"Be"

 Be brief, be brilliant, be gone.

I listened to a coworker speak today as part of our black employee resource group and she said something that was so wise and meaningful:  "Be brief, be brilliant, be gone".   This has been my approach at work  for years, which is significant because I work with lawyers who don't usually apply this approach!  But I had never thought of it so succinctly.  

Memories

I was just called unsentimental by my brother and my mother....it's really true.  Except for sometimes random stuff calls to me.  I went up to my folks last week and my mom had two of these bulls sitting out - one for me and one for my brother.  Even though I have a reputation for not wanting "stuff", I happily took one of these bull salt and pepper shakers because it reminded me of our childhood.  It also brought up the memory of the matching bull cookie jar, which I was sad to have learned that it broke.   So I now own one baby bull said and pepper shaker, which has a hole in its butt!   

Woot - UC Davis!

This week we dropped  G off at UC Davis for the end of her college career.   It was weird to drop off in the time of covid.  We had do certify we were symptom free to help her and she had to have a covid test before moving in.

Her apartment is brand new with no one having lived it them before.  She has her own room and has 3 room mates who each have their own rooms.

These are common areas in the apartment building.

After moving in, we went to Target and to get sushi!  Then went back to finish a few things.  She has a great spot and its super cozy.

 

Hops and Honey

 Check out our new labels!

Coyote Hike

We went for a hike today at Coyote Lake.  Took this pic to get the ridiculousness that is Jim's face - he got pegged by a bee in the lip yesterday morning!

First Harvest

A friend's husband invited us to his bee club to harvest our honey for the first time.  So we too five our capped frames and drove up to concord.

This is a frame that has had the capped was removed and is pure honey.

This is me using a heated knife to take of the wax caps.

Jim got a turn too.

 

We brought the honey home and bottled 11.25 pounds of honey.  Not bad for our first try.

When you extract the honey from the frames, you put it in this extractor machine that spins the frames to release the honey.  The machine shook quite a bit so it was more effective if you stood on it.

Yellow Queen Bee

We checked our hives the other day and one of them (the white one) is doing so well its crazy - tons of bees and tons of honey.  The yellow one has at least half the activity.  So we looked closely and don't see any eggs - which means no queen.

Jim went on a hunt for a new queen and found a guy in Walnut Creek that sells bees, including queens.  So Jim went ripping up there today and got a new queen.   It was interesting because the beekeeper guy is in a wheel chair so Jim had to do the work.  But he was super knowledgeable and Jim was soaking it all up.  And then Jim told him about Canine Companions as a resource if he was interested in a service dog.  The world works in mysterious ways....

Anyway - Jim shows up with the new queen and we place her on top of the hive for 20 minutes to see what happens.  If she was being attacked then we would leave the cork on the cage in for a day or so.  If she was not being attacked, we take the cork out and let the bees eat thru the candy and release her.   After 20 minutes, all was peaceful.  So she is in her cage, in the hive, waiting to be released.

If this queen is accepted by the hive, she will be named Queen Ruth after the Queen of Botswana who I saw on a business trip to Malaysia in the late 1990's.