Getting Ready for Christmas

The boys loved decorating the tree!

This is Ricky celebrating Christmas at preschool. A little busted face, a little green cupcake icing...

Thanksgiving in Stella

Here's the Circus Family :) Hard to get so many kids looking in the same general direction without someone sticking out a tongue...





















Uncle Brian had Ricky duty for a while. I think this was right after Gaga let him have ice cream for Thanksgiving dinner. When it was gone, Ricky looked up innocently and asked, "I finished all my ice cream, so can I have my popsicle now?"
























The babies cleaned out the cookbook cabinet more than once. I haven't seen chubby chins like those in a looong time :)

Kappa Kappa Gamma Reunion, Chapel Hill, NC

Last weekend, Alex and I went to UNC to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Epsilon Gamma chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma. We enjoyed ourselves immensely. Mom took the boys to the coast so we had only ourselves to manage!
We wound up at the movies on Friday night where we unexpectedly ran into a good friend Crystal from high school! I always find that weird but serendipitous. On Saturday, we had barbeque at the Kappa house and got a house tour. The tiny room that Robbins and I shared is now the President's single. The sleeping porch which used to sleep at least 12 girls now houses only 4 (three of the four are named Katelyn, Katelin, and Caitlin). The young ladies were shocked that we actually used the phone closet on the upstairs hall and the intercom to announce when someone had a phone call downstairs. The study lounge upstairs now has cubicles with a laptop in each. I hadn't thought about the consequences of all of the technology I've enjoyed as a real adult. When I was in school, the Internet was just emerging to the general population and I remember my sheer glee when my dad sprang for the 33 MHz processor in my first college PC.
We sneaked our way into Sitterson, the computer science building where I spent most of my best hours. They've extended it and named the extension after Frederick P. Brooks. The two most significant changes are that the GLAB (what we called the graphics lab) is now the Robotics Lab and - hold onto your socks - there's a room in the Brooks building on the second floor labeled "Lactation Room". Holy heck. We've come a long way, babes. Overall, I left with the impression that I used know things other people didn't and now I can't remember what I was just talking to Susan about before I had to pour someone more milk. I swear I'm going to take calculus classes at UNCC.

Ricky Loves Britney

Halloween!

Lisa and I took the kids on a haunted hay ride. It was slightly scarier than I had banked on, but the kids seem no worse for wear. I had Ricky sitting between me and Robbie and early on in the ride I covered his eyes with my hand. I should have noticed at some point during the event that he had fallen asleep sitting up. Either his brain shut down from too much stimulation or he really did need a nap pretty badly. Probably a good thing he fell asleep regardless. Robbie was fortunate that he had to "go" right before the ride started. When a moaning white-faced zombie staggered toward the wagon, Robbie beamed, "Hey! I saw him in the bathroom!" Kinda hard to be scared of the apparition that helped you turn the faucet on to wash your hands....

For Halloween, Robbie was Indiana Jones and Ricky was Tim Tebow (UF quarterback...)

Here's the video I was trying to upload. Did better on youtube.

Grandparents's Visit

We had a great time visiting with Grandmamma and Nana during their visit at the end of September! We took Nana down to Mary Jo's Fabric and she said she was coming back with an empty suitcase next time so she could stock up!

First Days of School

Wow, I was getting crabby for my friends not having updated their blogs in a while and look at me - a month! So here is the First Day of School edition!

Robbie on his first day of first grade with Ms. Thomas. This is what he will look like in his senior picture, just with an Adam's apple and some (more) cheek fuzz.

And here's Ricky on Robbie's first day of school. He is in his "big boy car seat" now and thinks he's one of the gang. On the first day that I drove carpool, he unbuckled and tried to exit the car to go into school with the other three boys! Very sad realization for him and he spent the first several days asking, "Where Robbie? Where Robbie?"

This is Ricky's first day of school. He was so proud of his picture and came home absolutely covered in marker. He was such a precocious wall artist in our house that there are no longer any markers here. I forewarned his teachers and now he can use markers at school! What a great idea!

So far, everyone loves school. Robbie is coming home with a crazy amount of homework and it all seems real and worth doing. Plus, carpooling has been fantastic. I've only driven a few times this year. Not bad.

