Stings, Books, Death, Thank You Global Warming
I've been trying to get re-organized and efficient with my hives. I am reading 5o Years With The Bees and LOVE IT. I want to be C.C. Miller and have that entire attitude and humor. In any case, he keeps a journal, one with single letters for verbs, and a fat pencil tied with a string to it, and a pair of scissors, and he numbers his hives like i do, and sheesh. I am awake at 3 am reading his book.
(An aside: I flew to Maui this past week, and out of 10,000 books at home, I took his book, a book of essays by Martin Gardner with a painting by GOK on the cover, which is controversial I have read, as to its orientation, as to how it would be to actually lie down on one's back and look up at the stars, and a book called "Poet's Choice", which I also LOVE, as it has each poet's choice, and a little blurb by them....and I took Good Poems, edited by Garrison K, but never read on- but boy, they are all great...._)
A few things hit me sideways- unexpected- and I lost two hives to CBPV, and I had three queens rejected in three hives- which has never happened before. But a lot of things this year haven't happened before- and I am learning, and trying to get to a place where it is enjoyable and natural, and not constantly dealing with crisis.
Today, I pulled #9 hive out, easily the most powerful hive I had two months ago, which swarmed twice I think, and then succumbed to CBPV. Or at least, I think so, its less dramatic than the video of hive #3 in my previous post- not so much shaking- but I am pretty sure its sick, so I pulled it out and put it at my mom's in the woods. Quarantine.
Which was where hive #3 was, the initial sick one. And I sort of hoped that it would have healed, or accepted the virgin queen, or quietly died out. Instead, there were still a lot of bees- and when I pulled the cover, they sat there, in a quivering mass. Shaking, a thousand bees, none rising up, none happy (I assume), each shaking, scraping, biting. Workers and drones both. And I figured they were on their way out, and in an insect way, suffering.
And despite my absolute conviction that free will is an illusion, and despite my Hawaiian upset learning that my mentor, Martin Gardner, believed in Free Will as he intuited it ( if you were, in your childhood, a Scientific American reader (my friend BS reminds me I had a subscription), you will be surprised by this).
Despite the fact it was hard to believe that they were in pain, or deserved death, I decided to kill them all. It felt like the right thing to do, as I would hope would happen to me. I'm not much of a farmer, I empathize with the weaklings and want to save them, help them. But I though- I go to sleep while they shake and suffer? I need to kill them.
At once.
That is, after I looked up Googled "how to kill a hive". Which wasn't that helpful, as its mostly about how not to- as no one should- and most people, finding one in their kitchen, would. So I took half my mom's dish washing soap and a spray bottle, and went out out and sprayed them. They seemed to die almost within seconds. All those spiracles shut down with a soap bubble. They turned black, and in fact, looked exactly like a bee with CBPV. And I knocked out each frame, and soon had mound of dead bees, which I buried. And I hoed the earth, and left it as if no hive had ever been there. Stung less than 5 times. I didn't cry. I am fairly good, I think, at doing what I perceive is my duty- and bearing it- though I know it all to be a fabrication.
I torched the supers with a blow torch, and put all the frames in a plastic bag, and will leave them there until I hear back from the USDA as to whether this virus survives on equipment or not. But I will probably throw them out (not burnable, as the foundation is plastic).
On the way home from dealing out this profound judgement on innocent creatures, I stopped at Cherry Valley Farms, to look at the hives I have there. Hive #18 was dead- as expected. I shook the remaining bees in the grass, torched the boxed, and moved it out of there. The rest were ok- but tomorrow I will open #14, which had laying workers, and where I put a new queen. I would have looked today, but the herdsman Johnny, who is Mexican, came by, and had a ton of questions, and taught me the Spanish for hive, hornet, Ram, Bee, Rattler, and Scorpion. His English isn't great, but he has one of those handheld things where you can look up Scorpion and get it in other languages. He has been bitten by one, at his Grandma's, where they climb the walls. He also eats armadillo and snakes. Snakes taste like fish. Armadillos taste like pig. Neither like chicken. He killed a rattler with a slingshot that was thicker than my arm, when he was 10. He also said that the word for "ram" (I think), and "beehive", were the same, except one started with "o" and the other "a". Being a Latin scholar, I recognized the Vespus and Apis word roots for the Spanish. Or maybe that's not Latin- maybe that's from getting a Jaegars Dictionary of Biology when I was 12 for my birthday, by request. I know, that sounds like name-dropping, but I had a dream about it last night and after 40 years still recall its black and white cover with a tern on it. Or something like a tern.
At home I combined four hives, and cloroxed the heck out of the areas I had the infected hives. And I vacuumed, which I know shot the virus everywhere and now its like the Andromeda Strain and a dumb thing to do. That cost me about 10 stings, until I put on a veil. Then I went next door and pulled 4 supers of honey off two hives. Which, though veiled, cost me another 10 stings, as I did not use smoke. Mostly on my ankles, but also in my pant legs. I have this thing where I try to kill the bee in my clothes before it stings by smacking it, which works half the time.
