Tag: queen cell

We do what we can with what we have.

The sky is filled with smoke. Sepia. Golden. Pink. Somewhere behind the haze is a view of San Francisco, which normally on clear days, you can see with great clarity–sometimes you can even see the grid pattern of the windows on the downtown office buildings.

But not this weekend.

This sky is also raining ash. Everything is covered in these fine flakes–the garden, the leaves on the trees, and cars.

The smoke is not from a happy cause. It comes from the fires in Yolo and Napa County, ushered here by a northerly wind. Somewhere in this dust are ancient trees and dead deer and squirrels and burnt cars and dreams.

The sky reminds me of my own trauma, my LA childhood in the early 1980s. LA air quality has much improved since then–I visited recently and was amazed at the clear skies. But the sky of my LA childhood was a dirty pink, a peach-brown, like the healing welt of a second degree burn. I grew up with smog alerts–and despite them, we played outside. By the end of the day, our lungs hurt with each sharp inhale.

My lungs hurt when I think of LA and my childhood. I can’t help but think the pain had everything to do with Los Angeles, because I have no painful memories in New York City–and the actors in my life never changed. It was always me, my mom, my dad, my brother, and I.

My friend moved to LA. It brings her energy and hope. She loves it there. I am supportive of this change–and of her happiness in Los Angeles, even though LA does not bring me the same. One person’s jail is another’s freedom.

We do what we can to survive. We will run away. We will find sanctuary. We will be frantic with pain trying to find safety. We will be restless. We will finally find shelter. Or maybe not.


Speaking of smoke: beekeepers use smoke on bee hives when inspecting. The smoke masks alarm pheromones that would otherwise cause bees to become defensive and…sting the intruder.

I try not to use smoke if I can, especially on my less aggressive hives like East Egg. It freaks the bees out a bit. I rarely use smoke on East Egg.

East Egg was my first hive. Its queen was my beloved queen. She kept her mites down near zero all year last year. She was huge and amber.

A few weeks ago, East Egg’s queen was injured.

So I had to replace her. Which I did. Which is another story.

But because she was not healthy and because she was not laying, and because every time the hive, suspecting her injured state, would build a queen cell with the intention of superseding her, and because she kept ripping the cells down and killing whatever queen potential lay inside, the hive went awhile without brood (aka “bee babies”).

The population dwindled. I am waiting for it to replenish with this new queen, which I placed in the hive about a week ago. You can see that tiny plastic cage. She is inside it, waiting for the bees to get used to her before she is released safely.

East Egg is dwindling. Almost ailing, save for the fact that a new queen is in place.

It is tiny. And it makes me worry. It has so many resources half-finished–honey frames yet to be capped, for instance. There are not enough bees to finish that task. The bees are doing what they can to survive.

I move things around between the two of my hives here in Berkeley. One is a resource for the other. Tangerine Hive gets the uncapped honey frames. There are many bees in Tangerine and they will get the job done.

If the queen of East Egg does not thrive, then I will put a frame of eggs from Tangerine into East Egg, and the worker bees there will convert one of the eggs into a queen.

We do what we can with what we have.

 

 

Bees Please

I have always wanted bees. To become a beekeeper.

But there is a difference between intentionality and becoming the thing you want to become.

Pascal introduced framework in the study of decision-making, coming up with the theory of expected value: When faced with a choice between uncertain alternatives, you should determine the positive or negative values of every possible outcome, along with each outcome’s probability, and then make your choice. Or in short–figure out best case scenario and worst case scenario, and see with which you’d rather live.

Another theory is loss aversion, or the discovery that winning $100 is only about half as appealing as losing $100 is unappealing. (The reason I don’t gamble). This theory illustrates that the relationship between value and losses/gains aren’t always equal; losses are a bigger deterrent than gains. 

I’d wanted bees for years–I can’t even count how many. Only that in 3rd grade, we were each assigned to pick a creature and do a report on that animal or insect. I chose honeybees. And the more I learned, the more interested I became in these diligent creatures. I wanted to learn more. I wanted to watch them work. I wanted to smell the honey and wax firsthand.

My desire to become a beekeeper has been a low level but steady desire, like french fries–I can live without them, but I’ll also never turn a french fry down.

But I didn’t get bees. I was married to a husband who was averse to bees and beekeeping. He had bee venom allergies. And he wanted nothing to do with any sort of farming or husbandry. The risk of putting strain on our marriage and relationship outweighed any unknown, positive outcome from beekeeping. Basically, I wanted to stay married. I made many decisions based on not wanting to lose something. Not wanting to lose my marriage.

And so I refrained. The loss deterred any unknown gains. The worst case scenario outweighed the best case scenario.

It didn’t matter. The worst case scenario still came to fruition. I lost anyway.

When he left the marriage, a tipping point emerged for so many decision points in my life. No longer did I have to consider his aversions. I wanted to turn every single failure and setback into an opportunity and this was one way to turn a failed marriage into opportunity. And furthermore, I wanted to create more space for myself in creating a new life as a single woman and single mother. I wanted matriarchy to combat the shit that would be coming down the pipe. It was time. I was ready. I wanted bees. I didn’t even want the honey so much as a living colony whose behavior I could observe and nurture. I wanted an example of an effective matriarchy.

Continue reading

© 2024 Christine H. Lee

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