A Ricky Fix

Ricky has been so busy lately. He's in my lap now looking for pictures of himself on the blog so I thought I'd put out some good ones I've been collecting :)

Our friends were over for a visit. Sienna came into the kitchen and said, "Ricky got peanut butter on the garden house." She left out the part about him rubbing an entire jar of peanut butter into his legs!

Guess who likes going potty?! He's training himself at this point and I just let him go when he tells me. He really only uses a couple of diapers a day.

The most telling part of the potty photo is a part I had to edit out. Look at this leg and tell me he isn't always into something. Each of these wounds is from a separate event. Maybe the bruises came in a set.

This is a picture from Emerald Isle courtesy of cousin Jennifer. Ricky in a waterfight with William! One of the best things about Ricky is that he can take it *and* dish it!

Of course, the harder they play, the harder they fall. Another Jennifer picture!

This is his anti-paparazzi face. Little tuffy.

Robbie's 6th Birthday

We celebrated Robbie's 6th birthday on Thursday. Here are some of the pix from his party. Friends Lydia, Zack, and Charlie were there to help celebrate. Theme: Speed Racer!

Robbie received the most excellent gifts this year including a Wall-E robot, an Indiana Jones *whip*, an Indiana Jones sword, a tape recorder that actually records, great new Lego sets, ToysRUs money with which he bought his first Technic Legos, sea monkeys (from his dad!!), and the game Sorry. He has already enjoyed them all over just the last few days.

Attempted Stingery!!!!

Today marks the first time one of my girls tried to sting me! Fortunately she missed my thumb and instead stung the underside of my thumbnail. I saw her sting, struggle to get away, her guts came out (!) and then I flicked her off into the grass. Whew!! (On the left is the guts and the stinger that almost got me, sitting on a piece of Styrofoam. On the right is a different dead bee.)

I saw approximately ten hive beetles in the outer cover and squished those. No queen today. I have to think about how much building out they've been doing. A notebook out there would be handy. I also need to figure out how to clean the frames. Lots and lots of really red propolis, heavy burr comb on the underside of the older frames. I also saw some weird looking larvae; I'm hoping they were in the process of being capped. That's the summary - how terribly scientific!

Laurie and I are meeting tonight with a potential carpooler for next year. Wish us luck!

My Buddy

Over the last school year, I got to know this little boy. Through a local agency, I was asked to meet him at his elementary school every Wednesday and read for an hour or so. I haven't seen him since the school year ended but he's been on my mind and I want to record everything I remember about him. I'll see him again this year for sure, but I bet he'll be a lot more grown up by then.

This is what I know. (For his privacy, we'll call him Buddy.)

Buddy is seven years old and is the fourth child in a family of five children. His eldest sister lives by her own choosing in another state with a relative. Next is his eldest brother who is at the elementary school with Buddy, I think in the sixth grade or so. Next is his sister who will be in fifth grade. Buddy is seven and will be in second grade. And Buddy's little brother is around three years old. These children live with their mother in the apartment of their 19-year-old aunt and her young children. In essence, Buddy is homeless, as his family does not live in their own place and is at the mercy of his teenage aunt. Once, the aunt kicked the family out of the apartment and they spent a weekend somewhere that had bedbugs. By the next week, they were back in the aunt's apartment.

Buddy's mother is in her late twenties. She works second shift at a job which means she is home when the kids go off to school but doesn't see them at all in the afternoons. She is home about an hour each day before the kids are due to be in bed. On the first day that Buddy and I met, within the first fifteen minutes of our very first introduction, he asked, "Why can't you be my mom?" That was a sign of things to come.

Buddy's father lives in another state but this year Buddy got to visit him for a weekend with the rest of the family. Toward the end of the school year, Buddy told me that his father was in jail for shooting a man because that man punched his father. I mentioned this to the agency liaison and she had no information or confirmation of this. Buddy was so specific about it, saying the man told him to remember how the man smelled, to never forget him while he was away, and that he wasn't going to be able to see him for a long time.

