Yesterday was a perfect Jeep day. Up early, clean kitchen and off to check the relocated hive. Sky so blue, sunlight so warm, air so fresh. The fragrances of honeysuckle and grass freshly cut, pine sap and wildflowers and specific June bloomers.
Shannon's first car was a GTO, a 66 convertible, that her Dad and his best bud had found looking pitiful and broken in a parking lot. They gave it a makeover and she loved it. After she went to Heaven, I found driving her car with the top down very therapeutic. There is something about the wind whipping through your hair, sunlight shining on the top of your head and being surrounded by wind and warmth that clears your head. I needed that yesterday.
I have had to learn that not all questions posed to the Universe will be answered. Sometimes we just have to wait and see. I am grateful to those who chose to respond to my Facebook post on the current state of the world by questioning my integrity and compassion. They gave me what I needed to finally make the break with a public presence on Social Media.
It is amazing how freeing it is to return to a life that is focused primarily on the people close to me.
When I opened the relocated hive yesterday morning, I worried that I would be met by a hostile, defensive force of guards but I was pleasantly surprised. The girls were busy cleaning and preparing and building and even though I had lifted the roof from the safe darkness of their warm sweet home, they did not perceive a threat. Todd and I moved slowly and gently, trying not to jar or injure any of the tiny creatures as we inspected the hive for mites or beetles. The new queen had emerged and mated and settled into her new responsibility of continuing the healthy survival of her hive. She will lay 1500 eggs a day for the rest of her life. She will live 3 to 5 years and her perfume, unique only to her, will be the force that calls her foragers home at the end of every day.
Just because I found these facts all in one place and hope to remember them...
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" Honey bees evolved about 60 million years ago during the Cretaceous period.
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There are no indigenous honey bees in the United States, European honey bees (German Black Bees) were first introduced into this country (Virginia) about 1621-22.
- 30% of our agrarian and up to 70% of our feral honey bee colonies have disappeared or died.
- Honey bees pollinate 30% of all the food that Americans consume and:
- Pollinate 85% of all flowering plants
- Perform 90% of all pollen transfers on our orchard crops
- One honey bee visits 50-100 flowers during each collection trip and can harvest several thousand flowers in a day, making 12 or more trips, gathering pollen or nectar from a single floral species each.
- Nectar collected from flowers is swallowed and in the honey stomach enzymes (invertase) are induced which convert the sugars (sucrose) into levulose and dextrose sugars.
- It takes about 556 worker bees to gather 1 pound of honey from about 2 million flowers.
- It takes about 55,000 flight miles per gallon (12#) of honey.
- The average honey bee will make only 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime (6 weeks). These foragers are the oldest bees in the hive and it is during the last two weeks of their lives that they gather nectar, pollen, water, and propolis.
- A hive can gather pollen and nectar from up to 500 million flowers in a year.
- 9 pounds of honey is synthesized to make 1 pound of beeswax.
- The bees use about 8 gallons of water to make 1 gallon of honey.
During peak nectar flows, a healthy hive can produce 2 to 5 pounds of honey per day. A scaled colony in Maryland was reported to gain 25 pounds of brood, honeycomb and honey in one day.
- Honey bees can fly up to 6 miles from the hive at 15 mph with their wings beating 11,400 times per minute.
- Honey bees use the sun as a directional marker when leaving and returning to the hive. The returning foragers do a waggle dance on the vertical comb surfaces in a circle or figure eight pattern which shows the other bees in which direction, and how far to fly.
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Karl von Frisch won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 for his work on Honey Bee Communications.
- Roughly fifty thousand worker bees live in a colony along with one queen and several hundred drones.
- During the warmer months the worker bees live about six weeks, the queen can live up to three years.
- Worker bees born in the fall will live throughout the winter with the hive population being about half of what it is in the summer.
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Average interior temperature of the hive's brood area is 93-95 degrees (F) regardless of the outside temperature. In colder weather they do not hibernate, but cluster generating heat much like musk-ox and penguins"
Because of life's demands, Jules and I have spent a great deal of time apart over the last few years. I am often asked if I am lonely or mind being alone. I am not and I don't. I am happy if he is happy doing what he enjoys. BUT... I think I have tried to fill the quiet by following friends and family on Facebook, Instagram and You Tube and I don't think I realized how overwhelming it had become. Celebrating with, Worrying about and Trying to Remember every birthday and anniversary, every success and failure, every prayer request and grief, every EVERY of EVERY... and feeling like I couldn't make a mistake or forget or ultimately even express a personal opinion was resulting in emotional chaos and an expenditure of brain cells that are rapidly decreasing with every passing day. Blogging is far more relaxing. I don't spell check or worry about punctuation. I don't expect anyone else to read what is written and my opinions and perceptions are merely the ramblings of my ever aging mind.
I haven't stopped caring about the friends from long ago. I will have to rely on the USPS or email for updates on family and perhaps even resort to a real phone call from time to time. I think we have gotten lazy or perhaps frantic in a world that demands so much from every moment. I probably won't hear all the prayer requests or be made aware of those who have left this life for the next. I will miss the newest photos of grandchildren and vacations, but in the quiet that I am rediscovering, family and friends reside with more of my attention focused just on them.
I got an email from Jules yesterday. It said, "I was going to send this to my lovely bride on FACEBOOK, but ALAS, she was gone!"
I couldn't help but laugh because what I am just beginning to realize is that it has been a long time since I have been so totally present.