Patrick's Pollinators

Meet the newest member of The Flight of The Turquoise Apairy! After four years we are retiring Crazy Comb who always lived up to her name. In the spirit of better karma and less crazy comb we hope the girls in Patrick's Pollinator live up to their name as well and pollinate the dickens out of our land owner's apricot trees, apple trees and expansive vegetable garden.

My friend Patrick is an adventuresome spirit full of compassion. Hopefully his spirit of adventure and love will rub off on these girls. Like myself Patrick is a Tibetan activist. The guy loves honey and is always encouraging the efforts behind The Flight of The Turquoise Bee Apiary. Most importantly though I am hoping Patrick's Buddhist influence will infiltrate this colony and give the girls a mild tempered spirit.

As always, hive  namesakes will hopefully enjoy a bountiful harvest come September.

Procrastination, Propolis and One Overwhelmed Beekeeper!

I am just kicking myself for the mess I have on my hands. It is my own fault and now, I am completely overwhelmed with the task at hand. I can't imagine what on earth I was thinking last fall when I junked up the basement with all our bee equipment straight from the bee yard. You can only see about a third of my mess in the picture. Boxes covered in propolis strewn about, nothing organized. Large Tupperwares filled with stinky sticky frames all combed out but scattered with unhatched brood. It is nothing short of a disaster.

I am not a procrastinator. My nature is anything but. I never stall. I am a get done now kind of gal. I make lists, I organize and I get stuff done. I never do this kind of thing! It is so unlike me. Right now, I am not even sure where to start. To make matters worse we left equipment in the bee yard.When we went down to check on the bees last week I was a little dumb founded to find the bee yard the way we left it. Behind the two dead out hives we had thrown bottom boards, hive stands and hive boxes. We would have pulled that stuff when we were there last week but it was snow covered and frozen in place and we couldn't pry it loose. We are expecting another foot of snow today so who knows when we will be able to get that equipment home for restoration.   We also have stuff in Paula's garage. All of this makes it very difficult to inventory, organize and clean.

I finally faced it all this morning and started hauling the hive boxes up to the work room to begin the daunting task of scraping, cleaning, repairing and painting.

I am trying to tackle one hive at a time which is hard since not everything is in the same place. Today I pulled Colleen's Royal Ruckus upstairs and spent the morning scraping Propolis off every nook and cranny.  Propolis may have its purpose and it may have great medicinal properties but frankly the dark sticky resinous stuff that the bees seal everything with is a bitch to clean up! I probably shouldn't be so callus in my dismissal of Propolis and take more care in actually harvesting it but right now I have four hives that need to be scrapped clean, repaired, and painted before April 6th.

Do the math, each hive has a screened bottom board, a hive stand, three brood boxes and three honey supers. That is 6 boxes plus 2 hive stand parts times four. That is 24 boxes and 8 hive stand parts that need to be restored people.  That isn't counting the frame work. Each box holds 8 to 10 frames. Did I mention I am overwhelmed?

Once I scrapped all the Propolis off  I vacuumed each box and cleaned them with a wet rag. Then started painting. I hope to get the bottom board, the hive stand and all three brood boxes painted with two coats of paint by the end of the day.

Once they are dry and labeled I will  stack them neatly in the corner of the room until I make my way through all four hives. Eventually I will need to tackle the supers and the frames. Right now I need to prioritize so that we have hive bodies ready for the four new packages of bees. The supers can wait.  If I can finish a hive a day I might make my deadline. Our bees are coming three weeks earlier than last year so the heat is on to get this done!

I got started painting this morning and didn't notice that the door to the work room was open. You can imagine how interesting this work is to a pair of kittens. Ziva Jane worked her way around the room and the activity like a little lady but not Tashi Losar he managed to get a wide swath of white paint on his beautiful dark coat.

In all honesty this pales to rest of the organizing and preparing that needs to take place before the bees arrive in early April. I have bee suits that are sorely in need of repair, feeders to clean, syrup to make and our record keeping logs to get organized. Like I said, OVERWHELMED!

I sure wish I had done a better job cleaning and storing last fall which would make all of this feel far more manageable right now. The good news, it is work I like doing and it is fairly physical which is all good. I couldn't be happier smelling the wax and tackling all that Propolis, knowing the girls will be here soon.

