Day #334 Epi Pens

I’d like to use today’s post to teach you how to use an epi pen. Ten years ago, a number of very brave people worked around the clock for days trying to rescue as many people as they could from the Twin Towers. I honor those people, and I’d like to do what I can to help you respond to a much smaller scale emergency situation, but one in which you could save a life.

An epi pen is a contraption about the size of a hot dog. Its purpose is to flood the body of a person who is having a severe allergic reaction with epinephrine, a drug that speeds up the heart rate and helps to keep the airways open so the person won’t suffocate.

Here’s what to do:

o   Open the plastic case and pull out the “hot dog”
o   Flip open the blue safety seal on the top of the epi pen
o   Do not touch the bright orange section on the other end. That’s where the needle is.
o   Jam the orange end HARD (REALLY HARD) against the front of the patient’s thigh to trigger the needle
o   Hold the “hot dog” in place for 10 seconds so the pen can inject the necessary dose.
o   Remove it and gently massage the spot for another 10 seconds.
o   Call 911.
o   When help arrives, show them the epi pen.

BEEattitude for Day # 334:

       Blessed are those who go out of their way to help others, for they shall sleep well at night.

__________________________

Green as a Garden Hose, the 3^rd Biscuit McKee Mystery,

is now available in mass market paperback

from World Wide Mystery, a division of Harlequin.

(Go to www.eHarlequin.com and search for Fran Stewart)

_______________________________

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 drawing.

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 #333 A Monkey Wrench in my Spokes

If you’re afraid of bees to begin with, you might want to skip today’s post.

I got stung again. Thursday morning, just one sting, on my left hand where the web of skin stretches between the thumb and first finger.

I was ready for it this time. Or so I thought. I came inside, took some Benedryl, and waltzed on through my day. The swelling just keeps spreading; it’s two-thirds of the way up my arm toward my elbow now. My whole hand, as you can see, looks like a stuffed sausage.

But then, Friday afternoon, one of the hives had eaten its way through the sugar water and needed to be refilled. Did I want a repeat performance? NO.

So I put on three layers everywhere:

>> long-sleeved blouse, winter jacket, AND my bee-inspector suit

>> two pairs of heavy-duty socks and my Wellington boots

>> slacks, sweatpants, AND those huge pants I bought at the Good Will Store

Before I went outside I wrapped a heavy scarf around my hair and topped it with – get this – a quilted, well-padded toaster cozy that’s patterned after a little English cottage. No, I did not take a picture of myself looking like that! Then I pulled the bee-hood over my head and zipped everything up.

Next I pulled on some heavy winter gloves – not easy over my swollen hand AND added my heavy-duty leather work gloves.

I looked like a cartoon version of the Michelin Man, but there was NO WAY a stinger was going to get to me.

Once I was ready, I took the fresh jar of sugar water outside, pulled off the empty bottle, replaced it with the full one, waited for the bees to stop flying around me, and came inside where I had to reverse the process. The gloves came off first, followed by the hood and the English cottage toaster-hat. And so on.

The good news is that, even if I looked ridiculous, I did not get stung. The good news where my hand is concerned is that, although I can’t flex three of the four fingers, I no longer have any wrinkles on that hand. That oughta be worth something...

BEEattitude for Day # 333:

       Blessed are those who aren’t afraid to look foolish, for they shall open whole new worlds.
 

__________________________

Green as a Garden Hose, the 3^rd Biscuit McKee Mystery,

is now available in mass market paperback

from World Wide Mystery, a division of Harlequin.

(Go to www.eHarlequin.com and search for Fran Stewart)

 _______________________________

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 drawing.

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 #332 Hatch-Out

Look what happens when a whole slew of baby bees all hatch out on the same day:

On Tuesday I happened to look out the bay window and was, quite frankly terrified, thinking that something awful had happened to my bees. There were thousands of them boiling out of the entrance holes and circling the hives – both hives.

I called my mentor, Tommy Bailey, in a panic, but he calmly informed me that since I’d started giving them sugar water three or so weeks ago, the first eggs were all hatching right about now. Remember? the bees were starving and the queens weren't laying any eggs -- until I started feeding them.






I blogged about feeding them sugar water on Day #311 (Friday, August 19^th). The queen probably started laying a few eggs at that time, but she really went into production five days later on August 24^th. How do I know that? Well, as I explained in blog # 209, there’s a 3-6-12 rule in beekeeping.

3+6+12=21.

·         The brand new egg stays an egg for 3 days.

·         Then it hatches into a larva and stays like that, growing constantly, for 6 days.

·         Next the nurse bees pack that larval cell with lots of food and cap it over. The larva is now considered a pupa. It stays a pupa for 12 days.

As soon as a baby bee emerges from her cell, she lets her wings dry a bit, turns around and cleans out the cell she just came out of, and then heads for the front door to take a GPS flight, better known as an orienting flight. That happens 21 days after the egg was laid.

