Honey, that ain't what I'm sayin'.

-Posted by Isaac

What a busy, awesome, exhausting week. I’m so thankful that I somehow lucked into this job. I get to socially isolate myself, working all the while, watching the seasons turn.

And I’m also thankful I have a patient, understanding, wonderful wife. Jayne takes on the lion’s share of homeschooling duties, and at the same time she manages the storm in the honey house. People need honey! They’re hoarding the stuff like it’s a cure for the virus. (I ain’t sayin’ it is… but I ain’t sayin’ it ain’t!) Grocery store orders have doubled, online sales are through the roof. On top of this, we’ve cut and staggered hours with Katie, Hannah and Lafe. It’s the right thing to do to keep everyone here healthy.

All this to say, they days are filled! And I’m the lucky fool who gets to manage the honey bee side of this storm.

This week the world started to pop with life and color. Suddenly I’m not nearly as distracted. (What pandemic??) There are far more pressing things than covid 19.

The willows are kicking in, and the deadnettle spreads in purple carpets across the no-till corn stubble. Yellow and red pollen flow in gushers.

I’m seeing more and more queen cups (Time to swarm!) and I’m not sure I can keep up. What an awesome problem.

Originally I thought I’d split everything here at home, make up a few hundred nucs, then move hives to the out yards at my leisure.

Nope.

I did my level best…

But the hives are just too big. And there are too many of them. And the flow is on!

So we switched directions. It was a dry week, and I decided that the time would be best spent moving bees…

…to their summer homes.

To the waiting deadnettle…

…and the oncoming honeysuckle.

All but the first sixty got moved. And I threw on a super for good measure. Maybe it will alleviate a little swarm pressure, aside from collecting deadnettle honey. We’ll get to the splitting when we can.

In order to split this early, you need queens.

And the first of my regular orders won’t be here until next week. What to do??

Well, JJ helped me out.

In the middle of the storm, the bee craziness, and the honey house craziness, I made a trip to Georgia. It was time to pick up package bees. Maizy called it a vacation. Ha!

It was anything but.

Hotel Ford

32 hours, down and back. A total of six hours sleeping in the truck, trying to avoid people. I didn’t want to take unnecessary risks.

That’s not to say that everyone was on the same wavelength. Although there were plenty of pandemic reminders on the freeways and constant radio news updates, you wouldn’t know it in southern Georgia. I drove through bustling small towns, past full parking lots, watched crowds gather around picnic tables in front of the Dairy Queen. Hmmm… made me think of something a friend posted:

I was gassing up in Jesup, and got laughing about this with the lady across from me. “Wow, it’s really different down here. Everybody up north is hiding in their houses, wearing masks and everything…”

Here’s what she said, verbatim: “Honey, I ain’t worried about all that. I figure if it’s my time to go (shrugging), it’s my time to go.”

I laughed. Maybe not the appropriate response. But she laughed with me. Sometimes I’d like to insert an emoji into conversations.

It gave me something to ponder while I focused on getting those bees home… risk and reward… Just keeping that old truck running was risk enough.

But it made it. Once again. A $500 truck carrying $10,000 of bees.

Praise Ford! (From whom small blessings flow.)

I got back by noon on Wednesday, we spent the rest of the day hiving packages and feeding.

A blur of a trip. But you know what? I got those queens!

JJ was able to part with about 100 extra. Wish it was more.

We’ll be burning through them soon enough. Splitting starts today.