Happy Fathers Day

A day late… like normal.

I had a great Fathers Day. It started on a very hard and difficult Saturday for me. Dad and I went to the Temple and had a good time, but the day from there on was just kind of rough and rocky for me. We did a big family lunch with everyone that afternoon, and it was just not the right thing to be doing for me.

Sunday morning, I was feeling a lot better. Katherine made me breakfast and cut me a rose to wear to church. Courtney showered me with gifts. Myron made me a T-rex pillow which he promptly stole back. Carolyn gave me a kiss. I felt great.

That night, my local brothers came over, and we talked for about three hours. It was awesome to be with them and just… be with them.

And that’s about it. Oh, and I did a puzzle. Shattered my previous time for a puzzle of that size. 550 pieces in just under two hours. I find puzzles so relaxing and soothing.

So, where’ve you been?

Yeah, what can I say?

It’s been 1.5 months since I last posted, and I wish I had a good excuse. I actually do have good excuses, but not for this blog. Just know that I did.

So where am I at right now? In a lot of ways, I feel better and stronger than I have in a long time, which is odd given life right now. There is so much going on, a lot of it difficult, and yet… not. But you find power and strength in odd places sometimes, and when you’re back is against the wall, it just all seems to come together. Sometimes.

So I just might be back to blogging. I think.

Blogging, for me, is cathartic more often than not, and I’ve found that catharsis in my journal lately. I’ve been journaling daily for the last two months or so (notice the coincidence in when I kind of went away?), and so the blog fell in priority. But now… I think I’m back.

I’d like to be back. There are a lot of connections here that I value, and I’ve missed that. Having said that, though, I admit it has been wonderful to not worry about this blog for awhile. It’s just been nice to be free of the stress of feeling like I wasn’t posting. So don’t be surprised if the frequency is lower than the past.

Still, I hope you’ve all been well!

Beekeeping Disaster

Remember how I mentioned a while back that I was feeling a bit off with beekeeping? Well last Saturday certainly did not help.

Earlier this year, Mackay and I sold four nuc hives, and Saturday was the day to see three of them out the door. The fourth was built on Saturday for delivery in mid-May. And good thing it was, because Saturday was a disaster. First, Hive 1 and its nuc went really well. The hive is strong, the nuc is strong, the queen looked great and was easy to spot…. No issue. In fact, midway through, Mackay looked at me and said, “The magic is back!” And it was. On to hive 2!

Hive 2 and its nuc, as it often seems to be, was a duplicate of Hive 1. In fact, we found the queen even faster. Oh how nice this trip was turning out to be! On to hive 3!

If you remember, Hive 3 (formerly Hive 5) was our gynormo hive of two weeks ago. From this hive, we had split off two nucs and still had a fully supered hive. It was incredible. So in we went to find the queen. No queen. No queen anywhere. But the nucs looked okay with eggs and brood and so on. We did see quite a few drone cells as well. Definitely on the high side, but not so high that I panicked, which I think I should have now.

At this point, Mackay had to leave, and we were approaching about 75 minutes in the hive. However, since one of those nucs was going out today, I had to find the queen. So back in I went by myself, this time using some extra boxes I had from some unused equipment to make the search a little easier. I searched everything. The hive, the two nucs… everything. No queen. I was at this point pretty frustrated, but I had seen eggs in both nucs and the hive. I had even seen eggs on the bottom of the cells instead of the walls. Again, lots of drones, but not so much that I was panicked.

By now, this particular hive had been open for about 90 minutes. Definitely time to close it up, especially since the bees were getting pretty darn mad (I used gloves for the first time in a long time). I determined that I would tell the guy who was buying the nucs that evening what I had found (or hadn’t found), and see what he thought.

That evening, he came by. I pointed out that the first two nucs were ready, were solid, and that I had seen the queen and everything looked great and ready to go. I mentioned that I hadn’t seen a queen in the third nuc, that I was concerned about it, but I thought it okay to go. I told him that if he didn’t see evidence of a queen within a week, I would send him money to get a queen (there is a supplier pretty close to him). That seemed fair, and we both agreed to it. I wasn’t too concerned because I had seen that third queen pretty recently.