Voilà! 21 days after that first major egg-laying, I saw the

Hatch-Out!

That’s when each little bee sets its internal GPS system so it will always recognize home. It only lasted about 15 minutes, and then it was over and everybody settled down to normal. I wonder if there will be another one tomorrow for the eggs she laid just a couple of days later?

Hatch-outs occur pretty much every day during the summer, especially when there’s been a strong honey-flow, but because so many foragers were coming and going from the hive, it never looked like anything special. Little did I know. It took a drought to teach me a bee-lesson. 

Isn’t this amazing?

 

BEEattitude for Day # 332:

       Blessed are those who recognize the small miracles of life, for they shall live in wonder.

 

__________________________

Green as a Garden Hose, the 3^rd Biscuit McKee Mystery,

is now available in mass market paperback

from World Wide Mystery, a division of Harlequin.

(Go to www.eHarlequin.com and search for Fran Stewart)

 _______________________________

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 drawing.

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.

 Please forward this blog post to your friends!

Day #331 The Termites vs. the Bees

Termites and Bees—those sound like opposing football teams, don’t they?

All along, since I decided eleven months ago to get a couple of bee hives, I’ve thought those queen bees were pretty productive--they can lay up to 2,500 eggs per day for weeks or even months at a time.

I’m afraid the termite team is going to win this particular game, though. The other evening I watched a documentary I’d found on Netflix that said a termite queen can lay up to 30,000 eggs per day. You read it right – thirty thousand. That leaves my queen bee looking like a slacker.

On the other hand, if a queen bee could lay that many eggs in a day, the hives would have to be ten times bigger than they are. My whole deck would be one enormous hive.

I’ll stay with the slow team, thank you.

BEEattitude for Day # 331:

       Blessed are those who take life at a (comparatively) leisurely pace, for they still get much accomplished and shall be happier as they do it.

__________________________

Green as a Garden Hose, the 3^rd Biscuit McKee Mystery,

is now available in mass market paperback

from World Wide Mystery, a division of Harlequin.

(Go to www.eHarlequin.com and search for Fran Stewart)

_______________________________

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 drawing.

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.

http://www.franstewart.com

Day #330 Whew! I didn't have to run!

Well, it rained all day Monday, so there wasn’t a chance to go out and replenish the sugar water on the yellow hive.

I figured there’d be you-know-what to pay when I went out there Tuesday morning. It wasn’t raining, but there was a heavy cloud cover, and bees don’t like clouds. Plus, because I hadn’t fed them the day before, I thought they might be ticked off.

So, I was fairly skitterish when I suited up and walked out there just after noon.

I shouldn’t have worried. They looked at me, said “BZZ,” which is bee-talk for thank you, and quietly went about collecting their new sugar-syrup windfall.

This just goes to prove

·         not everything I read will necessarily apply to my hive, and
·         bees don’t hold grudges

BEEattitude for Day # 330:

       Blessed are those who work though their silly fears, for they shall find relief when they succeed.

_______________________________

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 drawing.

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.

Share the link with your friends who love dogs

Green as a Garden Hose, the 3^rd Biscuit McKee Mystery,

is now available in mass market paperback

from World Wide Mystery, a division of Harlequin.

(Go to www.eHarlequin.com and search for Fran Stewart)

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.

_______________________________

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

_______________________________

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 #327 Hummingbird Heaven

Sure I put out sugar water for the hummingbirds, but I really enjoy having flowers they can drink from, too

A couple of days ago I took these two photos with my funny little Nokia phone camera, so you could see the flowering vines that wind up and around my front porch. I love the feathery leaves, and am absolutely amazed that these vines are flowering enthusiastically while everything else in the yard is gasping for water.

The white flowers are from the pokeweed. Yes, I suppose it is a weed, but the birds like the purply-blue fruit it produces. Thoreau said something about a weed being a plant whose purpose hasn’t yet been determined, and I agree with him, although I tend to think that weeds are highly successful plants that will grow where hothouse varieties won’t..

The really grainy-looking photo was taken through my front screen door. When I moved into this house seven years ago, I replaced all the screening with a heavy-duty pet screen, so the cats couldn’t accidentally fall out the windows if they leaned against the screens. Unfortunately, pet screen is pretty obvious in a picture.

There WAS a hummingbird there when I whipped out the camera, but of course he flitted off before I pushed the button. Oh well. I’m sure you can imagine him hovering there, sipping away.

BEEattitude for Day #327: Blessed are they who live and let live, for they shall find surprises all around them.

____________________________

Only 26 more days for the WAG Raffle!

A $10 donation will automatically enter you in the drawing.

The winner gets his or her dog in my next book

Doesn’t that sound like fun?

Walton Animal Guild (WAG) is a 501(c)(3),

so you get a tax-donation

Just hit the DONATE button on their home page

http://www.wagwalton.com

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.

_______________________________

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 …

_______________________________

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.

______________________________

www.franstewart.com