Day #379 Einstein had it right

I seem to spend an inordinate amount of blog space comparing people to bees.

·         If we’d only act like bees we would be better organized. 

·         If we acted like bees, we would stay more focused. 

·         If people were more like bees, we’d produce better products.

But then, I found this:

Einstein was right. People are not bees. We can learn from them, but I shouldn’t go judging people on how well they can do their honey bee chores. After all, I'm not too good at gathering nectar myself.

 

BEEattitude for Day # 379:

       Blessed are those who live in the moment, for they shall save themselves from excessive worry.

Day #359 Earth to Antares

Someone sent me one of those emails recently. You know the ones I mean. They’re characterized by:
      enormous fonts, usually in
            a bolded bright red, along with

a shake-your-finger-in-my-face narrative that tells me:

how little I understand,

how little I can think for myself,

how ungrateful I am for all the riches life offers,

and what horrible things will happen if I don’t forward the message immediately.

I hate those emails.

Every once in a while, though, one shows up that has something interesting in it. And I steal those ideas for my blog.

The email I have in mind had a series of pictures of various sized balls. The first showed a teeny Pluto, a slightly larger Mercury, a bigger Mars, a still larger Venus, and a great big Earth.

In the next picture, Earth was dwarfed by Neptune, and the sizes moved progressively up through Uranus and Saturn to an enormous  Jupiter.

In the 3rd picture, Jupiter was miniscule compared to the Sun.

In the 4th, the sun, Sirius, and Pollux, each in greatly increasing sizes, were nevertheless insignificant when compared to Arcturus.

And of course, Arcturus wasn't even a 100th the size of Betelgeuse, which was about half the diameter of Antares.

Antares, incidently, is more than a thousand light years away from earth, barely a hairsbreadth away when one considers the limitless span of the Universe.

The email ended by telling me that I ought to feel horribly humble in the face of all this HUGENESS (that's my word, not the email's).

On the other hand, miniscule fleas caused the Plague that devastated Europe, killing the major bulk of the population, and the great big people were powerless to do anything about it.

People may be able to grow to be six or seven feet in height, while a honey bee never reaches much more than about half an inch or so, yet the honey bee is responsible for pollinating 1/3 of our food products. Without all those teeny bees, we’d be in deep doo-doo.

Relative size has very little to do with relative importance. I think we all have our role to fill, whether we are a bee, a planet, a star, or a person who sends emails. And it is what we do with our lives here and now that gives us value -- not how little we are, or how big either.

BEEattitude for Day # 362:
       Blessed are those who take themselves with a grain of salt, for they shall enjoy a flavorful life.

_______________________________ 

The teeny details:
my books:  http://www.franstewart.com Please buy them from an independent bookstore or directly from my website.
my eBooks for Kindle:  http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=Fran+Stewart
my eBooks on Smashwords (for all other formats):  http://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=Fran+Stewart

Day #254 Sheltered from the Rain

We had a driving rainstorm on Wednesday, and I could see clusters of bees hanging beneath the screen on the bottom of the hive, each bee attached by at least four legs to other bees above and below. I tried to get a picture of them (before it started to rain), but there were too many shadows.

I have to wonder, though, if the bees at the top end up with joint problems. After all, having a couple of hundred sisters hanging on HAS to add up to a lot of weight.

Add the 99% Georgia humidity to that equation, and I must give my honey bees a blue ribbon for strength and endurance.

 

BEEattitude for Day # 254:

       Blessed are those who lend a leg to their sisters, for they shall help to form a living sculpture.

_______________________________ 

The teeny details:
my books:  http://www.franstewart.com
my eBooks on Amazon for Kindle
my eBooks on Smashwords (for all other formats)

Day #242 Flying High

For those of you who asked – my hands are much better. They're still swollen, but I can form a loose fist now. Dr. Greenberg at the Hope Clinic said that I don’t appear to be allergic to the antihistamine. The stings were just apparently in a really tender area. And I came home with a prescription for an epi pen. Just in case.

Now on to the exciting news. Let’s look at two forms of aerial excellence:

     Honey Bees Fly

"I know that," you say.

But did you know . . .

People fly, too!



Eli Reiman 2011



By day Eli Reiman is a data base manager. Otherwise, he’s a fire-spinner, stilt-walker, juggler, scuba diver, photographer, and now – aerial acrobat. You've seen a lot of his photos (Yelloideas Photography) in this blog.

