Beekeeping Is Wheekeeping
So I have a horrible confession, but I’m going to do it on film: here, listen to this.
That’s right; we hadn’t been in the big hive in nearly seven months. So it was time to get in, but I’ll be honest and say we were a little scared. Bees aren’t aggressive when they have nothing to protect, but once they have seventy pounds of honey and brood, they get a little defensive when people rip open the tops of their houses with crowbars and start rooting around.
…comparatively, this is. I mean, our bees are very nice bees. But a bee buzzing around your head, bumping you, hits some primal terrors. And there are a lot of bees:
I should add that for the seventeenth time, I misidentified a clump of ladder wax – which the bees use to climb between boxes – as a queen cell. I don’t think I’ll ever know what a queen cell is. But we’re paranoid about queen cells, because it’s the spring season and we’re told our bees are getting ready to swarm, and when that is imminent the #1 sign is queen cells, as the bees produce a new queen to tend to the old hive, just before the old queen flies off with about 20,000 bees to resettle.
There’s technically nothing wrong with swarming except a) it leaves your hive weaker, and b) we don’t look forward to explaining to the neighbors why there are 20,000 bees clustered under their eaves.
Here, you can see a bunch of now-dead pupae – which was the word I could not remember to save my life – that have been pulled free of their comb here, which makes me feel bad. And here, you can see me actively irritating Gini with every pronoun as I mourn at a not-quite-ready-for-prime-time bee who we’ve inadvertently yanked out:
And here, you can see the bees scattering as we use the smoker, which is oddly hypnotic, as well as seeing all the boxes spread open and laid apart.
(No, we did not see the queen. We never see the queen. I can’t wait to see the queen in the other hive, because she’s marked, but even after a year we still go, “Wow, that’s a bunch of bees!” Amateurs.)
Unfortunately, soon after this video was taken, this happened:
Basically, if you have a smoker – which is a metal canister filled with slow-burning wood – do not pick it up by the bottom. Which Gini did last year, and I did this year, rendering me with blisters across two of my fingers. Which was incredibly painful, requiring three hours’ of icing. It seems like a rookie move, and it is, so don’t do that.
In any case, by that point I was mostly out of commission, meaning that Gini would have to examine the bottom box of the bees alone. And at that point they were actively angry, with about three bees trying to go at us each, buzzing angrily, and Gini didn’t want things to get worse. So she slowly panicked and decided to put the hive back together.
We need a plan at this point. The bees are clearly healthy, but the top box of the honey super? It should only be for honey, guys, and already it’s filled with brood. This is a thriving hive, and if we take the honey super off, there’s a good chance the bees will feel crowded and swarm. If we don’t take it off, then we’ll have to get a new honey super come the end of the summer… and not only does that seem a little clunky, but we really want honey this year.
If any beekeepers have advice, I’m listening. In the meantime, I’m going to put more ice on my poor fingers. Ow.
Ironic, That A Movie About Getting Screwed By The Man Is Doing Some Screwing Itself
So I was watching Tower Heist last night, which is a better movie than it has a right to be. I knew it was about Ben Stiller and his other service-job buddies breaking into the apartment of the rich banker who defrauded them out of their pensions… But I wasn’t prepared by how much character work went into what’s otherwise a pretty by-the-numbers film. There was a lot of effort put into showing how helpless and futile these working-class stiffs, most of whom took some pride in their jobs, felt when they were ripped off by a guy who wasn’t even punished for what he did.
Then I read that this was initially meant to be an African-American “Ocean’s 11,” and it all sort of came together.
I think I would have enjoyed this film a lot more if it were an all African-American film – it would have been stereotypical in its portrayal of blacks being the underclass, yes, but also more interesting to see a bunch of smart black men (and women) triumphing against a broken system.
But then I thought of Red Tails, which George Lucas claimed that Hollywood refused to fund because “all-black casts don’t sell movies.” (Presumably because whites don’t want to see them.) I know that’s why Tower Heist eventually had to get Ben Stiller on board.
That irritates me, because there’s a self-fulfilling prophecy here. Most movies don’t sell. You need to have your films make two to three times their initial budget to start being profitable, and the vast majority of movies don’t clear that. Hell, Tower Heist with its all-white cast, sure didn’t.
So saying, “Black casts don’t sell movies, so we don’t make them” is kind of like saying, “Look, we gave you your one chance at bat, you missed, so you blacks clearly aren’t meant to be baseball players.” Forgetting that even the most skilled baseball players are lucky to hit four out of ten.
I think the perception is that white people won’t watch black people, which is doubtlessly true for some white people. But on the other hand, it’s amazing what happens when a Will Smith or a Denzel Washington become a box-office star, because then somehow that white terror goes away. Or when Tyler Perry makes a film, which admittedly mostly appeals to black people, but then those films get insta-marginalized to the field of “Tyler Perry films,” which is Hollywood code for, “the man’s a freakish outlier, nobody else can do this.”
