Day #227 Measuring Up

You probably know by now that I’m a voracious reader. And that I love libraries, because they give me a chance to try out all sorts of books that I might not read otherwise.

A week or so ago I picked up A Measure of Everything: an illustrated guide to the science of measurement, edited by Christopher Joseph. Don’t you wonder how often Christopher was called Joseph in grade school?

At any rate, the book is a compendium of short definitions (from about 3 to maybe 14 lines each) of everything you might ever need to measure. The subjects are grouped according to where they fit in:

o   Earth and Life Sciences

o   Physical Sciences

o   Technology and Leisure

Naturally, I looked up Bees. Nothing.  Just becquerel (a unit of radioactivity) and bel (a unit of sound intensity, equal to 10 decibels) on either side of where “bees” ought to have been. I found blood money, with its rather gruesome Anglos Saxon definition, and barn. Yes, barn. A barn a unit of area used in particle physics, equal to 100 square femtometers. Aren’t you glad I cleared that up?

Then I looked up Honey Bees. The H’s ranged from haab (the civil calendar used by the Mayans) to hysteresis, which the index said was on page 162, but which actually showed up on 163. I’m glad it wasn’t any farther away or I never would have found it and would, therefore, never have known that hysteresis is the degree to which a strain depends on the history of all previous stresses as well as the present stress.  Uh, right.

Quite by accident, I found Swarm, which was right below Hive. I should have looked through those H’s more carefully. The definition for hive was okay, but I beg to differ with what Mr. Joseph says about a swarm. He should have consulted with a beekeeper before saying that a swarm of bees is led by a queen. Not so. The queen is lured out of the hive by her workers, surrounded, and pretty much forced to go where they decide to go.

Now my trust has been shattered. If he’s made a mistake on swarm, how will I ever trust him for those essential definitions of apoapsis, kinematic viscosity, or rayleigh?

Sigh!

BEEattitude for Day # 227:

       Blessed are those who use words with precision, for they shall, hopefully, be understood.

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Day #223 Over the River

Yesterday my friend Millie and I went to see Over the River at the Aurora Theater in Lawrenceville. The play concerns a young man who’s lived all his life in Hoboken, eating every Sunday dinner with both sets of grandparents. When he decides to accept a promotion, which would require a move to Seattle, they try to set him up with a nice girl so he’ll get married and stay in Hoboken. The play kept me laughing; even the poignant parts were funny.

As I think about it, though, I’m remembering more poignancy than humor. The play brought up a lot of the reasons why I left home umpty years ago.

Bees don’t worry about stuff like that. The only time they “leave home” is when they swarm, and they take grandma (in this case, the mama queen bee) with them. They do it for the health of the hive, not for an impersonal employer. When the hive is too crowded, half of them leave, first making sure that the remaining bees have a couple of queens-in-the-making.

There's no hand-wringing where bees are concerned. Of course, bees don't have hands...

BEEattitude for Day # 2:

       Blessed are those who know why they do what they do, for they shall have less heartache.

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Day #195 I'm in Trouble

I tried Sunday afternoon to open the white hive, just to check and be sure it wasn’t time to put another layer on top so they could expand.

I lit the smoker without a hitch.

I used my hive tool to loosen the lid.

I lifted the lid about half an inch.

Whoops! It was way too heavy. I could see through the feeder hole on top that the frames were coming up along with the lid. Those busy little worker bees have glued the frames to the lid! I’d need about six hands in order to fix this problem.

You see, I’ll HAVE to get the lid off eventually, because that will be the only way to make room for another hive body on top of this one. If I can’t get the lid off, those bees are going to swarm when they begin to get too crowded, and that could be fairly soon.

“What did you do, Fran?”

 I’m glad you asked. I settled the lid back down, hoping I wasn’t squashing anybody. Then I sent out a panicked email to bee club members asking for help. Of course, it was Easter Sunday, so I figured I wouldn’t hear from anyone that day. But I sure hope I hear soon.

I don’t want to deal with a swarm this early in the season.  In the meantime, I went and played for a while in the garden.

BEEattitude for Day # 195:

       Blessed are those who answer questions or lend a hand, for they shall keep our beekeeper calm.

One thing Fran is grateful for right now:

       The lovely dinner I had at my daughter’s house. I so enjoy being with them.  

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Day #130 Wild Bees

Last week we had one of those gorgeous sunny afternoons that tempted me away from my writing. I threw on a jacket and headed out to the creek that runs through my back yard.

While I stood on the bank, I glanced up the hill on the opposite bank, through the tangle of discarded branches and stumps from the (former) trees my neighbor had cut down five years ago. Lo and behold, above one vine-entwined thicket I saw a cloud of bees, careening ecstatically around the stump, apparently on one of those cleansing flights that bees engage in as soon as a warmish day turns up after a winter of confinement in their hives.

If I’d been a Neanderthal, I would have seen that bee-cloud as a harbinger of sweets, and I would have gone after it with my bare hands.

I’m happy indeed that I’ll be able to gather honey from a civilized box on my back deck, having first puffed smoke into the hive to calm the bees, instead of trying to fight my way through the brambles to tear open a fallen log.

I would have made a lousy Neanderthal.

BEEattitude for Day # 130:

       Blessed are they who keep our hives intact, for we shall remain in one place instead of swarming away.

One thing Fran is grateful for right now:

       The daffodils beginning to poke their way up through the leaves 

http://www.franstewart.com