My bees are upside down half the time, too, but I must admit, I've never seen them in bright red . . .

BEEattitude for Day # 242:

       Blessed are those who enjoy what they do, for they shall carry blessings along with them everywhere they go.

_______________________________ 

The teeny details:

my books:  http://www.franstewart.com

my eBooks on Amazon for Kindle

my eBooks on Smashwords (for all other formats)

Day #192 I Left the Queen Cage in Too Long

My dear friend Nanette Littlestone, who also happens to be my editor and therefore helps bring order to my often chaotic manuscripts, asked if she could see the bees. “Sure,” I said. “Come Thursday and you can help!”

So she dropped by that afternoon. The cage the queen bee came in needed to be removed, and I needed to replace that extra frame I’d taken out as I was installing the package. Nanette watched as I tried and tried and tried to light the smoker. She cheered when I finally managed the task. She stood back as I lifted the lid.

Oh, expletive! I’d left the queen cage in there too long because the bees had busily built two gorgeous sections of comb hanging down from the lid into the space I’d left open. Naturally, when I lifted the lid, that comb came up with it, covered by hundreds of working bees. They were stuffing it full of nectar and pollen. Much to my chagrin, as I discovered later – there were dozens (hundreds?) of teeny-tiny bee eggs in the comb as well.

If I’d lifted the empty cage out on Tuesday or Wednesday, I might have saved the lives of all those little eggs that now won’t grow into beehood. I’m feeling really sad right now. I know I can’t save every bee on the planet. I can’t even save every bee in my own yard. But I sure do wish I could have foreseen this problem.

S  I  G  H . . .

Of course, the good news is that, even though I didn’t spot the queen herself, I have incontrovertible proof that she lives and thrives.

Maybe I’ll just concentrate on that.

BEEattitude for Day # 192:

       Blessed are those who understand how we work, for they shall find happiness in knowing.

http://www.franstewart.com

Day #191 First Pollen Pocket



Public Domain Photo



Late Wednesday morning, as I sat next to the hives drinking a cup of tea, I saw a bee with those bright yellow “saddlebags” on her back legs, the corbiculae that I wrote about last October 25th on day # 14 of this blog. Those pollen pockets had been, until Wednesday, only a vague concept to me. Now, the reality of those foragers carting load after load of nectar and pollen has come home to me in a flash of insight.

In the hours since that moment, of course, I’ve seen plenty more of them, and I’m gratified to know that the trees and flowers around here are providing plenty of protein for my honey bees.

But that very first sight of that very first bee will stand out in my memory for a long time. The wonder of that bright flash of golden yellow felt like a miracle. And, I suppose, it was.

BEEattitude for Day # 191:

       Blessed are those who move slowly around our hives, for they shall see bee-wonders.

One thing Fran is grateful for right now:

       The stately ravens who stride around my front yard

http://www.franstewart.com

Day #187 Today's the Day!

It’s gonna happen, finally, after all this waiting and hoping and studying and dreaming and planning and building and staining and setting up.

Once my 42,000 new friends are installed in their new home, I’ll let you know how it went. Please send encouraging thoughts to all the bees who’ve spent the night cooped up in a box, waiting for me to arrive, to transport them, and eventually to release them.

BEEattitude for Day # 187:

       Blessed are you, and blessed is this day, and all is well in this hive.

One thing Fran is grateful for right now:

       EllieBug (my car), who has never before carried 42,001 passengers. She’s pretty strong, isn’t she?   

http://www.franstewart.com

Day #183 A Bit of Bee Trivia

Why is a honey bee not a honeybee?

A few examples to illustrate the difference:

Ø  A dragonfly is not a type of fly, so it is not a dragon fly

Ø  Ladybugs are not bugs; they are beetles. So they are not lady bugs.

A honey bee is a bee that produces honey, so the correct term (regardless of what terms I’ve used in this blog so far) is two-worded:

Honey Bee

By the way, this bit of trivia won’t work in the United Kingdom, for there they use the term “honeybee.”

Don’t ask me why.

BEEattitude for Day # 183:

       Blessed are the wordsmiths, for they shall call us wondrous things.

