Day #329 Water - Saving

Bees are very aware of water.

·         They need to drink a lot of it

·         They have to evaporate a great deal of it from the nectar to form honey

·         They have to avoid flying in it

I’m aware of water, too. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about my new bathroom faucet. The good folks at Keep Smiling Plumbing put it in several weeks ago to replace a leaky, yucky iron-deposit-laden mess.

My new faucet even has a name. “Eva.” I didn’t name it. I think I mentioned a while back that the people who manufacture these Moen faucets name all their plumbing fixtures.

  

Well, why not? I named my car EllieBug, and the faucet is about the same color as the car (although without the yellow polka dots).

It was hard to turn the old faucet on, and even harder to turn it off. In the middle of this drought that Georgia is experiencing, a leaky faucet is downright irresponsible. Of course, most Americans use WAY too much water. Think about it next time you’re getting ready to turn in for the night.

·         Why do we leave the water running (down the drain and into the sewer or septic tank) while we’re brushing our teeth?

·         Sometimes it’s because the doggone faucet is too hard to turn off. But now, I don’t ever have to worry about that again.

And all because of Eva . . . They oughta write a song . . .

BEEattitude for Day # 329:

       Blessed are those who use water wisely and who make sure we bees have some to drink, for they shall eventually get lots of honey.

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Get Your Dog in My Next Book!

From now through the end of September, anyone who donates $10 to WAG, also known as the Walton Animal Guild, will be automatically entered in a raffle.

If you win, your dog will be in my next Biscuit McKee mystery!

http://www.wagwalton.com

The donate button is right on their home page

Every $10 donation is automatically entered in the drawing

See Blog #324 for the details.

Forward the link to your friends who have dogs!

Day #328 Yellow Hive - Yikes!

I’m wearing my bee suit every time I step near the hives now. I know I started out having a nice cup of tea each morning out there on the back deck, but for some reason the bees in the yellow hive have developed

an attitude !

You’d think they’d understand when I bring them sugar water that I’m trying to keep them from starving in these drought conditions.

The brown/white hive is very placid. I pull off the empty feed jar and they simply wait for me to put the new one in place.

But the yellow hive! Good grief! The second I remove the feed jar, thousands of them (well, okay, so it’s only dozens of them, or maybe a hundred, but they SOUND like thousands) boil out of the hole where the feeder jar goes. I then have a heck of a time getting the new jar in place without squashing bees. If they’d sit still for a few moments, we wouldn’t have this problem.

Sunday morning, two of them landed on my slacks and came inside with me. Fortunately I noticed them before any damage was done, either to them or to me. I walked back outside and they flew off. Whew!

Anyway, here’s the difference in the hives. I took the picture from my bay window at about 8:00 a.m. As you can see, the yellow bees are clustered on the front of their hive. The ones in the other colony are inside sleeping, no doubt.

BEEattitude for Day # 328:

       Blessed are those who relax when we fly around, for their lack of fear will not frighten us.

Fran’s bee.s: “Frighten you????? That’s easy for you bees to say. You oughta try seeing it from my standpoint! Why do you think I’m wearing that silly-looking suit all the time now?”

bzzz-bzzz-bzzz-bzzzzzz-bzz-bzzz (translation: We know you're not scared. You're simply being prudent.)

Have a safe holiday

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Get Your Dog in My Next Book!

From now through the end of September, anyone who donates $10 to WAG, also known as the Walton Animal Guild, will be automatically entered in a raffle.

If you win, your dog (or your granddog, or the dog you had when you were a kid) will be in my next Biscuit McKee mystery!

http://www.wagwalton.com

The donate button is right on their home page

Every $10 donation is automatically entered in the drawing

See Blog #324 for the details.

Day #326 An Evening with Frannie

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you’ll know I don’t have a TV set. No entertainment center. No fancy furniture.

Ah! But I have Netflix, and I play the DVDs on an old outdated computer with a monitor that’s only about that wide – if I sit close enough I can see what’s going on.

I also have a sliding glass door that goes out onto my deck where the beehives are. When I watch a movie in the evening, the light from the room (I always have the overhead lights on while I’m watching a movie – can’t stand a darkened room with a glaring screen, even if it is only a little one), that light attracts stray bees to the sliding glass door.