Mass Casualties Two Dead-outs

I always get antsy in February about the girls. Did they make it? How many colonies will I be managing this spring? If they died, how did it happen, did they freeze or starve? What could I have done differently. So much is at stake. In my head I have created this idea that the mark of a real legitimate beekeeper is one who can overwinter her colonies.

Now I am smart enough to know that there factors way beyond my control that determine if the girls will make it or not but emotionally I am tied to the idea that if the they survive I have accomplished something big.

The Buddhist in me takes the responsibility of beekeeping seriously. I care deeply about the well being of my bees and while I am painstakingly mindful and deliberate about my actions in the bee yard there are occasional casualties and sometimes even deliberate actions that result in a necessary loss. I try and minimize those losses and go about my beekeeping in a manner that reflects compassion and care.

Last year we overwintered two colonies of bees. We were giddy last January when we found one colony thriving. We had not left much honey for them, nor had we taken much. We didn't have much to work with but we wanted to try. Of course there were three more months to go when we found those girls last January. We ordered sugar boards to hold them over through February and March and we started feeding them in April. When we went back a few weeks later we discovered the second colony had survived, we just hadn't gone deep enough in the boxes to find the cluster. Through a combination of good karma and good beekeeping they all made it.

Mr. Abbott's Little Bee came out of one those overwintered colonies last summer, genetically related to the ill tempered Turquoise Bee. The bees came from the Turquoise Bee but they got a new queen and an opportunity to sever their lineage. But you might remember the queen mayhem that ensued. Two queens running amok for over a month and then the new queen disappeared leaving the colony with a new queen the bees had raised from original Turquoise Bee brood and thus poor genetic fate. They struggled all summer, never produced a lick of honey and it wasn't until September that the population started to mount. It was hard to convince ourselves to attempt an overwintering plan for them but we did. We moved a few frames of honey from other hives into the colony, put them to bed and hopped for the best.

Then there was Katrina's Drone Den, a strong group of girls who had produced well over the summer. Her sister colony Colleen's Royal Ruckus had absconded late in the fall, probably infested with mites. We could have checked the mite load in Drone Den but it wouldn't have swayed us, we needed to try and overwinter them. We left them with a full box of honey, probably not enough but more that we had left in our previously overwintered colonies. We could do the same thing as the year before and order sugar boards if need be.

Paula and I went down to check on the bees today. We should have gone in January but it was too cold to open the hives. Even today was too cold but if there was any chance they were alive we needed to know and get food stores on the hives.

I just love going into the bee yard no matter what time of year. It is a place of solace and calm for me. We worked our way through the snow with our shitkicker boots, veils and hive tools. It was cold, we had to move quickly.  We started with Katrina's Drone Den. Nothing in the first or second box but we'd learned our lesson last January,  and  worked our way to the bottom box.  I was  hopeful at first, no dead bees piled up outside the hive. Right way though we found large clumps of dead bees on frames right next to large patches of honey. In fact it seemed like the top box was just as we left it, full of honey. Clearly the bees had frozen, unable to move to the honey on the frame. It was as though the cluster had busted up in a frantic moment and they were spread all over just frozen in place. Sad really, knowing they couldn't move to get to the honey. A total dead-out.

Mr. Abbott was a slightly different story.  You can see in the picture a large pile of bees outside the hive and dead bees scattered all about just outside the hive, tell tale signs of a dead-out. Since there wasn't much honey in that hive its hard to know what happened. They may have starved, they may have frozen, not enough clues to make a deduction.

Two total dead-outs and two sad beekeepers.  What can I say, grim day for us. We have three new packages coming and I am going to try and find a forth package between now and April. In the mean time we have a heck of a clean up job facing us. Last fall I piled all of our equipment in my basement storage locker without cleaning any of it. I knew I would regret that come spring and I sure do. It will take days to clean the boxes, repaint some of them and get organized for the April 6th arrivals. We also have to clean up the dead-outs which is never easy. Such is the business of beekeeping. I am going to re frame all of this and look forward to a fresh start! All new colonies, and more than likely we will be starting each of them on frames that have been completely combed out which will give every colony a kick start. We minimize our swarm risk and hopefully maximize our honey production. So chin up,  all is good at The Flight of The Turquoise Bee Apiary!

More Is Better

I can't help myself. I am wired for more of everything.  What ever it is, I want more. Right now the object of my affection is weight loss, lots of it. I want more of it and I want it faster. I know better, really I do but that doesn't help the chemistry of my constitution.