So today… I get an email from the guy asking for a refund for that third nuc. I can’t say I blame him. He had another friend (a beekeeper) come and help him install that nuc, and they looked it over and found some pretty strong evidence of a laying worker (groan…), something I had missed in the ordeal of Saturday and because, frankly, I wasn’t looking for one. I didn’t think to look for one since I had seen her not too long ago and everything looked well.

We talked about it for a bit, and I agreed to the refund (I’m not in this for the money). But then I started thinking about the rest of Hive 3 and that fourth nuc we created from Hive 3 on Saturday. I started to put two and two together, and I’m thinking now that Hive 3 is a goner. If there was a laying queen in that nuc, my guess is she came from Hive 3 when I created that nuc originally. It would certainly explain the masses of drones. But it also means that those eggs I put into that fourth nuc? Drone. All of them. It would also explain the lack of the queen in Hive 3. At first I assumed I had just missed her (she’s not marked), but I don’t think so anymore.

So what to do…. Yes, I know what I could do, but I’m wondering what I will do. See, Mackay and I are both exhausted. When we sold the nucs, we were excited and ready to go. Now? We’re tired. We’re both feeling quite overwhelmed with school, work, family, and church responsibilities. Bees are something that is easy to drop right now, and we had already agreed to do just that, which is why we sold our two new packages to Lee. So what to do with Hive 3….

The hive is currently strong enough that if I can get rid of the layer, we’ll be fine. When we opened up 3 on Saturday, the hive was literally boiling over with bees. It looked like a full production hive in July. The thought of first moving and then dumping all those bees to get rid of the layer sounds… tiring. It really does. Exhausting. And yet, I know that I should. Had this happened last summer, this wouldn’t even be a question. Now? It’s a handy excuse to get down to just two hives.

Courtney and I were talking about it on my lunch walk today, and I came to the conclusion that I’m done. I’ve really enjoyed it, but I think I’m done. And not done-done, just taking a rest. Maybe.

I’m not going to kill off the hives, but I honestly can’t quite get up the desire to launch into managing them either. Having, yes. Managing, no. Not right now.

I’m going to talk to Mackay about it tomorrow, but don’t be surprised if we commit to getting that fourth nuc done (I’m a man of my word), and then leave Hive 1 and 2 fully supered and see you in August. As for Hive 3, I’m not going to buy a new queen. I just don’t care right now. I might shake out the layer. More than likely, I’ll stack some empties on the bottom, put the old hive on top, wait for the foragers to come into the bottom hive, and then let the top hive die (the layer will be in there). Then I’ll throw in a frame of eggs, stack the supers, and see you in August. Maybe.

Sigh… I admit that this is all kind of depressing. And then again not really. I think it would be more depressing to keep pushing through after the passion is gone. Mackay has already announced that he’d love to get rid of all of them. I’m starting to agree….

So here’s my question, fellow beeks: Have you burned out before? What did you do to get back into it? What would you recommend? Did you take a break and then come back later? I’m not one to just have the hobby; I want to be the hobby. Whatever the hobby.

Hiving Packages with Lee

So one thing Mackay and I have talked about is a loss of magic with bees. We think there are a few reasons for this:

• We tried to monetize it. I’ve found for me that monetizing happiness is typically a poor choice.
• We took on too much.
• We’re both feeling overwhelmed.

Like I mentioned previously, we have tried to help this by dropping down to three hives and really practicing our lazy beekeeping this year. Oddly enough, at the same time, I’ve convinced more people than ever to join in the fun. One of those people is Lee.

A week or two ago–when Mackay and I realized we didn’t want to do two hives–we offered my two empties plus the already-purchased packages to him, and he snatched them up. Last night we helped him install the packages, and it restored a bit of the magic Mackay and I had lost.