And somehow or other a few of them are getting inside. This evening (Friday night), this is how it went:

About thirty minutes into the movie I heard a bzzz-bzzz-bzzz. A bee, about four feet from my head, was walking up the curtain. I hit pause, picked up the plastic container I keep on the coffee table for just this purpose, placed it over the bee, and slid a piece of paper underneath the jar, being careful not to trap the bee’s little feet in the process.

“Bzzz-bzzzz-bzzzzzz,” she said.

“I know, I know, I’ll get you back outside.”

I went to the door, slid the curtain back, and saw about forty bees on the outside. Hmmm. If I open this door to put this ONE bee OUTSIDE, about TWENTY of these other bees will get INSIDE.

 
So, balancing the bee container, being careful to keep the paper firmly over it, I went to the FRONT door, slipped on my wellington boots (I am not going outside in the middle of the dark night in sandals!), and walked the bee all the way around the house to the back deck, up the stairs and over to the hives. Not knowing which hive the bee came from, I lifted the paper off right between the two hives. I figured she could find her way home from there.

Back around the house and inside. Take off boots. Resume movie.

“Bzzz-bzzz-bzzz.”

This time, the bee was walking across the floor. Jar, paper, boots, around, let go, back around, boots off, movie.

“Bzzz-bzzz-bzzz.” This time, before I went out the front door I turned off the overhead light in the family room. I finished the movie (Freedom Writers – very good story, by the way) with no further inter-bzzz-ruptions.

Wish me luck figuring out how they’re getting inside…

BEEattitude for Day # 326:

       Blessed are those who avoid toxic poisons in their yards, for they shall have their plants pollinated by us.

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Get Your Dog in My Next Book!

From now through the end of September, anyone who donates $10 to WAG, also known as the Walton Animal Guild, will be automatically entered in a raffle.

If you win, your dog will be in my next Biscuit McKee mystery!

http://www.wagwalton.com

The donate button is right on their home page

Every $10 donation is automatically entered in the drawing.

See Blog #324 for the details.

Day #325 Quarts of Feed

My bees have been eating a quart of sugar water each day now for a couple of weeks. I—who used to avoid the grocery store sugar aisle for the most part—now am buying ten pounds of sugar a week. Do you know how much that costs? I used to spend most of my budget on birdseed. Now it’s on bee-feed!

The woman at the checkout lane has eyed me up and down a couple of times. Maybe I should explain to her that the sugar is not for me.

Yesterday one of my neighbors stopped by to thank me for the honey I’d given her. “The best honey we’ve ever tasted,” she said. “My daughter never used to eat honey. She said it never tasted good, but she sure does like this!”

I guess the speaker at last month’s Beekeepers Club meeting was right when he said, “Give your neighbors honey, even if it didn’t come from your own bees. Just buy it from a good local honey producer. They’ll love you for it.” I followed his advice.

BEEattitude for Day # 325:

       Blessed are those who give from the heart, for they shall find their heart expanding to encompass the world.

bee.s. from Fran: There was some confusion about yesterday’s blog. The WAG website does not list a raffle. Instead they are automatically entering EVERYBODY who donates $10 during the month of September. The donations are beginning to roll in. Join the fun! Details below …

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Get Your Dog in My Next Book!

From now through the end of September, anyone who donates $10 to WAG, also known as the Walton Animal Guild, will be automatically entered in a raffle.

If you win, your dog will be in my next Biscuit McKee mystery!

http://www.wagwalton.com

The donate button is right on their home page

Every $10 donation is automatically entered in the drawing

See Blog #324 for the details.

Day #324 Will Your Dog Be in My Next Book?

Get Your Dog

in My Next Book!

From now through the end of September, anyone who donates $10 to WAG, also known as the Walton Animal Guild, will be entered in a raffle:

http://www.wagwalton.com

The donate button is right on their home page

Every $10 donation is automatically entered in the drawing

If you win, you can send me a picture of your dog, and I’ll use the name, size, breed, coloring, and personality in Violet as an Amethyst, my 6^th Biscuit McKee mystery. Your dog will be a feature character in the plot, and will have his or her bio at the end of the book, along with a photo if you have one available.