Buddy often came to school wearing dirty clothes. His school imposes a uniform policy of a white shirt and navy or khaki slacks. His white shirt was rarely white, mostly white-but-dirty-and-gray and was truly white only on the days when he showed up wearing something new. I would never see a new shirt twice. His shoes were a constant source of trouble. For most of the year, he wore a particular pair of tennis shoes; one shoe had a sole flopping off the bottom, having detached from the rest of it. He also kept his heels out of the shoes when he wore them and his feet crushed the backs down flat. They hurt his feet when he wore them properly. When I mentioned it to his agency liaison, she lamented about how the agency had provided several pairs of new shoes to him. When asked, his mother would say something like, "He lost them," or "They are in his closet at home." I asked Buddy and he said the shoes they bought him didn't fit or they made fun of him on the bus and he didn't want to wear them. I know that the liaison took him to Target specifically to buy shoes that fit. Who knows where the new ones went? In the meantime, Buddy got the ones falling apart.

Frequently, little Buddy had not brushed his teeth before coming to school and suffered from regular halitosis. He clearly did not bathe often. His nails were long and dirty. One day, the liaison chased me down on my way out of the school and apologized for his smell. It had been particularly ferocious. She at least was able to provide him a toothbrush. When asked about it, his mother said it was Buddy's job to get himself ready for school in the morning, not hers.

I remember one day we were reading My Very First Mother Goose. During one poem, he started relating about a movie he had watched "on the Lifetime channel" with his mom the night before. He then proceeded to describe in full detail the plot of "Fatal Attraction." Am I kidding you? No. He didn't remember the name of the movie but told me all about the rabbit on the stove and the "boy" and the lady kissing and the lady in the tub who wasn't really dead so the boy shot her and, basically, every memorable part. I said, "That must have been really scary," and he replied, "Yeah! My aunt was screaming!" I called the liaison and left her a message about it and she told me the next day that the kids had been an hour late for school the morning after the movie night. Each had said they stayed up late - past 3 AM - watching movies with their mom. The mother denied it, saying they were making it all up. After the liaison learned about "Fatal Attraction" and confronted the mother again, the mother changed her story, admitting that she just really wanted to watch it.

Buddy's favorite book is "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus" by Mo Willems. Buddy fancied himself the pigeon. I sent all kinds of books home with him, never to be seen again. But he always had Pigeon with him in his desk. Every day he would take it home and bring it back the next morning.

With few exceptions, I brought snacks with me for our meetings. Stuff to eat together and extra to take home. I always only brought veggies and fruit and he acted like it was Christmas every single time. The joy of the carrots with their own side of dip! Cold apples from the fridge! His favorites, really, were the Cuties - the awesome clementines (oranges) that are small and really easy to peel. Once I let him eat four in a sitting. After a while, when they were out of season, I couldn't afford them any more and I had to stick with carrots and apples mostly. Eventually the liaison asked me to stop bringing the extra because he was taunting other kids on the bus with it and causing a disturbance. He did tell me once that his mother and aunt really enjoyed the bag of baby carrots I sent home with him. I'm still not sure if that's good or not.

Despite his family situation, Buddy had a big smile on his face every time I saw him. He never once gave me trouble. He sat down when I asked, he read to me what he was supposed to read, he answered my questions politely and he was never loud or rambunctious. He had a wonderful spirit and a willingness to please. So the times when I would get a call from the liaison letting me know his latest discipline problems always came as such a surprise. I couldn't imagine Buddy being the source of such constant disruption in his classroom. I could imagine him being a follower and getting into trouble by chasing the pack, but he seemed to have more of a reputation for instigating events. It was clearly one-on-one time that made a difference for him. In conversation with the librarian, we agreed that it was the single biggest factor in his performance. Is there a program to provide that level of service to a child who just simply needs more attention?

Buddy was suspended from school this past year. And it wasn't his first time. Apparently, the teacher threatened to send him to the principal's office and was going to call his mom if he didn't stop doing whatever it was (talking? making noises?) that she didn't like. When the subject of his mom came up, he hid under his desk and refused to come out. Instead of ignoring him, the teacher continued the disruption by attempting to pull him out of the desk. She could not and she called in the principal. The principal also attempted to pull him out and he began screaming, "Stop! Don't touch me!" He was suspended for three days. And it wasn't the first time. He was in the first grade and he had already been suspended at least twice.