One thing Fran is grateful for right now:

       My dear friend Debby Barker, who has the most amazing healing energy.   

http://www.franstewart.com

Day #182 Oh Dear! Too Many Flower Choices?

I just read that honeybees have a tendency to focus on one particular type of flower at a time, which is why it’s possible to have clover honey/ macadamia nut honey / sourgum honey / tupelo honey and such like. And here I am planting all sorts of different flowers and veggies in my yard so my bees will have lots of choices.

It seems like every time I read something lately, it makes hash of what I read last week or last month. Isn’t it great to know there are so many people experimenting with different ways of keeping the bees happy?

So, I’m going to keep on planting the flowers and shrubs that I love, and the bees will figure out how to deal with it.

BEEattitude for Day # 182:

       Blessed are those who love us enough to plant delicious flowers for us, for we shall enjoy whatever they plant and shall pollinate it well.

One thing Fran is grateful for right now:

       The Gwinnett Choral Guild. I love singing with them.

http://www.franstewart.com

Day #179 Rats!

Friday morning I called H & L Bee Farm to be sure I could pick up my bees next week, and they said that half their shop had been destroyed by a tornado. Fortunately, nobody was hurt and only a few hives were blown over, but they’re still in a tizzy trying to get organized to put the packages of bees together,

GROAN

it may be another couple of weeks before I can pick up my girls.

ANOTHER GROAN

Still, let’s look on the bright side.

Ø  This way my bees will be avoiding all the heavy winds and thunderstorms that have beset Gwinnett County over the last week and look to be continuing for another few days at least.

Ø  My garden plants will be that much taller and that much closer to needing pollination.

Ø  The Mack truck that would have run me down if I’d driven to Ocilla this week will be somewhere else altogether when I drive down there later this month—see, the tornado at H&L saved my life!

Ø  I’ll have the time to watch that Installing Your Package of Bees DVD a couple more times, so I’ll be that much more ready.

Okay, now I feel better.

BEEattitude for Day # 179:

       Blessed are those who see the bright-side, for they shall avoid discouragement. If we bees got discouraged, nothing would ever be sweet!

One thing Fran is grateful for right now:

       Fudge made with honey. Yum!   

http://www.franstewart.com

Day #178 Feeling Encouraged

We had a Board meeting last night, where we sat over dinner and discussed what we want the Gwinnett Beekeepers Club to accomplish over the next year. It was lovely to see the enthusiasm of the other members. Each of us wants to encourage beekeeping and to educate people about the value of honeybees.

But the real value for me came when I mentioned that I’ll be picking up my bees next week. Instantly the experienced beekeepers were full of suggestions

v  stay calm,

v  be sure you take pictures because this is the only time you’ll open a package of bees for the FIRST time,

v  make sure the queen cage is placed in the middle of the hive body,

v  spray the bees a little bit—not too much, and

v  enjoy the process.

That was the big one—enjoy the process. It won’t help the bees one bit if I get all nervous and flustered. So, I have my checklist all made out, and I honestly think I’m as ready as I possibly can be.

Tomorrow I’m going to call the bee supply place to see if I can get an exact date for picking up my bees. Then I’ll be twiddling my thumbs, waiting for the big day and wondering if there’s anything I’ve forgotten. Maybe I’m not as ready as I think I am . . .

BEEattitude for Day # 178:

       Blessed are those who stay calm, for they shall not upset us.

One thing Fran is grateful for right now:

       Doggie bags from restaurants.   

http://www.franstewart.com

Day #155 Sitting at the polls

Yesterday I worked at the polls all day, hoping the roof wouldn't leak (the way it did during the election last November) and hoping we wouldn't have another tornado (like the one we had on election day last November).

For this month's election to replace the somewhat ignominious Chair of the County Commissioners, who chose to resign rather than face an indictment, eight poll workers began work at 6 a.m., when we turned on the machines we'd set up the previous evening, and swore (or affirmed) to uphold our duties as election officials.

By 7:15 we'd had two voters. By noon, there'd still been fewer than a hundred. When the polls closed at 7 p.m., our machines showed that 189 people had voted (out of the 3,533 registered voters in our precinct). Calls to other precinct managers reported similar dismal results. In fact, our precinct was one of the more heavily attended.