Despite the mayhem. for some reason, the bees packed away Maple honey this year. I have never, ever, had enough to extract. Jim U says it tastes bad. But I will try anyway- as I need the supers, and can't keep adding them. So far, I have pulled off 10 full supers of this- and I think I can get 4 more. I forget the math- sitting in a bar as I write this- but I think that's at least 20 pounds a super (or more), and if there are 14, that would be 280 pounds, and there are 12 per gallon, that's 23 gallons. I am figuring this out on a napkin, but that's about $2,240.00 worth of honey. There might be a decimal point wrong. Anyway, a surprise, thanks to Global Climate Change. Thank you, GCC.
(An aside: I flew to Maui this past week, and out of 10,000 books at home, I took his book, a book of essays by Martin Gardner with a painting by GOK on the cover, which is controversial I have read, as to its orientation, as to how it would be to actually lie down on one's back and look up at the stars, and a book called "Poet's Choice", which I also LOVE, as it has each poet's choice, and a little blurb by them....and I took Good Poems, edited by Garrison K, but never read on- but boy, they are all great...._)
A few things hit me sideways- unexpected- and I lost two hives to CBPV, and I had three queens rejected in three hives- which has never happened before. But a lot of things this year haven't happened before- and I am learning, and trying to get to a place where it is enjoyable and natural, and not constantly dealing with crisis.
Today, I pulled #9 hive out, easily the most powerful hive I had two months ago, which swarmed twice I think, and then succumbed to CBPV. Or at least, I think so, its less dramatic than the video of hive #3 in my previous post- not so much shaking- but I am pretty sure its sick, so I pulled it out and put it at my mom's in the woods. Quarantine.
Which was where hive #3 was, the initial sick one. And I sort of hoped that it would have healed, or accepted the virgin queen, or quietly died out. Instead, there were still a lot of bees- and when I pulled the cover, they sat there, in a quivering mass. Shaking, a thousand bees, none rising up, none happy (I assume), each shaking, scraping, biting. Workers and drones both. And I figured they were on their way out, and in an insect way, suffering.
And despite my absolute conviction that free will is an illusion, and despite my Hawaiian upset learning that my mentor, Martin Gardner, believed in Free Will as he intuited it ( if you were, in your childhood, a Scientific American reader (my friend BS reminds me I had a subscription), you will be surprised by this).
Despite the fact it was hard to believe that they were in pain, or deserved death, I decided to kill them all. It felt like the right thing to do, as I would hope would happen to me. I'm not much of a farmer, I empathize with the weaklings and want to save them, help them. But I though- I go to sleep while they shake and suffer? I need to kill them.
At once.
That is, after I l
I torched the supers with a blow torch, and put all the frames in a plastic bag, and will leave them there until I hear back from the USDA as to whether this virus survives on equipment or not. But I will probably throw them out (not burnable, as the foundation is plastic).
On the way home from dealing out this profound judgement on innocent creatures, I stopped at Cherry Valley Farms, to look at the hives I have there. Hive #18 was dead- as expected. I shook the remaining bees in the grass, torched the boxed, and moved it out of there. The rest were ok- but tomorrow I will open #14, which had laying workers, and where I put a new queen. I would have looked today, but the herdsman Johnny, who is Mexican, came by, and had a ton of questions, and taught me the Spanish for hive, hornet, Ram, Bee, Rattler, and Scorpion. His English isn't great, but he has one of those handheld things where you can look up Scorpion and get it in other languages. He has been bitten by one, at his Grandma's, where they climb the walls. He also eats armadillo and snakes. Snakes taste like fish. Armadillos taste like pig. Neither like chicken. He killed a rattler with a slingshot that was thicker than my arm, when he was 10. He also said that the word for "ram" (I think), and "beehive", were the same, except one started with "o" and the other "a". Being a Latin scholar, I recognized the Vespus and Apis word roots for the Spanish. Or maybe that's not Latin- maybe that's from getting a Jaegars Dictionary of Biology when I was 12 for my birthday, by request. I know, that sounds like name-dropping, but I had a dream about it last night and after 40 years still recall its black and white cover with a tern on it. Or something like a tern.
At home I combined four hives, and cloroxed the heck out of the areas I had the infected hives. And I vacuumed, which I know shot the virus everywhere and now its like the Andromeda Strain and a dumb thing to do. That cost me about 10 stings, until I put on a veil. Then I went next door and pulled 4 supers of honey off two hives. Which, though veiled, cost me another 10 stings, as I did not use smoke. Mostly on my ankles, but also in my pant legs. I have this thing where I try to kill the bee in my clothes before it stings by smacking it, which works half the time.
Despite the mayhem. for some reason, the bees packed away Maple honey this year. I have never, ever, had enough to extract. Jim U says it tastes bad. But I will try anyway- as I need the supers, and can't keep adding them. So far, I have pulled off 10 full supers of this- and I think I can get 4 more. I forget the math- sitting in a bar as I write this- but I think that's at least 20 pounds a super (or more), and if there are 14, that would be 280 pounds, and there are 12 per gallon, that's 23 gallons. I am figuring this out on a napkin, but that's about $2,240.00 worth of honey. There might be a decimal point wrong. Anyway, a surprise, thanks to Global Climate Change. Thank you, GCC.
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