It’s been about three weeks since I’ve checked on Beta or Gamma hives.  That’s a little two long but times have been busy. So yesterday was warm and sunny and I was in the mood so I took a peak.

Beta Hive swarmed a few weeks ago. That swarm I housed up in Alpha Hive. Now, Beta seems a bit…unpopulated. The major problem I knew I had was a mess of cross-combing that had resulted from my trying to fix last year’s cross-combing. Some comb had collapsed and the bees had built on that and there was lots of brood in it…so I left it. Last night, I looked in and almost all of the brood had hatched and they were only just beginning to lay in honey so I removed the mess of comb.

They didn’t give me any problems. I did the whole thing without a veil. That got me worrying (N.B. everything gets me worrying) that maybe they weren’t just nice but lethargic. I think tonight I’ll put in some syrup to feed them and help boost them up. Last time I noticed this in a hive was Alpha Hive 1 before it died. That was later in the year but I don’t think I’ll take any chances.

Gamma Hive is always mean so I put on my veil and tried out my new smoker. The smoker worked great but really pissed off those bees – everything pisses tem off. They finally settled down into the usual, relaxed (for them) smoked mood and I took a peak. They’ve built huge amounts of comb. The bars I put in a few weeks ago are fully drawn out with comb and packed with brood and honey. The old Lang frames I need to remove still have a bit of brood in them but one had mostly honey. I’m thinking I’ll take some honey from them this weekend to make sure they don’t become honey bound. I’m not sure if that’s a reality but the hive is packed!

Rick Robinson has written a classic novel about male, middle-aged angst. Women, when you ask your man “Whatcha thinking about?” Here’s the answer for many men. But they won’t tell you.

Robinson writes what most middle aged men left unspoken. He writes it in a straightforward, graceful style. The level of the lead character’s self-examine and insight into the life he – and other men – have led is deep and thorough.

In the novel, James Conrad has had a successful life. However, he’s not had his life. In his boyhood, he was shown the way. An beloved uncle lead by example that every man should choose his own path no matter the societal pressures. James Conrad, however, was pulled down the path of expectations and the success his parents and town saw for him. But childless and in a loveless marriage at fifty, Conrad, alone on his birthday in south Florida, realizes that he has been conned.

“When you wrap yourself in the charade of success, you live with the fear that someone will peek behind the curtain and discover it’s all been a sham. Failure is real. Success is smoke and mirrors.”

His journey to fully realizing what his path is takes him from the beaches of an upscale resort, into a Seminole Indian reservations deep into the Everglades where his late uncle lived and into the arms of a woman who serves as a mirror reflecting back the emptiness of his soul.

Alligator Alley is a hopeful work. The book’s cover states ‘because it’s never too late to change destiny’. Conrad realizes that fact. As he states, “I was staring fate in the eye and fate was blinking”.

Robinson, normally a thriller writer, has the courage in this novel to write with elegance, subtlety and a quiet rhythm possibly based on the lapping of waves against a fishing pier in the ‘Glades. You’ll find yourself stopping and re-reading passages and sentences simply to realize how true they are. You’ll find yourself stopping completely and contemplating Conrad’s life…and your own. At least, I did.

I popped that Beta Hive swarm into a small box colony and put them up near Alpha Hive to get oriented and calm. This Saturday morning I did a quick transfer from that small hive box into Alpha Hive. Long Live the new Alpha Hive!

The night before (Friday), I had driven down to Dry Ridge, Kentucky to pick up some bees. And Saturday afternoon I put them into a hive at my dad’s house. This is now christened Delta Hive.

The bees I bought for Delta Hive were in a Langstroth Hive. The hive I was putting them into is a completely different and smaller hive called a Warre Hive that my father made out of cedar. The Warre Hive is – to my mind – a more natural way to keep bees and requires much less interference from the beekeeper. This is good because it’s four hours away from me.

Basically, to get the Langstroth comb into the Warre Hive, I had to cut down and bust up honey and brood comb all while 10,000 pissed off bees requested that I stop my busting up. But they’re in there and seemed to be doing well at 10AM the next day. Only four or five stings.

I’ll have pictures of later of the Warre Hive.

In this bit, the main character has a gun and has the man who hurt his daughter in his sights. What’s he do? Is a violent society useful? He writes:

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“Pocketing Dad’s .38 wasn’t planned either. But I had it. I knew dad had it for years and while I knew mine was in the system, the chances of his being registered anywhere were nil. I was fingering it. It’s such a little thing. It can do so much damage. I could pop him right now. I could end him. He’d just be another shooting on the eleven-o’clock news. Just another statistic in our violent society. Violent society? What crap. Maybe it’s violent but it’s also good. A violent society is a vibrant society. Orson Welles makes a little speech in The Third Man. He says, “In Italy under the Borgias, they had thirty years of warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace — and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

This sums up any answers to questions about a violent society for me. I bet a lot more daughters went unraped in Italy than in Switzerland.”
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Here’s the scene from The Third Man he is writing about. Very cool scene.

At Gamma Hive, the comb guides are doing their job. I took a quick peak in the old Lang frames that I’m trying to remove but they are full of brood so I left them.

That was Saturday. I did a few other things around the house on Saturday and when Sunday came I decided to camp out on the couch. It was suppose to be rainy but about 100 laps into the prior night’s Richmond race (which I had recorded), my wife interupted me.

“I think the bees are swarming,” she said.

“Nah,” it’s just an orientation flight.