Enter as many times as you like, just by donating to WAG

$10 per entry

Donate $50 and get five entries

Donate $100 to get ten chances to win

Even if your dog has passed on to greener pastures, you can still enter, and the author’s note above your dog’s bio will say that this book is “in loving memory of _____”

Naturally, there will be something about bees in this upcoming book, and Marmalade, the orange and white tabby cat, will put in her two cents’ worth as she meets the dog.

Pass this on to your friends who have dogs!

Share it on Facebook and Twitter!

Remember, the raffle runs only through the end of September,

so the book can be out in time for holiday shopping!

http://www.wagwalton.com

WAG is a 501(c)(3) rescue organization in Walton County GA
They're having an open house on Friday 9/14/11
3904 Oak Grove Road
Loganville GA

BEEattitude for Day # 324:

       Blessed are those who laugh a lot, for they shall tickle their own hearts when they do.

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www.franstewart.com

Day #323 Night-time Cleanup Crew

Birdfeeders are messy. All around them, birds scatter seeds, feathers, and the end products of digestion. That’s what they do in my front yard. It’s okay, though. I have a clean-up crew who come around every night, 24/7. They never take a day off. They never complain. They keep the area under my “squirrel-proof” birdfeeders looking (relatively) tidy.

And I don’t have to pay them!

Last night I went out to bring in the feeders—because if I don’t, the cleaner-uppers climb the pole and empty them for me—and heard scrabblings up the trunk on the majestic tulip poplar that stands near my front door.

I stood still and waited. Within seconds a black-masked little face peeked around the trunk about ten feet off the ground.  Before I could say, “Good evening, little friend,” a second face poked its way over the first one’s shoulder.

Two nights ago, I remembered after I was practically asleep that I’d forgotten to bring in the feeders. I barged out the front door without thinking and startled a possum on my front porch. She cleans up the niger seeds the goldfinches drop.

During the day, pigeons and doves and other sorts of ground-feeders pick up what the raccoons and the possums miss.

And the daddy-longleg spiders inside the house clear up any ants who find their way inside.

Life is good.

BEEattitude for Day # 323:

       Blessed are those who take the time to observe what we animals do and who appreciate us, for they shall reap the benefit of our activity.

Coming Soon: a raffle, so your dog might be in my next book!

Details on September 1^st!

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http://www.franstewart.com

Day #322 Dewitt Jones and his celebration of life

Dewitt Jones is a photographer who likes to share his work with me (and the umpty-kazillion other people who subscribe to his website). Every so often I get an email with a lovely photograph, some words of wisdom, and a gentle reminder to

“celebrate what’s right with the world.”

That’s a great idea. I celebrate

every time I step onto my deck to listen to the bees,

every time I look out the window at my beehives or the birds,

every time I share time with a friend, and

particularly every time I hear from one of you,

as well as a lot of other times in between.

 

www.dewittjones.com

BEEattitude for Day # 322:

       Blessed are those who share beauty, for it shall reflect back on them as well.

Coming Soon: a raffle, so your dog might be in my next book!

Details on September 1^st!

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http://www.franstewart.com

Day #321 A Shrew and a Line

In the past few weeks I’ve seen two marvelous theater productions, and I'd like to share my delight with you.

The first was The Taming of the Shrew at the Atlanta Shakespeare Tavern. Shrew is one of those shows that a lot of people hate in our politically-correct times. I’ve seen it produced many different ways. That’s one of the beauties of Shakespeare – you can take the very same words, change the intonation, and get diametrically opposing interpretations.

This production turned out to be raucous, hilarious, and one of the finest love stories I’ve seen in a long time. www.shakespearetavern.com I hope you’ll check it out. Through the end of September, they’re playing it in repertory with Two Gentlemen of Verona and A Comedy of Errors (which happens to be one of my favorites).

Then, on Sunday I saw A Chorus Line at the Aurora Theater in Lawrenceville. First, I must say I’m in absolute awe of anyone who dance that long and that hard, and make it look that effortless. I was almost reluctant to see it—I’d seen the movie and quite frankly was bored silly. But the play was something altogether different. Beautifully cast, and quite well-performed.

Then I came home to my bees and watched their daily production, choreographed by a master planner. Lovely.

BEEattitude for Day # 321:

       Blessed are those who work to excel at their craft, whatever it may be, for they shall be blessed with applause.

Coming Soon: a raffle, so your dog might be in my next book!

Details on September 1^st

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http://www.franstewart.com