Look, Hollywood. You know what people want? Good goddamned films. The truth is, you don’t really know how to make them; as William Goldman once infamously said, “Nobody knows anything.” If creating a hit movie was as simple as putting the right elements together, every movie would be a hit. But some movies have an indefinable something that makes them great, and most do not. Why? Hell if I knew. If I did, I’d be churning out bestselling novels.
So take some chances, man. Make more action-adventure movies with all black casts. See what percentage of them catch fire. Because giving them one big shot every decade or so isn’t enough at-bats to see how someone’s truly hitting, man.
I Kind Of Feel Like I Should Say Hi
Depression is, sadly, eating my face. And depression’s boring to write about. I started to write an entry on how this time is worryingly different (arriving earlier than usual, possibly rooted in real-life needs), but then my brain went, Christ, is he writing about that shit again? and I wandered away, bored.
It doesn’t help that I’m working on a very different Novel of Doom, one that’s literally mostly character study, and it’s terrifying me. While it has a speculative element, which is the term we use in The Biz to say “Weird shit ahoy,” mostly it’s two teenagers talking to each other as one of them falls in co-dependent love with a vampire. Who they don’t know yet is a vampire. So I’m like, “Nothing’s blowing up, nothing is happening, this is boring, it must be boring,” and every time I write this novel – which I thought would be easy – I’m freaking out because we’re 15,000 words in and there hasn’t been one atomic explosion. And I’m convinced without all that frippery, it must be dross.
Which may or may not be true. Plenty of novels are written about ordinary people, and they work. But for me, this is a bare minimum – stripping away all my strengths of creative ideas to just work on two people having ordinary lives before the weird stuff hits. I’m not convinced I can do that. I’ve been mainlining Stephen King (oh, Christine, you’re the best book ever) to try to remind myself that you don’t need to start with a gun to the head, but this is tapdancing way outside my comfort zone.
So it’s a weird time. This journal may be all bees and comment-whores for a time. And yes, I know it’s my space, but I still feel guilty about being a bad host.
Sometimes, We All Fall Down
If your kid’s five years old and has never had a busted arm, or a cut head, or at least a couple of bruises, then your kid’s probably in trouble.
Now, I know that sounds horrible, as though I’m wishing broken arms upon toddlers. I’m not. But if a kid is exploring properly, she’s going to fall down occasionally – and fall down hard. The cuts are the sign of a kid pushing the envelope properly, finding the edges of their knowledge and skill by occasionally sailing right over them.
Learning is failing. A child who’s never had a bruise is a child who’s never taken a risk.
Likewise, I think relationships without bruises aren’t really good relationships. You don’t want a relationship that’s all bruises (just as you don’t want a child falling down the stairs every day), but a relationship that’s all happiness is one that’s often static.
I’ve known happy couples who’ve told me, “We’ve never had an argument!” And more often than not, those are the same couples who’ve split up after a decade because they quietly grew apart… or the couples who, as it turns out, didn’t have sex for three years because one partner didn’t want to and the other didn’t want to cause trouble.
A lot of the conflict-free relationships are inherently reductive – as in, “My going out on Friday nights with the girls bothers you? Well, I’ll stop doing that. Oh, and your playing World of Warcraft bothers me, so you should stop doing that.” And slowly but surely, in these well-meaning, reductive relationships, you quietly give up everything that would cause the other partner stress.
It’s meant to be kind. In a way, it is. But eventually, you’re both bumping up against each other in the Venn intersection of each other’s comfort zones, which is often a very tiny and bland place indeed.
No, for me, relationships involve bruises. You’re growing, taking risks, learning – and sometimes that’s going to inadvertently put an elbow in your lover’s eye. You apologize. You figure out what you could do better. And then sometimes you discover this new thing you enjoy doing is going to be a little ouchy until both of you adjust, and you acknowledge that “comfort” is something that’s often overrated, and when it’s done you’re both the stronger for it.
If it’s a growing relationship, there are going to be growing pains. It’s not always pleasant, but that’s often the way of ultimately good things.
Random Thoughts On A Random Day
I’m feeling random today, so have some random.
Today’s 4/20!
I’ve never really liked marijuana, and as such I can never really find a celebration of it all that entertaining.
I dunno. Maybe it works for other people, but every time I’ve smoked marijuana I have really stupid thoughts that never seem to produce anything interesting in the light of day, then I eat until I’m sick. Then the next day I feel tired and unmotivated. It’s better than cigarettes in that at least I feel a radical initial high (as opposed to just coughing a lot), but the fetishization of pot just always makes me wonder what I’m missing out on. So much of pot culture seems to idolize sitting around the house watching TV, and that’s mystifying.
I mean, hey, I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it. Pot should be legal, and I don’t have to get something to say, “Hey, you go ahead and have fun now.” But in this case the experience of what other people have with pot deviates so much from my own that it’s actively bizarre to me to see people excited to smoke pot, let alone posting excitedly on Twitter going, “It’s 4/20, man, I can’t wait!”
