Monday, October 17, 2011

The Week in Advance



I have a 9 to 5 for the next couple of weeks. 9 to 5 is all i can stand. Garlic planting time is here. Beds are built, and the cloves are popped and soaking in "kick start" tea. I'll drain 'em and start poking their little selves where they like it best...in the ground!

I'll look like the hunch back of Notre Dam for the next two weeks. I guess my gene pool   set me up to  to plant root crops... I damn sure wasn't set up for sitting at a desk.  At 70, I can still stay bent over all day putting cloves in the ground. Most people bend over for a while and then go to crawling. I can't do that.  I have to have one arm on the ground to hold my large upper body up  if I get on my knees to plant. Starting on one's knees is not an efficient way to start a run of ten miles.

Maybe I can "Tom Sawyer" someone to help plant garlic this week. I'll come up with a list of likely names name while I'm bent over today. Be an all day job. thinking of likely candidates, that is. Maybe one of the 50 Republican candidates for Pres would like a job. Naw, they just want a photo op, they don't want to work.

Guess I better get the bowl of Wheaties and get to it. "Burning daylight, waitin' for dark", as they say.

I moved Hive One to David's house "by the light of the moon" last night. They'll wake up facing NE in a new environment. All the bees that were moved there  last fall are two generations gone, so nothing will look familiar. They won't care, they are like cats, they just continue life doing what bees do...where ever they are. No time to sit around and have a discussion with Dora, The Explorer.

I'll get a couple of frames of honey from one of the other hives, and a baggie of sugar water and see if I can save this hive. They "got robber" and deserved better, probably brought on by my intervention. They say if just one bee can find a way in to an unguarded honey store, she'll go home and bring the whole hive, and once the robbing starts, it won't stop, if the robbee can't defend itself.

Next time I won't put the excluders inthe hive in advance of robbing the honey for me. They are intended as way for the bees to escape the super of honey, and not be able to return to the super.  That way no bees die unnecessarily. I'll just take my super, blow or brush the bees off. The rest will have to take their chances.  I'll not give the opportunity for robbing to get started.

Robbing is impossible to stop, so I hear, as long as their are stronger and weaker hives in an apiary. Guess I'll move 'em all, a pain to do, but it may save my hives. Don't know what people with lots of hive do when robbing starts. I guess the hives are all together and the honey just goes from one to another. The bee keeper gets his share, just loses a hive, in the long run. That is of very little consequence to the "commercial" bee guys.

I'm sure there are thousands of people out there with lots of advice and a cure. There is the option of reading the 2,000,000 volumes of info on bees and find an answer. How boring. What if their isn't a answer, that only the bees know?

We sure take a lot for granted on this little blue green ball called earth. Wonder what they call this little blue green ball way out there? Know It All Ball? Hmm. Glad their aren't answers readily available for some things. Nobody knows it all about garlic and bees. That's one reason I keep searching for answers to "life's persistent questions", as Guy Noire would say.

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