Besides being suspended, Buddy was regularly sent to the principal's office to spend the day. He also got sent to a Kindergarten class for days and weeks at a time. "Ms. J" was really awesome but Buddy had no business doing worksheets in a Kindergarten class. He could behave for Ms. J while sitting alone in a corner doing worksheets but wouldn't or couldn't for his regular teacher? I wasn't sure why that approach to discipline was allowed at all. And I think that choice reflected more about Buddy's teacher than it did about Buddy.

By the end of the year, Buddy was diagnosed with ADHD and (surprise!) put on Ritalin. His in-class behavior and reading skills did indeed improve dramatically. Unfortunately, his mother ran out of medication before the end of the school year and Buddy's behavior crashed and burned. He actually became violent, hitting other students. He had never done anything like that before. His mother was given enough medication to last Buddy through the end of the school year. So how did she run out? The agency's prevailing theory is that she was triple-dosing him every day. Or could she have been selling them packaged with his nice new clothes and shoes?

That's all I have for now. But I am seeking the solution to this problem, the little boy's life that already sucks. If anyone has the answer, feel free to let me know. I read Juan Williams' book "Enough" and Tavis Smiley's autobiography "What I Know for Sure". I'm about halfway through Bill Cosby's "Come On People". They pretty much all say the same things: black families need present fathers, families must value education, women must not get pregnant until educated and married. None of that helps Buddy. And Buddy's future is already written on his forehead at seven years old.

Our Summer Beach Trip

We recently returned from a trip to Emerald Isle where my dad's side of the family reunites annually. Unfortunately I couldn't find my camera before we left so I have no visual recordings. My dad sent the following and you can visit Susan's blog for a few more of Ricky. Sorry these pictures are so small. I'll get the originals from my folks this weekend.

Susan's blog

A few days after our return, Robbie presented me with my camera, having found it in his room. There was a picture of Ricky and this video...

(Ricky is saying, "Cheeeeese!")

And I wondered why I couldn't find my camera?!?

Bee Update

I sneaked outside today to check the hive. It's been two and a half weeks since I was there last so I expected lots of changes. Not many, really. Pretty much the same as the last time.

Lots and lots and lots of bees. Didn't seem as aggressive today as last time, but then again, I wasn't as nervous from the abundance of population as I was last time.

Oh, the last time. There was an enormous population explosion during the third week of bees. I opened the hive and each built frame was so heavy with bees, brood, etc. that I had a hard time lifting them! (An empty frame by contrast feels like picking up a piece of paper!) There were so many bees that I got a little spooked and made some mistakes. First, I was nervous that bees were crawling on my hands. There were so many that they were just spreading out, I guess. The first time, I flicked my hand behind me to get the bee off and she whipped out into the grass a good distance. The second time I flicked a bee, I didn't do such a good job and she got mad. And her friends got mad. They started swirling around me and their buzzing significantly increased. Kinda got a little more scared. Then I felt a bee crawling up my leg inside my pants just under my knee. I froze and I felt it crawl up and up, slowly, slowly until I was insane a la the tell-tale heart and I went running in and took off my pants as fast as I could. No bee! (Now I put rubber bands around my pants legs!)

So today was much like last time. I squished three hive beetles. Not bad. I saw one of them because it was on the run with a worker bee chasing it down. I let it run onto my hive tool and then I squished it :)

There were four of my frames not built out at all and one frame that was built on one side. The bees had started storing pollen there since the last time I saw them. I'm pretty sure they should be doing more building but I bet it's because there's not much of a flow going on.

No queen cells, no drone cells. Lots of capped brood. The open cells contained larvae. I have some cleaning up of burr comb to do but I'm not sure how you hold a frame of bees and scrape off wax at the same time... There were a number of bees with their pollen baskets full and even a few with their bodies completely dusted yellow with pollen.

I saw the queen after going through the frames a second time. She didn't seem to be moving very quickly and then I realized it was probably because she was carrying a worker bee on her back. So I can't really judge her harshly for that.

The American Bee Journal finally had something useful in it - a checklist for inspections. I'll reproduce it here and fill it out after each inspection. All in all, a good looking hive.