Occasionally I go to the gym twice in a day, because more is better.  When I have  a little coffee melt down  before doing my weight lifting routine or on Friday when I swim in the morning I go twice.  I am stymied by the number of people who are at LAF at all times of the day. Generally I am there very early in the morning or right after work. Stopping by in the middle of the day is out of character for me. Still, there are volumes of people there not matter when I go.

I have been at this for 52 days. Yes I am counting the days, just like my first days of being sober.  I have lost 14 pounds. Tina says my body shape looks different. I think she is just being nice. That being said I do feel better. I have more energy. I didn't actually need more energy, god knows I have a plethora of energy but it is true, I feel more energetic. I walk with more enthusiasm, I move more easily. I can get up off the floor more easily. I can do 90 squats without batting an eye, 30 of them holding 20 pounds of weight. When I heard that squatting would help me out in the bee yard, picking up heavy boxes full of honey I started doing them earnestly and with enthusiasm. I can't lunge to save my soul nor can I do a push up, pull up or sit up. But I am stronger and that is good.

I have a constitution for also not feeling deprived, lucky me. Exercise is only one aspect of cleaning up the sabbatical mess. I am eating differently and not cooking elaborate exciting meals. We aren't eating out as much. Dinners usually involve some protein, a vegetable and a salad. I am limiting my carbs, mostly saving them for "good".  Eating pizza on New Years Eve, a little creme brulee last night after a theater fiasco or planning a fun birthday dinner keeps me going. Oh and I have not had a potato chip in 53 days. The key for me is coming up with food that really appeals to me, that is savory and will fool me into thinking I am eating something special.

So a few nights ago I created a side dish to go along with a roasted chicken. A savory kale dish with onions and mushrooms and a scant amount of brown rice not only tasted fabulous but was very attractive and company worthy if you like that kind of thing! I made more today adding the left over scraps from the roasted chicken and packed it up for my weekend work lunches.

Spicy Kale with Onions and Mushrooms

8 ounces of thickly sliced mushrooms

1 large white onion thickly sliced

2 cloves of minced garlic

scant teaspoon of olive oil

1 large bunch of kale, de-veined and chopped

1 /8 cup white wine, more if needed

1 can RoTel, original or mild

salt, pepper and red pepper flakes to taste

1 cup cooked brown rice, or any grain you like (optional)

Heat a large non stick skillet. Once hot add the olive oil to lightly cover the bottom of the pan. Add the onions and garlic and saute on medium heat for about 3 minutes, until slightly soft. Add the mushrooms, continue to saute a few more minutes. Add salt, pepper and red pepper flakes. Add the copped kale, tossing it in the pan to mix with the onions and mushrooms. Add the RoTel and simmer until the wine reduces. About 5 minutes. Add the rice to absorb excess liquid and continue to simmer until heated through.

LAF: Weight Check down 8+

See all that medical equipment. It might easily be what I walk into at work on any given day. I know exactly what to do with it and within a short time I will have hooked up all of it to a single patient or two. It is complicated, sophisticated and serious business.  I can't get it wrong!

And this, this is the face of a treadmill and for the life of me I can not determine exactly what I am looking at. To make matters worse I can hardly start the treadmill without a great deal of effort. I am a firm believer that if equipment is spitting out data then it must mean something. But this, this little track with all its colorful blinking lights, for the life of me I can't figure out what it is telling me or what its value is. Go figure.

It only starts here, my trouble with equipment in the gym. But I am going to save the rest of my equipment woes for another day. Today I only have a minute to report in and then I am leaving for some sunshine.

Lucky for me I am a stick with it kind a gal and even if it takes me 10 minutes to get the treadmill moving I hang in there. Today marked the beginning of my fourth week of working out at LAF. Now if I were to say I love it, or even like it, that wouldn't be telling the truth. I am tolerating it. I do love the swimming, but then I am really really good at that. I do feel better and I have dropped 8.65 pounds. When my trainer asked me what my goals were I said "weight loss".  "Great, anything else?" "Yes, weight loss and more weight loss." I tend to focus on single issues. Maybe once I loose some weight I can consider some other benefits of this rigorous plan of mine.