Then I looked. The bees were swarming. A huge cloud of bees hung over our back yard, and the next door neighbors and the back yard neighbors. I went out and stood in the midst of the swarm. A fabulous experience. The noise wasn’t deafening but it was a grand white noise of humming.

I stood and enjoyed it about 2 minutes before I started to grab some items: a wool shirt, gloves, a box, a brush.

The bees were settling on a fence post in our back alley. When most of them had formed a clump about the size of two footballs, I shook them into the box. I did this a few times to make sure I had the queen and after about an hour most of the bees that had filled three yards squeezed themselves into a little hive box I had that is not much bigger than a box new boots come in.

I took them up to Alpha Hive and placed them their. This queen is the daughter or granddaughter of the original Alpha Hive. I guess even it could be the queen that was cast off from Alpha Hive. That’s cool.

Because rain was coming and I didn’t want to traumatize them anymore, I just left the small box on Alpha Hive. It’s laced with some lemon grass oil and a bar of old comb. They should like it until I move them into Alpha 2.0.

“I was back in and two nights later we made love. It was okay. I never understood the fascination with make-up sex. I find it horrible. Each of us was touchy and emotional over all the crap we’d been talking about. We’d supposedly worked that stuff out but it was still on both of our minds. One false move in bed and BAM! all of that stuff could have boiled over.

I always looked forward to vacation sex. That’s something different. Once you’ve been married awhile and have the kid, the house and the job, you never really get to have sex when you’re rested. But the fourth day of vacation when you’re both all settled in, caught up on sleep and feeling relaxed, loose and open — that’s good sex. It’s also only once a year. But we made it through the make-up sex.”

Your thoughts?

My character writes:

“I’d like to think I’m more Mitchum than Peck, more tough than contemplative. Most people love Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird. I found him preachy and holier-than-thou. People forget the innocent black guy accused of raping the white girl dies in the end. What good is Peck’s self-righteousness then? Peck let him get killed. Mitchum? I’d like to think Mitchum would have busted him out of jail, put him in the backseat with a blanket tossed over him and made a run for the north. If Mitchum was there, Tom Robinson would have died on the southside of Chicago sometime in the 1970s surrounded by his grandchildren with that busted up chifforobe a distant memory. Instead, Peck lets him get shot in the back. But what the hell did I know? I’ve got no idea who I am. Am I Peck or Mitchum? Neither?”

What think you? Oh, and here’s the trailer for Cape Fear. Please share. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay-GXvrEHKw

Alicia bought me this book by Christy Hemenway who has helped me quite a bit.

But the hives:

The baffle boards I thought that would help me straighten out all the cross-combing did just the opposite. There’s a good metaphor here about a ‘government’ (me) interfering with a society and generating unintended consequences but I’ll forgo that.

In Alpha Hive, the girls built lots of comb on the bottom and side of the baffle board. It’s brood with a touch of honey. I moved it to the rear to let the eggs hatch (I hope) and put in four new bars for them to build on. I need to just check and make sure they are kept straight. Then slowly rotate out the old comb. Note: All this is for my ease and benefit and not the honey bees.

In Gamma Hive, the four frames I moved to the rear still have brood in it. I’ll wait until they hatch and hope that the queen doesn’t lay more eggs in it. One of the new combs I used to fill the area where the langs were chopped has a small bit of comb on it which I straigtened out a tad. I just need to keep on top of that also.

Finally, no swarms were cast that I could see. I rebaited the traps. This weekend I think I’m installing my first bees into my father’s Warre Hive which, of course, will be known as Delta Hive.

“Caution: Daddy Issues is a real punch in the gut.” – Kia Heavey, author of Night Machines

Wagner Siebenthaler is doing well for himself. He is the blue-collar success story. He has a thriving business, a nice house, a pretty wife, a growing daughter and a girlfriend on the side. He’s living the good life.

That all changes when his daughter is sexually assaulted. Now all Wagner wants is revenge. That obsession for vengeance, however, pries open a small crack in his psyche. What comes out is a tsunami of pain and violence that crashes across the Kentucky landscape carrying away the lives of anyone close to him.

In this brutally honest novel, Howard McEwen explores the meaning of Manhood and Fatherhood in a modern America that marginalizes the virtues of men and fathers.

Alpha Hive died over the winter. I’ve divided up the hive structure into three baited traps. I have to go up a lure it again but I’m lazy.

Beta Hive is doing great. I put in a baffle board at the end of last summer to encourage them to make straight comb. It hasn’t but I’ve left it in today and put in four bars with a better comb guide so I’m hopeful. My goal there is to monitor it each week, keep the new comb straight and slowly remove all the crooked comb. How will that go? Who knows? I do have another bait hive up near Beta. I’m hopeful of catching a swarm with it.

Gamma Hive is hot. Hot is a nice word for saying that colony is full of a bunch of jerk bees. They’re grumpy and mean. Today, especially so. I barely looked at them and they start making runs at me, bouncing off my veil. I have the remains of four chopped and cropped Lang frames in it that I moved to the back of the hive. My intetion was to let all the eggs hatch and remove those frames. What I should have done it move one at a time. I think I’ve disturbed the entire hive making them even hotter. I’ll go back in a little while and see what’s what. I also have a bait hive near it that I ‘re-lured’.

Beta and Gamma have some good room to grow but I do hope they swarm and I catch the swarm in one of my traps. I’d like to re-populate Alpha with them. I do have three other hive bodies waiting to be populated. I’d like to start working a Delta, Epsilon and Zeta Hives.