By the way, that's not a picture of my hive. It looks kinda like that, though. You can see the capped brood in the upper left corner.

My Sisters' Visit and the Rest of the Week

Last weekend was really fun. Kathleen with Paige, William, and baby Jack came to visit on Saturday. Susan and Ruby came on Sunday and everyone stayed and visited for a few days! The cousins really played and played. We went to the pool, opened the hive, hung out... Robbie even went down the waterslide at the pool with Paige and William! Pretty cool.

And look at these two sweetie peeties. Classic y-chromosome pose on Mr. Jack. All he needs is the newspaper and his pipe.
















Alex began his work in his new office this week! Hooray! I'll post pix of the place when I have one to show.

On Thursday, we went on an impromptu trip to Carowinds with Lisa, Stori, and Siena.

Does this kid look excited to be on a horse or what?!?

We rounded out the week with Robbie's tennis lesson, my tennis lesson, receiving the counter for the island, choosing some cabinet knobs, and finishing the work on the new driveway and retaining wall!! Backsplash and we're done!

And you. Yeah, you. Leave a comment.

Bees Have Arrived!

Hooray! Robbie and I picked up our bees on June 2. We drove down to Easley, SC to Porter Farm Bees. Dwight Porter was very helpful and we talked bees for a long time. Then we put our hive with our new bees in the back of the Pilot and we started for home. One bee escaped. We nervously opened the windows and she flew away. A while later, another bee got loose, we opened the windows, and she flew away. Then another and another and another bee got loose and we just drove home with bees flying around in the car. They didn't want to get us, afterall. They just wanted out of the car.

We put them in their spot and left them alone until Saturday. With a crowd of neighbors watching safely from the screened porch, Robbie and I opened the hive for the first time and took a look....

It was fabulous and completely uneventful. The queen had been doing her job. We saw larvae and capped brood. The workers had been doing their job. Lots of nectar turning into honey. Some pollen. One small hive beetle which I personally squished.
After Robbie was finished, his friend Anne Francis donned the suit to have a closer look too.

Curious onlookers. (Alex, Lisa, Laurie, and children Stori, Siena, Anne Francis, Whitney, Robbie, and Ricky)

Lots of bees, capped honey, etc.

It's hot work being a beek!

My only scare so far was when a large number of bees were rocking back and forth listlessly on the front entrance of the hive. I thought surely they had starved. I called my bee mentor Will and he said, no, that it's called bearding and they do that when it gets really hot. And it was really hot. We were in the high nineties with no cooling off in the night. Whew! They weren't all dying after all!

School's Out!

Here's Robbie saying goodbye to his Kindergarten teacher Mrs. Moran at his awards night. Originally, the teacher for his class was another lady and Mrs. Moran was the assistant who worked between two classes. The first teacher didn't work out and within two months she was replaced by Mrs. Moran. The weekend before she took over, I tried explaining that the first teacher wouldn't be there anymore and that Mrs. Moran was going to be his teacher on Monday, etc., etc. Robbie looked up at me, rolled his eyes, and said, "Uh, Mom. I'm in love with Mrs. Moran... and so is Charlie!" You can see why :)

At awards night, Robbie received the Spanish Award.

Alex's Birthday

For Alex's birthday we drove to Chapel Hill, dropped the boys off with my mom, Aunt Susu, and Ruby and continued down the road to see Duran Duran live in concert at an amphitheater in Cary. Duran Duran was really a lot of fun to watch and this was one of my more favorite concerts.

The opening act was a young band from Leeds, England called "Your Vegas". Actually quite good. Every time a song would finish and the mildly attentive, yet milling, crowd would clap politely I would think, "What if that were Ricky? I'd have to follow him all over the world and make sure to sit in the front row every time and clap really loudly!" After they finished playing, they sat at a booth and shook hands and gave autographs. They were very, very polite boys so I guess it would be OK if it were Ricky... right? I would just have to go on tour with him. I'm sure he wouldn't mind.

Renovations (Are We Done Yet??)