It was fun to watch a new beekeeper really getting into it. Not only that, but a random guy on the street saw us unloading the equipment. He was interested, so we invited to come back and join us, which he did. So we had two people getting excited and interested. You can feed off of that energy, and it is contagious!

On an interesting note, I did my first beekeeping without a veil yesterday. It was very comfortable and relaxing. No stings as well.

Mackay and I will be supporting Lee as he needs it over the summer, but I’m excited to see how his hives do!

Le Purge

Administrator Note: For some reason I always feel the need to put a note up on this particular topic. To be perfectly blunt, the purpose of the note is  not to lessen the impact of what we did and our reasons. It is, however, to highlight that his is our choice for our lives. We neither judge nor condone any action on your part, but we do invite you to seek answers for yourself. How can you know the answer to the question if you never ask the question?

Over the years, Courtney and I have been prompted to take steps to clean up the media in our home. We’ve done it three or four times now (I think). The first time through, we felt prompted to remove any movies that were clearly not appropriate for the lifestyles we wanted to lead. To be clear, I am not confessing to owning a stack of Rated R movies or other media. That has never been in the picture.

The second time, we felt prompted to go a little farther. And that has continued over the last several years.

The last purge, the stated goal was that we wanted to remove anything that we would not be comfortable watching, reading, or listening to should the Savior walk through the door. And with a standard like that, I kind of assumed that we had reached the pinnacle of this particular aspect of our lives.

Not quite….

On Monday, the prompting came again, and as I pondered what on earth we would do more than we had already done, the thought came that we had been waiting for the Spirit to come into our home, but we had not made an effort to invite the spirit into our home. And that is a key difference. The first is passive while the second is active. Seeking.

A week or so again, we watched Chariots of Fire with Mackay and his wife. It was inspiring to watch such a clean movie with such a great message. Afterward, I thought on how fun it was to not worry about what might happen next, what word might be said, or what we might see. I also remembered that in my parent’s house, there weren’t two shelves of movies. There was one: Family. And it was all safe to everyone no matter the age.

In our house, we have two: Mommy and Daddy and then one for the Kids. I don’t want that anymore. I just don’t. I want clean, safe family entertainment that the kids can have and watch any time.

So yes, the purge happened again Monday. I was surprised at some of what we decided to get rid of. I was especially surprised to find among the movies some that we had held back from previous purges because they were “too hard to get rid of.” They are all gone now.

And something that made it particularly easy for us is that in almost every case, we hadn’t even watched the movie in… years. Sometimes many years.

As we made these choices, it helped to have in the back of my mind the idea of inviting the Savior to watch the movie with us. That made it particularly easy to get rid of some choices I would have otherwise kept.

And on a related topic, we also added four films to our collection. Each are classic comedies, clean, and comfortable:

• Bringing Up Baby
• Thoroughly Modern Millie
• It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
• Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines

I’m also looking at getting Court Jester and Charade.

There is excellent, clean entertainment out there without descending into cheesy (check out Rise of the Guardians for a great example). We’re committed to finding it.

Kicking and screaming into the 21st century!

Courtney and I, last Saturday, crossed a bridge. A huge bridge.

Finally, after resisting for many many years, Courtney and I got texting on our phones.

We’ve resisted for a long time because we didn’t want to be that connected, but over time, it has become the go-to communication method for many people, including some dear friends. That, as much as anything, is what finally tipped us over the edge to accept texting.

And we love it! (To everyone who is now saying, “I told you so,” I have a short message: Shut up.)

We told no one that we were doing it, so I took great pleasure in sending text messages to friends who know about my non-texting ways. I am almost famous in some circles for not texting.

The first text message I ever sent was to Mackay, and I did it while peeking around the corner of the house. He was in the front yard of his house playing with the kids, and I sent him a message so I could watch his reaction. He peeked at his phone, got this really confused look on his face, called his wife over, she read it, she got a really confused look on her face, and then I popped up around the corner while he was scratching his head. It was awesome.

