People Pleasing

-Posted by Isaac

Despite my very best efforts to anger people with this blog, it appears I’m still failing.

Sales continue to skyrocket. Jayne, Katie and Hannah bounce through online orders in the honey house.

And I struggle to keep up with the grocery store honey.

Even the bees are overwhelmed with the rush.

The pollen flows in torrents, and we can’t begin to keep up with these exploding hives.

We’re busy!

The online sales, the groceries and the nucs… it’s like a bee business blitzkrieg. We’re overwhelmed. And all during a pandemic. The political hate coming at me from a few blog readers doesn’t seem to stem the tide one bit. You guys are still buying stuff like everybody agrees with me 100%. I have failed.

But what was it we all learned as children? If at first you don’t succeed…

Let’s try this route: I don’t like you.

Well… not you. You’re cool. We could hang out. It’s the general you I’m talking about. The 99% plus the irksome one percent.

The last time I posted something about nucs, I got 10 or 12 emails, people wanting to buy! buy! buy! I kindly and responsibly responded. No, you can’t have one. We wholesale these things.

But why??

Why? As I said above, I don’t like you.

We retailed nucs a few years ago and I learned my lesson. It took years off my life. Not that there wasn’t more than a few enjoyable moments. Not that I didn’t meet many many wonderful people. It wasn’t the general experience. It was the one in one hundred that got me. Those are the people you remember. We don’t retail nucs because I can’t take the 1%.

Who are these people?—the few and the proud. And the loud. Are they the same people you see on Facebook?

You know, the one who posts an outrageous meme which strings along 53 comments. Half of which are the author’s using ALL CAPS!! Could it be the same people who go to a beekeeping blog to seek political confrontation? I wonder. What if we had a venn diagram?

Or maybe I just need to toughen up. The truth is, I want to be liked by everyone, and the world just isn’t built like that. Come to think of it, maybe this is the reason I had such a short lived teaching career. If only we had a pandemic during my years in front of the classroom… maybe I would’ve lasted. It could’ve been more of a wholesale approach to science education.

As it is, we’re going the easy route on the nucs.

Wholesale.

Once they’re gone, they’re gone. In July when they swarm due to lack of space— not my problem. In December when they die due to lack of treatment— not my problem.

My only problem is getting them made. It takes time. And lately, time is scarce. Today however, I had a crew.

They were a big help.

Three of them went fishing.

One of them started in a beekeeping flurry, but found that napping in the dandelions was an easier way to pass the time.

Hey, beekeeping can be hard work.

But it’s nowhere near as hard as people pleasing.

The workers are going home

-Posted by Isaac

So how’s the pandemic going for you?

That’s great!

I’m, like you, trying to wrap my head around this thing. And I can’t. It seems like a best-of-times, worst-of-times type of thing.

To tell you the truth, we’re sort of enjoying ourselves. Homeschooling at Honeyrun Farm:

Science-

And more science—

And more—

Out on the range…

…and into the woods

…and out on the water

…and back to the woods

…finding and foraging

…and planting

…and growing.

We’ve got the natural sciences covered.

But social studies, not so much. Myself, I’m stuck on PANDEMIC 101. While we hide ourselves, sorta schooling, sorta working, the history of this moment grinds on. Day by day.

Remember a month ago? The virus starts spreading on home turf and we see memes and messages everywhere: We’re all in this together.

I’m not seeing this so much anymore. All of us still want to beat this thing and get back to normal, but part of us want “normal” to be right now. And they’re loud about it.

We’re picking teams again. And me being the sympathizer, the fence-sitter, I’m seeing it from both sides. It’s hard. Which team do I choose? Social Studies is definitely tougher than Science.

Usually I can find my bearings by stepping back and looking at things from a distance.

And when you look at it that way, it starts to make sense.

Sometimes a friend on Facebook will help you out. A beekeeping buddy of mine has had segments with this handsome guy on his news feed. This is the first I’ve taken the time to watch.

That settled the question even further. The handsome guy sort of consolidated my wondering thoughts. I couldn’t quite wrap my head around what happens when a fantasy (“back to normal”) crashes headlong into a hard truth (the virus spreads and kills.)

And then there’s always old friends. Here’s an old construction buddy:

He’s still doing construction these 25 years later, but now he’s the big shot foreman on big projects. He’s not going back until there’s a vaccine… official “reopening” or not. And I can’t imagine he’s the only one who feels this way.

Kind of hard to keep that economy chugging without the chuggers.

So that clenched it for me. I’m choosing my team. Whew! That had me worried. Social Studies will eat you alive. If they could only present the stuff as sort of a math function.