I was so hoping to be down by 10 pounds at this point. You see I have some really lovely bathing suits I'd like to fit into starting tomorrow. While packing today I was grateful that at least one in my collection of four fits. I am just going to be grateful for that and keep my chin up. I  have 10 days of personal training with my wife to look forward to which is more than most girls get in a life time.

Musings From The LAF Training Room

My wife is the best ever. Monday morning I had my first training session. I came home and by Monday evening I could hardly move. It really wasn't just a matter of hurting. I simply couldn't conduct the activities of daily living. I was a little pissed off to say the least. I had a "free training" session last week, part of the deal when you join LAF. After reviewing the training costs when I first joined I decided they were cost prohibitive. After my free training session the training manager said he could offer me something more reasonable.

I came home and contemplated the offer and decided to give it a try. The training manager had taken me through an upper body routine. I was surprised I was able to do anything and while I hurt for the next day or so it wasn't god awful and I could carry on in my other activities.  My usual MO is to go at these things alone and since I suffer immeasurably from the disease of addiction that usually gets me in trouble. It seemed like a smart idea to have a professional teach and guide me through the strength building aspect of this endeavor.

So on Monday I had my first session with "a  trainer".  He had me do three sets of Goblet Squats with boxes and a 35 pound weight, 12 rotations each time and taking one of the boxes away each time. By third set I was practically squatting to the floor. Then I did three sets of one minute planks, three sets of leg presses 12 reps each time with 70 pound weights, three sets of ball curls 12 reps each time and some sort of cable hold with 20 pound weights.  By the time Paula and I got to the bee yard I could hardly get out of the car and by the end of the day I was completely incapacitated. Seriously people, a girl should be able to sit on the toilet to pee. Period.

I knew something wasn't quite right with this clearly over zealous routine. I don't mind hurting and I am not going to pay for training only to slack my way through it. But for the love of Christ I am a 54 year old women who has never lifted a weight. What was he thinking? By Tuesday evening I hurt so much I couldn't sleep.

Getting back to my wonderful wife. I had a scheduled fit test Tuesday morning. I am not sure who's idea it was to schedule a fit test the day after my first day of training, seems to me it should have been scheduled the other way around. Anyway, I got to the gym and discovered a really sweet card in my bag. Buoyed by her encouragement I carried on and completed the fit test with startling results. To make matters worse I was told I would gain weight before loosing weight. Hard to stomach when the primary goal is weight loss.

I am getting a new trainer, no more young men who have been fit all their life and have no idea what it is like to be a 54 year old female who is completely out of shape and has never lifted a weight in her life.  I will work hard but I am not willing to find myself in a place where I can't even function for two days because I hurt so bad.

My musings may give the impression that I am miserable. I am not! I am feeling better, even after only 10 days. Lucky for me that little issue with addiction makes it really easy to establish new routines. If I do something twice it becomes a routine.  I have now put together 10 days of  a new routine with one day off. I am walking 2-3 miles a day. I am riding a bike for 3 miles a day and I am swimming, every day which I love. Swimming is my reward. I am only going to do the weights 2 or 3 times a week for the time being.

I will admit I was taken by surprise at the results of my fit test and my measurements. I did a little more damage during my year of sabbatical that I realized. Right now I am going to take some lessons from my program of recovery "one day at a time". And, I am going to come up with some daily goals so I can get those rubs from my wife every single night!  In the meantime I hope you all stay on board and cheer me on. It makes a big difference.

New musings at Sweetpea's Bees

The Flight of The Turquoise Bee Apiary and Sweetpea's Bees have gone on hiatus. We are making our last trip of the season to the bee yard on Monday to remove all the combed out frames inside The Turquoise Bee. After having mice take up house in Crazy Comb I don't want to leave a single frame in an empty hive. December 1st I will order three packages of bees and then we are free until early March. In the mean time I am launching "Updates from LA Fitness" for my off season musings.

Beyond bees and honey we had an over the top year last year. We are on an academic calendar around here so when talking about a year in review I am talking September to September. Tina was on sabbatical and we had way too much fun. Too much fun led to too much eating. Too much eating led to too little exercise. Too little exercise led to too much weight gain and too much weigh gain led to a very unhappy camper. I wouldn't take the year back but I do wish I had not eaten my way though it like there weren't any consequences.

