Day #160 You can't beat a good mechanic

Dan Palmer at AutoStop in Buford has been servicing my cars for more than ten years. First it was a little gray Maxima, then it was LadyBug, my little red Mitsubishi truck, and now he takes good care of ElliBug, the champagne-colored Nissan—the one who has her very own trophy for “the car with the most polka-dots.” (See Day #106  - 1/26/11 for a picture.)

Last week I had an oil change and regular vehicle check, and I got to thinking about how good it is to be able to trust that the person servicing your vehicle will do a good job. That, of course, led me to thinking about bees.

Yes, I know, EVERYTHING leads me to thinking about bees lately.

But bees trust each other to do what needs to be done in the hive. The newly-emerged  (and still rather wobbly) baby bee has her specific job, cleaning and polishing the cells, getting them ready for the next round of egg-laying by the queen. It’s kind of like the oil-change of the bee world.

As she gets a bit older and her exoskeleton hardens a bit, she begins to care for the brood (those are the newly-hatched and very hungry larvae), feeding them royal jelly for 3 days. For the next 3 days, she feeds them regular old worker food, sometimes called bee milk. But this little bee is not simply pulling bee milk from a faucet. Nope. She has to manufacture it from glands in her head.

During those 6 days, each larva increases 500 times in size. That takes a lot of bee milk from those dedicated little workers.

The worker bee still has lots more jobs to go through during her lifespan. But those will wait until tomorrow’s blog.

BEEattitude for Day # 160:

       Blessed are those who know how to repair things, for they shall be ever safe.

One thing Fran is grateful for right now:

       The fresh lettuce I ate from my own garden!   

http://www.franstewart.com