Mission Statement

The Fire Service has taught me about the value of a mission statement.  I have a mission statement for just about every serious life-topic. 

When I started raising bees three summers ago, my mission statement was two-fold.  To help the bees survive and to produce comb honey.  Winters are hard in Wyoming and I have lost entire colonies.  I am learning that some of this loss is due to my mismanagement.  Hopefully, I can figure this out and help them through the long, hard winter.

Thanks to the epic swarm I caught in early June, I now have comb honey!  Lesson here is one needs lots and lots of bees to make comb honey!!  Very exciting!  This will be a continued quest each summer; to figure out how to get my bees to build comb honey. 

Here are six beautiful comb honey squares waiting to be packaged.  Notice how each square is a different color reflecting the flowers the bees were working on when they were bringing back the nectar to the colony.  One bee will produce about 1/4 of a teaspoon of honey during her short, six week life.  Think about that as you look at this amazing picture of honey combs. 

Quote of the Day

from Harvard Business Review....

It is impossible to build the future using the blueprints of the past. It is like going to a plastic surgeon to restore our looks when we should see a psychoanalyst to free our mind instead.

This quote really resonated with me today!

What If This Was So.....

Today's exciting report!  Check it out by clicking on THIS LINK If it is so, I shall not get COVID!!  I have been stung so many times this year!!  Everyone will want bees, if it is so!!

And look at what my swarm bees have been up to!  So so exciting!  My quest has always been to get comb honey.  Anyone can get honey but comb honey is hard to get.  I am so excited!!  Thanks to that massive swarm, I enjoyed this comb honey, placed on a dish, scooped up with a spoon and savored - just like I did as a kid at my Great grandmother's table!  No idea on how I will harvest the natural comb the industriously built in the space where I had no frames to place.  Such a work of art.  It takes bees 8 hours of energy to make wax to one hour energy to make honey. 

Plants are relishing this year's wet/cold/warm weather.  Some plants are way behind, some are three weeks early.  I love the fickle irises, tall and splendid!  The garden is awesome.  My greenhouse friend made me take another flat of cabbages on Saturday.  I need to count, but I'm pretty sure I have upwards of 30 heads of cabbage planted now!!  

Look at these beauties!!

Mike and I made ourselves go fishing up on Jackson Lake on Sunday.  Thunder and the down bust of wind pushed us off  the lake - probably too early, but still, we caught a couple of fish - Mike snagged a nice 5 pounder -  and found out everything still works on the boat....oh, to have more time!!

A busy week ahead....Mike may be driving to the ID/OR border to buy a team of mules.....stay tuned!! 

Mind Sump

Since COVID, I have been mentally impaired to write.  It's not like writer's block, but more of an emotional thing.  Like most everyone else, I have found it difficult to focus on any other thing.  Priorities reshifted and my brain has been at a loss to take a stand.  The brain energy capacity (BEC; a new cool acronym) is mostly used up on 1) how to try to keep Mike vigilant on disease prevention, 2) how to keep me vigilant, and how to stay infection-free at work.  These mental and sometimes verbal musings have been enough for my BEC and I'm tired. 

Everyone is tired.  I can tell because very few are taking COVID seriously anymore.  The stores that used to have clerks masked up, no longer require masks, Mike is chewing on his fingers again (a long-life lived habit, very hard to break - even with a nagging wife).  And I'm getting tired of fighting the COVID battle. 

Maybe it is so that we all will end up getting it.  I really want to believe it is possible to live life and NOT get COVID.  Too many people die from this disease.  I know, I know, lots die from influenza too, but COVID is different, more virulent.  It's sneaky, this one.  And deadly.  I don't want it.  

So, because I am tired and I really don't have much more to say, here are some pictures from the Freedom garden.  Doing so so well this year!! 

 

Epic Experience

I was notified by Friend Coralia about the event happening down the road from here house.    A swarm of bees was forming on a field post. This is what it looked like.  You can see the bee hives in the background.  These bees got too crowded in their wooden bee hive homes and decided to venture off to new digs.  The barn across the road was most likely where the scout bees were looking - I took the initiative to make up their minds for them!

Here you see the act of swarm collecting.  I was hopefully the bees would not be too "pissy" (a word frequently used by bee keepers to describe bees that are mad and sting often), but found out on my first scoop that they were not in a very good mood.  Who can blame them?  They had spent the night clustered on this fence post (got down to 45 degrees).  Multiple stings were delivered by the time I finished; all to my hands.  They say bees stings are good for arthritis.  I can only say, today, my hands really itch!! 

I have never seen so many bees in one spot!  This was intimidating, exciting, exhausting, and rewarding.  The company who owns the hives still has not called.  I have taken their bees and I do not think they care.  The bees seem to like their new digs.  I set them up with lots of space, a couple of frames of honey, and a great location.  Buying bees is not a cheap endeavor.  Catching a swarm is a lot of work, time, and sting-taking, but these bees were free!

I am anticipating honey this year!  Probably alot of honey from this colony!!  This weekends forecast indicates SNOW so these bees have been well taken care of....rumor is, another swarm showed up last night......

Is there a Calling I an not Hearing.....????

True confession.  So, I read this article and said, "awwwwhhhh, that's a nice article!"  I'm a bit embarrassed by my response, now months since I've written this, but I have to say, it's a pretty good article.  Read it, be my judge.  What do you think?

How Did I Do? My latest Publication  Click on the link to read. 

Let me know what you think - I love hearing from friends!!