On The Nebulas
Jim Hines said today that everyone nominated for a major award has the “What if I win?!?!” freakout. I think it says something about me that I have not once ever thought that I’d win, something confirmed by Sauerkraut Station‘s lack of nomination for the Hugos.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled to have been nominated. It’s a major honor! But my brain immediately went, “That’s as far as you’re gonna get, you’re going up against Rachel Swirsky and Geoff Ryman and Charlie Jane Anders, and those three alone would bury you.” And I’ve gone on happily going, “I’m gonna attend the Nebulas! As a nominee!” and never once attached the word “winner” to my head.
The things my brain chooses not to freak out about are odd indeed.
On Levon Helm
I think everyone who is lamenting the loss of music great Levon Helm should read Bart Calendar’s essay on his death, and feel shamed.
The short version is that Levon, a rich and successful man, was bankrupted by fifteen years of cancer. And I think that’s the myth that conservatives are peddling to stupid people: that hey, if you’re smart and rich and have good health care, you’ll be okay.
Except, as anyone who’s ever actually fucking met someone who’s been through a large-scale disease knows, this is not actually true. You can do everything quote-unquote right and still get fucked by our system.
I’ve talked to idiots who’ve said, “Well, if I get sick and I’m getting substandard treatment, I’ll just switch to a better insurance company,” as if the term “pre-existing condition” didn’t fucking exist. I’ve talked to morons who’ve thought that if you had really good insurance, you’d be completely safe, and that the insurance would never run out or refuse a claim.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you don’t know how good your insurance actually is until you get direly ill. Every insurance company looks good on paper. But they can screw you bureaucratically in a thousand ways. And they’re incentivized to, since a for-profit organization loses money every time they pay for a sick person’s treatments.
And yes, I’m sure you’ve had your insurance claims go well for some major illnesses, conservatives. That’s fine. I’m glad yours went well. But you don’t get to use anecdotes about the horrific failures of the European system as evidence that socialized medicine is evil without acknowledging the fact that some pretty damn well-off people have to work through cancer in order to keep their family afloat. To acknowledge that the idea that “good insurance and wealth is a catch-all” is not a 100% shield against going bankrupt.
(G’wan. Talk to my wife, the bankruptcy lawyer, about this. She knows how many bankruptcies come from medical claims.)
In short, if you’re a fan of Levon Helm and against the socialized medicine and Obamacare, then take a look at the hell that you – yes, you – put him through and decide whether you’re really a fan. Or whether your policies were fair.
My Own Image Macro
So Bart Calendar posted this image macro an hour after I posted a Twitter status on this topic, so I felt it kismet to create my own:
Covered in Bees, 2012: Installing a New Hive
Last year, Gini and I had a very odd argument about which one of us was going to open up a box of 10,000 bees and dump them into a hive. This argument was made odder by the fact that both of us were arguing that we should be the one to do it.
I won the right to install the hive, and the rather quickly taken video can be found here. But this year, I got to be cameraman as Gini handled the bees, and so we have much more extensive videos. For example, if you want to see what a box of 10,000 bees looks like, here is Gini holding three pounds of live and flying bees in a wooden box, with my explanations about how the bees survive the trip and the mechanisms of what one has to do to open it.
Now. What was not captured on video was THE MOST TERRIFYING SOUND OF MY LIFE.
See, when you get a wooden box full of bees, you have to put it in your car to bring back with you. In our case, we wisely stored it very far away in the trunk. And I was getting some honey-bee-healthy out of the front seat when Gini opened the trunk and I heard “Oh shit!” followed by the sound of clattering wood.
When you know you have 10,000 bees contained in a small wooden box, this is a sound that encourages pants-filling.
Fortunately, it was just the new hive top falling out of the back, but for a moment all and sundry imagined how we would deal with an angry swarm of emerging from a broken bee-box. (Even if it probably wouldn’t have been overly bad – I mean, if you watch the third video you’ll see what happens when they’re dumped out, and it’s actually rather lackadaisical. Still, the business of scooping up a bunch of bees from our driveway using magazines would have been a hoot.)
Having survived that, I now explain how you prep the bees before opening them so they’re nice and mellow:
This next video is the money shot, as it’s a close-up look as Gini, yes, dumps a bunch of startled bees out of their box and into the hive. Unfortunately, this video’s about two minutes longer than I wanted, with lots of dead space, as Gini and I debated techniques for a bit (i.e., we bickered) about how to put the queen in and when to remove the can of syrup. Still, if you want to see a close-up of how you actually transfer bees into a new hive, this is your best bet from La Casa McJuddMetz.
For the record: Gini’s bee-tamping technique is inferior, but her bee-dumping style trumps mine. So in an ideal world, I’d thump the bees to the bottom of the box and then hand it to Gini for an efficient transfer.
Finally, the hive installed, I took a video of what it looks like when it’s done, explaining the various parts and functions of the hive. Gini got stung once when a bee crawled up her sleeve and got scared, but there’s also a rather vivid discussion of the dangers (or not) of being stung in beekeeping and bee docility.
Now we have to leave the bees to themselves for a week, and check in. We have not yet opened up the other hive yet because it’s been a series of crappy weather days, but we hope to do that soon – and yes, I’ll document.