Once upon a time, not too long ago I was an avid walker, 10 miles a day, every day starting at the crack of dawn. I am one of those people who get up to watch the moon set. I loved my walking. Rain, shine or 30 below zero I left the house at 5 am and logged 10 or more miles. It was a routine I took for granted for the past 15 years. When we vacation in Florida I often put in a few 20 mile days. I guess you could say I am/was a distance walker. When I had my first bone density scan the endocrinologist who read my scan actually wrote in my report "bone density of a postal worker". I was flattered and relieved since Celiac Disease can lead to osteopenia. I am no stranger to extreme fitness adventures either having completed the Chicago Marathon in 1986 in under 4.5 hours and riding a three speed bike from St. Paul to Chicago in five days in 1996, I am quite capable when I set my mind to it.

 About a year ago I stopped walking and took up space in a chair, in our kitchen. A leather lazy-boy like chair. I monitored the news like it were my job and I planned one fabulous trip after another and one fabulous meal after another. We traveled well and we ate well. Now all I have to show for it, other than some really good memories, are 30 plus pounds right in my middle. I am not much for appearances. I could really care less what I look like but the fact of the matter is that I don't feel good. My clothes don't fit and I don't have any energy. The idea of going outside for a walk is more than I can face.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I lost 100 pounds. This isn't a new problem. I kept it off, most of it for 10 years.  The I started jumped up and down 10-15 pounds, moment to moment. It was just that easy to gain 15, lose 10, gain 5, lose three. You can see that eventually  the math started gaining on me. So when this particular episode got underway I was probably up by 10 from my baseline and then went on to add another 30 pounds. My usual methods of dropping 15 pounds simply aren't going to work this time around.  I've considered just getting back out there walking again but it hasn't come easily. After contemplating my options I finally decided the routine was so off kilter it would need a real jarring to fix.

 I decided join a fitness club which admittedly makes me groan. I hate health clubs. I hate paying money to do something I can do outside on my own. I hate how they smell. I hate all the skinny girls running around in skimpy outfits. I hate spending time getting there and getting home. I don't like "working out" and I don't like exercising with other people. I don't share space very well. All that and I haven't even mentioned the equipment. I loathe exercise equipment including weights.

I am smart. I operate very sophisticated live saving equipment at work. I program pumps to deliver complicated medications. I hook up all kinds of monitoring equipment. Hell I can even calibrate a scale to weigh a diaper. But turning on a damn treadmill is so complicated it takes me 10 minutes. I am dumbfounded by how difficult it is to simply program the treadmill to go for 40 minutes and a certain pace. I am not a quick study so once I finally get it going I have no idea what particular combination of buttons I pushed actually made it start so when I return the next day it is like starting all over again. If the treadmill isn't mind boggling enough let me tell you about the recumbent bike. That little stinker isn't even programmable until you actually start to pedal. Seriously, how I figured that out I'll never know.

I decided to join LA fitness for several reasons. Most importantly I can pay month to month. I didn't want to be locked in for a year or more. It is close to home, another important feature. When I visited the facility I was impressed with how clean it was. I also love to swim and there is a lovely lap pool. So I joined and have been going for three days in a row.

I wish they had some handout on fitness club etiquette. I like to know the rules. For example since everyone else seems to have on headsets can I just go ahead and sing out loud. I don't really like music except for Christmas music which is all I have loaded on my ipod. I just want to belt out the lyrics but I am not sure that's a good idea. This morning I was very troubled to find the only treadmill open was in front of the TV stuck on fox news. I can't actually get the sound but just the idea of exercising to Fox news was disturbing. I tried to distract myself, following along to the fake track of multicolored blinking lights in my "dashboard" but that only amused me for so long. Then I got a little excited about my next door neighbors reading material "Making your way to sexy curves" only to realize she wasn't reading about highway 1 in CA. So I came back to the blinking track pondering why there were three different colored lights blinking at different intervals. So boring. My reward, after 40 minutes on the mill and 10 on the bike is 10 laps in the pool.

I am nothing if not determined. My goal this week is to just get another routine going. We are entertaining Tina's colleagues from Budapest tonight. Crab cakes, smoked porterhouse, Minnesota wild rice with chanterelle mushrooms, green beans with gremolata and creme brulee. Starting tomorrow food is going to look very different around here until I get these 30 pounds reined in.

So, jump on board and cheer me on. I need all the motivation I can get. I'll be musing here every once and awhile about my progress so stay tuned. Hopefully by the time the new girls arrive in April I will be back in shape.