Then I sent one to Jeff, and he sent me back a “What is this?” style message.

Then I sent another to Lee, and he waxed poetic: “What? Doth texting come from thy phone?”

Priceless.

I finally sent one to Joe, and he just busted up laughing (I was sitting at the desk immediately next to him at the time).

I’m really glad we did the unlimited plan. It’s only been a few days, but we’re already finding a lot of use and ease with texting. And no… I still cannot convince myself to get data on my phone. I still don’t want to be that connected, and I still find it pathetic (sorry all you data loving friends!) when someone ends up glued to their phone. Why would you stare at a phone when the real world is all around you?

There is nothing on your phone prettier than a cherry tree in full blossom, a friend’s face, or real human-to-human contact.

Dropping down to three hives

One of the questions I come back to frequently with bees is the idea of “being” a beekeeper or “doing” beekeeping. My mentor, Aleisha, did beekeeping for a few years before setting it aside to see where she really fit in. I still think it is a truly great thing to be able to walk away from such an intensive hobby (in terms of time, emotion, and money investments), and I take a great deal of encouragement in honestly answering that question myself.

This last Saturday, Mackay and I were out at the hives, and it just was not fun. It was work. In the purest sense of the word. Work. And we’ve been kind of feeling that way for a little bit of time now if we’re being honest with ourselves.

I consider myself very fortunate to have a friend like Mackay. A big part of that is that we can honestly and openly talk about virtually anything without fear or concern of judgement. It’s just awesome! I hope everyone has a friend like that somewhere in their life. As we’ve talked about the bees for the last few weeks and remembering that Mackay will likely be moving to AZ come December, we’ve come to realize that the biggest joy in beekeeping is NOT the bees. It’s doing it together. It’s sharing that experience, talking about it, spending that time as best friends.

That’s not to say that the bees aren’t high on the list and still enjoyable, but if we’re being honest, they are NOT why we do beekeeping.

So this year, we’re going down to just three hives. A few reasons for that:

• We’re not quite ready to abandon it outright. It still has a place and is still something we enjoy.
• Five hives was a lot of work last year, and the minute this becomes work is the moment this stops being fun for us. We’re hoping that three hives lets us continue on the fun scale without burning out.
• Three hives fits better in my apiary. It’s a cleaner, smaller set up with more space to work and really get into the hives.
• If/when Mackay leaves, I can handle three hives alone much more easily than I can five. Five is simply too intimidating for me to handle by myself.
• And yes, there is an emotional association between beekeeping and Mackay. I’m man enough (we both are really) to admit that about ourselves. I’ll be the first to say that the first time I’m out there and Mackay isn’t won’t be all that fun of an experience for me.

On Saturday, I offered the equipment from my two empty hives plus the two packages I had already ordered earlier this year to another friend who has wanted to get into beekeeping. He said he’d take all of it, which both Mackay and I were glad to hear. We’ll get enough to mostly recover our costs, which is all we care about–This has never been about making money–and he’ll get started. We’ll support him as needed through this first year as well, which will be nice.

So there it is… I’m still not sure if we are beekeepers or if we do beekeeping. I think we’ll know for sure by September/October. If I had to answer that now, I think I do it. It’s an honest assessment even if it is one that’s a little hard to work through right now.

PS–A short hive inspection report:

• 1 is okay. Not great, not bad, just okay. We saw brood and eggs. Last time we had reversed the hive bodies, so the queen is still roaming throughout the hives. We will need to figure out a way to consolidate that brood nest down to a normal size, and we bought queen excluders just for that purpose.
• 3 is about the same as 1.
• 5… Oh Moses…. 5 is fully supered. In April. And I’m worried that I’ll have to add more boxes soon or do a harvest. We opened 5 on Saturday, and every single box was full to the top with bees. Drones are in full production as well (drone comb everyewhere!), lots of honey, and the brood nest fills pretty much all three supers. It was an amazing sight. I honestly think I could split this out into 3 hives today if it weren’t for the cold. What a sight!