VIRUS=SPREAD=DEATH=FEAR=SHUTDOWN=PROTESTS=REOPENING=VIRUS=SPREAD=DEATH=FEAR=SHUTDOWN=PROTESTS=REOPENING=VIRUS…..…to societal meltdown or vaccine. Whichever comes first.

That little text conversation got me thinking of a Weezer song about workers getting screwed by the system— Jonas. And wouldn’t you know it, just a few minutes later the very song came up on my Pandora music feed.

I had to laugh. The dozer will not clear a path… the driver swears he learned his math…

THE WORKERS ARE GOING HOME!

Let’s just hope they never decide to protest.

Make me an angel

-Posted by Isaac

But that was a long time, and no matter how I try

The years just flow by like a broken down dam

We lost a songwriting legend this week.

I think it was Jayne who got me started on John Prine, a mix CD when we were first dating. We were soon playing his songs in the bars and open mics. This was in Colorado and Montana. He came to Missoula when we were out there, and being penny pinchers, we decided that we just couldn’t afford it. Years later, he headlined the Red Ants Pants festival in Sulphur Springs MT, but we missed him again. Finally, thankfully, we joined our good friends Mike and Angie and caught him here in Columbus. At the sold-out Ohio Theater. What a treat!

John Prine can move you. His songs tell stories, they make you think. Lake Marie. And a few will make you cry. Summer’s End. Hello in there. Or, at least I cry. I’m a softie. I swear, every time. Here’s one that does it to me:

I’ll let you listen and we can cry together,

…thinking about the time passing. And of course, thinking about bees.

This week we made nucs. (Angels?) A lot of them. And I’ll show you the process.

The prepping starts weeks in advance— building boxes and frames, fitting entrance plugs, snapping in foundation, etc…

Now we have a nice shop… makes it look all professional :)

You take the boxes out to the bees, usually needing a four-wheel drive this time of year. This group was at home, so they were easy.

Got to have your queens in early April.

If the splitting is going to take a while, more than a few days, you might as well bank those queens.

And start in.

A nuc is 2-3 frames of brood (ideally capped brood), a frame of honey and a frame of foundation or drawn comb.

You can either spend time finding the queen, or use queen excluders (the silvery screen in the background above). Either way, you need to know which box she’s in, and where she’s not.

This is the first year I’ve seen a lot of queen cups in early April. (Because of the almond pollen flow in February.)

You’ve got to cut the cups. The bees shouldn’t be thinking about making their own queen when you’re giving them an expensive bred queen.

A high queen placement will help keep her warm during these cold nights.

After the nuc is made up, the original hive gets the new replacement frames and some diluted sugar syrup to stimulate comb building.

In this case, I couldn’t just place the nucs in our normal spot next to the goat pen. All the older bees would go back to their original hives. I learned my lesson from last year’s Easter disaster.

Fortunately Becky and Justin at Tilley Farmstead live not far away. They have a nice bee-friendly spot out of the wind. (After I hauled them over and scattered everything, I politely asked permission.)

Permission granted!

Here our little angels will mature for a couple weeks. I’ll eventually make it back around, check the queen’s progress and colony growth, then they’re off to somewhere in the wide world beyond. To parts unknown. In a month each one will be somebody else’s angel.

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.

Give me ambiguity, or give me something else.

-Posted by Isaac

By far the biggest news of the week was what took place early on Tuesday morning.

Our California girls came home!

Return of the bees! After a quick lesson in semi truck unstrapping and net-rolling,

I started on the unloading.

Within minutes I could tell that we were dealing with some super strong hives. The bees would boil out the entrances at the slightest bump.

And some clusters were bulging out the bottoms.

It only took an hour and a half. Unloading is not nearly the ordeal of loading.

And no getting stuck this time— I thought ahead— we now have a gravel patch instead of a mud patch.

Later that day, my suspicions were confirmed— these hives are awesome!

Whatever doubts or hesitations I had about going to the almonds have vanished. This little gamble has paid off in spades.

I spent the rest of the afternoon popping lids and dusting a probiotic. Saying hello. It’s so good to see my girls again. Missed you guys!

Probably 90% are splittable right now.

But we won’t have queens until next week. The spring busyness starts then. I will however, right now, make a bold prediction: we’re going to have a huge spring honey crop.

Maybe the best ever.

Just press pause for a couple months! No mortgage payments. No rent. Loan forgiveness… for just a little while. Isn’t this plausible? Just to press pause on the thing? Make it the Year of Jubilee.

That makes me think. A friend from church posted this insightful article. Well stated. Christians don’t need to be congregating on Easter when they’re busy saving society.