We have been in the midst of renovations at our house for several months. What started with bad linoleum in the kitchen soon turned into replacing all the downstairs flooring with hardwood, replacing all the upstairs carpeting with new carpeting, finishing the third floor, getting a new island, new countertops, and new kitchen appliances. And we had the screened porch built. Still on our list and being scheduled now is having the driveway extended around the side of the house and graded flat so that cars have a flat place to land when they pull up to the house.

I'm ready to collect my before and after pictures.
Let's start with the den.
BEFORE:
















And AFTER:
















Here's the kitchen BEFORE:

And I'm not ready to post the after.... still working on the backsplash and the island counter. Sigh.

I'll have to update this post as I have more to add!

Ricky's Birthday Weekend

Ricky's birthday was Friday, complete with a Nemo cake. If you ask him how his birthday went, he'll tell you, "Nemo cake!" And if you ask him how old he is, he'll say, "Six." He thinks he's six, anyway. That's for sure.




Nemo's tail was a great source of extra icing without having to deal with the boring old cake.

















Grandfather came into town to help celebrate with Ricky and to help Alex set up the swingset in our backyard woods. Super, super cool. Robbie and Ricky supervised the entire time. Poor Gaga was sick and couldn't make the trip. She's on the mend now and we'll see her Wednesday.


The first step for the project was making a clearing in the woods that would house the swingset. Mostly skinny trees in the undergrowth and a few stumps. One was particularly cool, something I wouldn't have expected in our backyard. A cedar! The portion of the stump above ground had turned a mossy green. Once dug out, the cedar really became prominent. Almost purplish red and smelling soooo good.












Then construction began. Here are the guys taking a well-earned break. I'm pretty sure Alex is somewhere nearby chopping out a stump. There were five kids playing on the swingset today after school, but I'll have to wait to post a picture of the whole thing once Alex finishes up the details.

Gardening Topics

This morning I participated in a Charlotte Heifer presentation on the topic of Sustainable Gardening. My part was bees and worms, bringing in our empty hive and an observation hive with live bees in it and all of the acoutrements. For the worms, I recreated an elementary school science project by placing different layers of earth in an aquarium, adding earthworms from my own garden, and keeping it covered in the garage for a month. After that much time, you can see the progress that the worms are making mixing the different layers of earth together. I used sand, composted manure and topsoil, and dirt from my garden in six layers. Kinda got heavy so next time I will cheat and put styrofoam blocks in the center and fill the dirt around the sides of the aquarium. Other topics included composting, making your backyard into a certified wildlife habitat, container gardening, and making newspaper pots to start seed in.
The boys and I also got our seedlings in the ground. I picked up some small plants from Dearness Gardens on the way home from picking up our lawnmower. The tomatoes I chose were Heirloom Green Zebra, Supersonic, 100 Sweet, and Grape. Also got a few cukes, some Carolina Sweet Bell Peppers, and some hot peppers for Alex. I saw a bunny in our front yard this morning despite Stripe being on the loose out there so I wonder if the baby plants will make it without being nibbled to death.
Also our blueberry bush has exploded in berries. One of the benefits of not being a good pruner is that your shrubs get tall and lanky. For me, this means the birds are too heavy to land on the blueberry branches and therefore can't eat much fruit.

Summer Begins

It has been a great start to the summer. Robbie comes home from Kindergarten with so much energy and is just ready to play. Of course Ricky can't wait for him to come home.
We recently received some of porch furniture. Happily it arrived in several very large boxes. Here's a video of Robbie and Ricky taking advantage of their new toy. Ignore the junk you see at the tree line. That's a product of the porch construction and a free swingset that Grandfather is going to help erect next weekend.

The shouting that you hear in the video is from a knock-knock joke... Knock knock. Who's there? Luke. Luke who? Luke out below! That's not what the boys are saying, though. That's Ricky's version of the punchline. "Be out beyoh!"

The porch has been the best! Alex and I will read the paper out there in the mornings. We leave the door open to the den and let the breeze blow in and cool things down before the day gets too hot. Fabulous.

A bunch of other women and I have started tennis lessons at the neighborhood courts. Yesterday was our first go and I didn't do too badly. With 11 people signed up, I feel like there will be plenty of people willing to practice with me who are at my same beginner level.

What else is summery so far? I haven't seemed to be able to get any plants in the ground. I'm way behind on my tomatoes for sure, if I'll have some at all. Seems like I should get on that.

