Long Live the Chickens

It's really loud under our tin roof when it rains. Loud enough that it's preventing me from wasting another evening watching tv, which I suppose I appreciate!
Something has started preying on our chickens. The last couple of days, we've lost two of the old ladies, Sparkle, and Buffy. Squeak is also unaccounted for at this point, but she's a wild'un anyway and could be in a tree. The disturbing part is that we're finding their bodies pretty much intact, so whatever is killling them is not eating them.
Sparkle and Buffy were at least 9 years old. I've kind of lost track, to be honest, but I think they were in their third summer in 2004, when a tree took out my doublewide. They hadn't laid eggs in years, and they weren't especially friendly. They were pretty cute, though, all fat and fluffy and set in their ways like old ladies should be (I certainly intend to learn from their example). For the last 4 or 5 year, they spent their days at my neighbor's, waiting for her to fill her bird feeders and taking dust baths under her storage trailer. I'd hoped they would die in their sleep and I feel sad their last moments were frightening.
99.999999% (that is a scientifically proven percentage that I just now made up) of all chickens live less than a year, and the chickens people eat mostly live less than 4 months. So I take some comfort in those old ladies living a free and comfortable life for most of a decade.
We're debating what the predator might be. I'm inclined to think dog, since there was some apparent chasing, and then no eating. Buffy was missing only her head, which though it may be unkind so speak so, was abnormally tiny. Jordan thinks it was a bird, an owl or hawk, who found out too late she couldn't carry a nine pound hen back to her nestlings. Spring is always the worst time for predation. The wild critters all have hungry babies and, well, there's not a predator or even an omnivore under the sun who can pass up a chicken. Wondering whether I should keep the birds in their coop for a couple days. They hate that, but I'd hate to lose Darkle (Sparkle's sister and our last remaining old lady) the same way.

We opened the hive this evening for our weekly inspection. There are a s-ton of bees in there, and they are building a lot of comb. The bar I pulled out (added two weeks ago) was fully drawn with comb and surprisingly heavy with honey. We added just one bar this week, since they hadn't done much work yet on the two we put in last week.

Adios, Sparkle and Buffy. It was good having you around all these years.