Something is wrong with this picture. Five percent of the voters are deciding who will lead Gwinnett County, one of the fastest-growing counties in the nation. Five pathetic percent.

Bees don't do it this way. People who don’t know bees, think the queen must lead the hive, but it’s really the worker bees—all of them—who make the decisions. The queen doesn’t have a vote, and the drones aren’t eligible either. Still . . .

100% of the eligible bees

versus

5% of the eligible humans

Humph!

I figure if I don’t vote, I don’t have the right to complain about the results.

Do you vote whenever you have the opportunity?

BEEattitude for Day # 155:

       Blessed are those who exercise their civic rights. If they acted like us bees, everyone would behave responsibly.

One thing Fran is grateful for right now:

       Gentle rain.    

http://www.franstewart.com

Day #150 Big Island Bees in Hawaii

I went to Big Island Bees website (www.bigislandbees.com) and found this information. I blatantly cut and pasted it, so if you tell anybody about how amazing bees are and use these statistics to prove it, be sure you give Big Island Honey the credit:

Each 9.5 oz. jar of Big Island Bees honey is the result of:

683 bees

flying 32,550 miles

to visit 1,185,000 flowers

to collect 5.93 lbs of nectar.

That’s a lot of work. But, it is so worth it!

Thank you, Big Island Bees. I’m still enjoying your honey on fresh biscuits for breakfast.

BEEattitude for Day # 149:

       Blessed are people who appreciate bees, for they shall find honey in abundance.

One thing Fran is grateful for right now:

       The Gwinnett County Extension Service (see tomorrow’s blog to find out why).    

http://www.franstewart.com

Day #146 Thoughts on Immortality

My thoughts have been all over the road map recently. Miss Polly, my 14-year-old cat, woke me as usual the other morning, and I got to thinking about mortality—hers and my own.

People, and cats too, live as individuals. When we see a friend walking down the street, we don’t say, “Oh, there goes another member of my part of the human race.” No, we call that person by name and recognize her individuality. Ditto with cats, friendly dogs, even the possum who cleans up around the bottom of my bird feeder and turns on my motion-sensor light each night.

Honeybees, on the other hand, live their short lives (six weeks for a worker bee) as simply a part of a larger unit, the hive – the way individual cells in our body do their work for a short time and then die off, to be replaced by new ones.

Eventually, our human cells—all of them—run out of gas, and we die. But think about a hive. There could conceivably be a hive somewhere in the world that is still making honey after, say, a thousand years of being in that same place. Or maybe a million or two. As the hive population grows, half the bees take off somewhere else (that’s called “swarming”), but the other half stays behind and builds up their numbers and their honey and pollen stores all over again.

Isn’t this a kind of immortality? I’d like to think it is. You see, when I’m no longer around, my bees will be able to keep going without me. They may move to a new location, but they’ll still be the hive that grew and flourished on my back deck.

Come to think of it, as long as my books last, my first cat is immortalized, because she served as the model for "Marmalade."

BEEattitude for Day # 146:

       Blessed are those who take good care of themselves, for they shall live long and prosper.

One thing Fran is grateful for right now:

       Romeo and Juliet, which I saw last night at the Shakespeare Tavern in Atlanta with my granddaughter. Four hundred years, and the story is still fresh. Hey! That’s immortality, too, isn’t it?   

p.s. It’s official: this is “National Read an eBook Week.”

You can find my Biscuit McKee Mysteries on Amazon or Smashwords for only $3.99. These links will take you straight to my eBook pages.

Day #141 They're Coming Soon

When I started this blog last October, it seemed like the bees were a distant goal. I’m glad I’ve spent this much time getting ready for them. I’m also really, really glad that they won’t need me to be perfect. Heck, bees have been around longer than people, and they’re good at what they do.

I figure they’ll be rather like honored house guests, ones who will mind their manners and leave a gift of honey every so often.

Four weeks or so . . . and I still don’t know how to get the pictures out of my phone and onto my computer. I think I need a thirty-dollar doohickey. Anybody know where a Nokia store is?

BEEattitude for Day # 141:

       Blessed are those who plan ahead, for their surprises shall be elegant indeed. Frannie truly has no idea just what we bees are going to bring to her life.