Our Honey Bees

Robbie and I will be keeping honey bees for the first time this year. I went to Bee School with the Mecklenburg County Beekeepers Association back in 2006 but by then I was expecting with Ricky so I didn't pursue beekeeping that year - or the next, since an infant is the best excuse for not doing something! Finally I was so sick of hearing myself say that I was going to do it that I did another round of Bee School this year and ordered my equipment from Brushy Mountain before I could chicken out. Here's Robbie doing a little construction on the bodies.

Besides the equipment, I also ordered a package of Italian bees since that's the most common type that most people suggest you start with. Then I went to class and heard about the Russians.

The first lesson I've learned is that once you decide what course you will take with your bees, you then learn about another different-better-stranger-more difficult way to do it.

There are a few principles that I will stick with during my beekeeping tenure. One is that I will not use chemicals, fungicides, pesticides, fumigations, or anything else yucky that I wouldn't want in my house if I were a person or a bee. That's non-negotiable. The second principle that sounds good to me now is that I won't requeen. (You are generally advised to kill your hive's queen every couple of years and replace her with a young, fresh, already-mated one.) Problem is I'm no bug killer. At best, I'll get Alex to kill the occasional nasty roach, millipede, or other revolting creature. Otherwise, spiders, snakes, bees of any kind - let's summarize - anything (but a roach) with eight legs or fewer - are off-limits for killing. I actually didn't know these ideals would be found in favor but I met the former president of another association and she said she practiced those same beliefs herself! No chemicals, no killing. Permission!

Anyway, one of the benefits of keeping Russians over Italians is that they are more mite resistant and many beeks (that's the short version of beekeeper which has way too many eeeee's) are able to keep Russians without employing chemicals and the rest. Matching with my first principle, I swapped the Italian order in and hunted down a Russian dealer. I'll be getting our girls from Porter Farm Bees in Easley, SC.

So the next thing is that our hive and spare parts are all built, painted, level, ready to go. The foundation is installed... and then I hit upon true organic beekeeping online. There is a whole set of practitioners who do not treat disease and instead stimulate their bees to fend for themselves. That means that they lose weak hives but they support bees the way nature intended - not as a souped up agricultural product but as an independent part of the ecosystem. I really like the sound of that.

A major topic I've come across is large cell versus small cell honey bees. Sure, they told us in school about how different cell sizes are used to grow either a worker (regular size cell), drone (bit bigger), or queen (really big). What they didn't mention is that the cell size predetermined in the standard foundation is larger than what honey bees would naturally make for themselves. The slightly larger cells create slightly larger workers. The idea is that the larger workers will produce more honey but apparently that's not the case. So the naturalists put the bees through a process called regression in which the generations of bees are born smaller until they are the size to build their own comb with the smaller cell size that they would prefer had they been feral. Some people think that the larger workers are more prone to varroa and tracheal mites because of their bigger bodies and their slightly longer life cycle in the larval and pupa stages. Again, sounds reasonable to me. Why would you try to manage the nature of a creature that has managed itself for 150 million years?

So I have all of this wired wax foundation in place and I think now that we want a fully drawn, food grade polypropolene HSC (honey super cell) foundation with a cell size that helps them transition. Once the girls are back down to normal size, they will build their own comb with no foundation provided by me. Didn't know the factory-produced foundation has all kinds of chemicals in it anyway.

My bees are due in mid-May although the supplier said he was running a bit late. That's OK as it might give me more time to figure out my approach to foundation and probably lots of other things that I don't know about yet.


Here's Ricky having a snack next to the hive with no bees yet.

At Our House

Inspired by Ruby's pages, I've decided to record our family's events here.

Yesterday was my birthday! I slept until 10:30 and woke to find presents and homemade cards outside our bedroom door. The perfect start to the day! Alex, Rob, and I built our raised garden beds and worked on our hive stand. Then Rob went to Charlie's to spend the night and Natalie sat Ricky for us. Nothing like dinner and a movie. We went to The Grape beforehand. Much more interesting than I expected. Found McWilliam Shiraz. Definitely need to find local places for dinner though and start avoiding the chains.