. It was a little bit cool outside, and they took a while to dry, so I ended up putting them in the bathtub in a pet carrier with a heater blowing on them overnight.
The bath worked really well and they have been critter free so far.