One thing Fran is grateful for right now:

       The woodpecker and the male cardinal sitting peacefully on my bird feeder as I write this.    

http://www.franstewart.com

Day #137 Nightmares and Common Sense

I dreamed last night that a bear wandered up from the creek and ripped open my bee hives to steal the honey. Yikes! I don’t even have the bees yet. What’ll I do when they’re actually installed on my back deck?

Of course, I’ve never yet seen a bear paw print (much less a bear) on the creek bank, just some raccoons and possums, so I probably won’t ever have to worry about Winnie-the-Pooh’s cousins.

Worry is the interest you pay on a loan you’ve never taken out, so I guess I should just forget the bad dreams and sleep easier. Good idea.

BEEattitude for Day # 137:

       Blessed are the calm of mind, for they shall take their rest with ease.

One thing Fran is grateful for right now:

        Cowans Book Nook in Blue Ridge GA, where I’ll be signing books today (Saturday) from noon to three.   

http://www.franstewart.com

Day #135 Writers Boot Camp

What fun! I spent time yesterday speaking the fifth-grade students at Woodward Mill Elementary School as part of their Writer’s Boot Camp program. The topic was “Draw Your Reader into Your Story: Pick the Right Verb.”

We talked about how changing the verbs can change the whole intent of the story. For instance, we started one story this way:

o   Mom pulled to a stop beside the road.

Then we wrote the same story, changing nothing but the verbs, and it started like this:

o   Mom screeched to a stop beside the road.

Two different verbs. Two different scenarios. See?

At the board, I wrote, “The lion __________ across the grassland.”

We quickly discarded tired words like ran or walked. Instead, they supplied fifteen or twenty vivid verbs, including:

Ø  limped

Ø  staggered

Ø  stalked

Ø  bounded

Ø  crept

Ø  roared

In “I _________ the picture from my grandfather,” they suggested verbs such as:

v  adored

v  burned

v  destroyed

v  inherited

v  detested

v  evaluated

Eventually I’d like to get an observation hive so I can haul it to the school and introduce them to the joys of raising bees—just as much fun and just as important as the joys of writing effectively.

BEEattitude for Day # 135:

       Blessed are the teachers, for they shall be illuminated by the light of knowledge.

Something Fran is grateful for right now:

       The students who jumped in joyfully with answers    

http://www.franstewart.com

Day #134

I keep saying in this blog that bees haven’t really changed since their beginnings. Well, guess what? I’m not too sure people have changed much either. We have increased our technology and our languages. But have we changed in any substantive way? Are human beings any different than they were a couple of million years ago?

I once was asked in a class to explain how people have changed over the course of history. My answer, I’m sorry to say, was that as people became more “civilized,” they simply increased the distance over which they could hurt each other.

Think about it. A bee butts a person to scare him away from the hive. As a last resort, the bee will sting, thereby killing herself. This has been true for more than 140 million years. Now think about people. We, like bees, used to be able to hurt people only if they were close by, within arm’s length of us. Then, with such tools as language and weapons, we gradually extended the range over which we could cause pain.

On the other hand, we’ve also increased the distance at which we can cause joy. A phone call from my sister or a dear friend can brighten my day considerably, no matter how far that person is from me geographically. A well-written book brings me joy even if the author is on the far side of the county—or the globe—or on the far side of the grave.

 Bees still have to “bee” right next to each other to communicate, but we can reach each other happily at any distance. What a relief. Maybe there’s hope for us humans after all.

BEEattitude for Day # 134:

       Blessed are the children, for they shall be the harvesters of tomorrow.

One thing Fran is grateful for right now:

       My dear friend Lyn, who knows about “Human Design”    

http://www.franstewart.com

Day #132 When am I going to stain my deck?

I hadn’t thought about this particular wrinkle in my beekeeping to-do list.

I stain my deck every few years to protect the wood. The stain is supposed to be applied when the weather is relatively warm. The trouble is, when it gets warm enough to stain the deck, I’ll be picking up my bees and installing them—yep—on the deck.

The last thing I want is for them to get stuck in the wet stain. Of course, I don’t want my deck to rot away, either. Will you keep your fingers crossed for a spell of warm-enough weather the week before the bees are ready?

I need all the luck I can get on this one.

BEEattitude for Day # 132:

       Blessed are those who do preventive maintenance, for they shall have less to worry about.

One thing Fran is grateful for right now:

       Potting soil   

http://www.franstewart.com