Post # 54 Compliments Can Become Burdens

Be wary of compliments.  Compliments are fun to receive.  They feel good at the time, but sometimes, they can be life changing.  Sometimes a compliment can be placed on you that changes the way you think about yourself, and the way you behave.  I received such a compliment in the summer of 1998.  It is a burden and an honor that haunts me to this day.

I graduated with my doctorate in 1996 and passed my state board exam in 1997.  I had been working for Boss for ten years, and was at that stage where conflict between the two of us was growing.

My degree empowered me to think about an independent future.  It was a little like going through adolescence all over.  I was full of knowledge, and it seemed like the more I knew, the less Boss knew.  He noticed, and talked to me about this.  Of course, I realized that he was right, and attempted to adjust my attitude.

Still, I wanted to leave, but knew I couldn’t because I needed Boss to supervise me for a year to become fully licensed.

Feeling trapped in a job is the quickest way to grow resentment toward that job.  I now felt trapped, and was becoming unhappy. 

With school debt added to the normal every day bills to pay, I continued to work for Boss while swallowing the desire to be somewhere else.

Then Providence stepped in.  Providence came in the form of an older, respected psychologist from a nearby town.  She invited me to start a new practice in her small non-profit center.

Providence was a strong proponent of a new treatment for mental health, especially for Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder, called Neurofeedback.  She and I had both spent time going to workshops and trainings across the country.  I had studied Neurofeedback and had written my dissertation on its use.  Providence wanted to offer this newly emerging form of treatment to her community and hoped I would come to work for her.  Providence was licensed and she was prepared to do the one-year supervision I needed.

My heart leapt for joy, but I needed to think about it.  Starting a practice is hard.  It takes a while for money to start coming in.  A contract from somewhere might make a difference. 

I contacted the school district where I was about to start my practice.  Practice Town School was interested, and understood that I could start in two weeks.

With support from Wife, I (actually, WE), took a huge leap of faith.  Despite young children, car payments, a house payment, and despite a student loan that probably wouldn’t get paid until I was 75, I agreed to work with Providence.

I was nervous as I walked into Boss’s office the next day and gave him my two weeks’ notice.

Boss gave me two hours to move out of my office.

My anxiety morphed into anger.   

My friends from the office were saying sad goodbyes as I packed my things.  In the middle of all of this commiseration, I was told I had a phone call. 

Practice Town school didn’t want to wait for two weeks.  They wanted me tomorrow!

My anger evaporated.  I was smiling while my friends continued their angry glares toward Boss’s office.

 

***

 

My practice took off.  It grew, and I eventually had a practice that was larger than I had ever thought I wanted.

The summer after I started working at the nonprofit center, I thanked Providence for helping me to get launched in my own practice.  Then I asked her “Why did you ask me to come to Practice Town?  There were others who could have done this for you.”

Her response surprised me.

“Because you have integrity.”

I was stunned.  I’d never thought about myself in this manner before. 

“You have integrity.” 

That is both a compliment that I value, and a goal that I now feel obligated to live up to.

“Integrity.”

This revered old psychologist knighted me with this label one hot summer day in the cramped quarters of my office in an old house that was serving as offices for a nonprofit counseling center.  It was the humblest of settings, yet I will always remember her words. 

Those words guided me as I built my practice.  They were with me as I greeted each new client, and every time I went before a judge to testify.  I will always remember that summer. 

I will always strive to live up to Providence’s expectation.

This compliment could have become a burden.  In truth, it is an honor that I hope I always remember.

Post #53 The Importance of a Balance in Nature

Wife and I were encouraged to move into Wife’s parents’ home after they died.  Initially, we didn’t think we wanted do this.  But the idea grew on us.  The house was built sometime around 1920.  Wife had moved into the home when she was around age seven.  The house had a lot of character, and it had a lot of room.

Once we moved in, we realized the house needed some updating.  The electrical wiring was ancient, it had settled quite a bit, and some of the fixtures needed to be replaced.

One of the first things to go was the old bathtub.  We decided to replace the tub with a marble tub with jets for Wife’s back.  The plumbers came out and removed the old tub for us.  Under the tub we found a lot of plastic grocery bags and a “Jesus Loves You” banner. 

Rats!  “But at least they were Christian rats” I tried to explain to Wife as she threatened to burn down the house.  I stopped up all of the holes with wire and steel wool.  The new tub was put in place the next day, and all was fine.

The house sat on pier and beam.  It was three to four feet above the ground, depending on which side of the house you were on.  This made for a nice nest for a variety of animals.  With dogs, you can’t really allow possums and raccoons to just live under your house.  Besides the risk of eating the wiring, they infest the yard with fleas, and will fight back if challenged by a dog.

So, I bought a live trap and began catching the possums and the coons.

I caught at least one possum or raccoon every evening.  Sometimes, I’d get a “two-fer” and find a pair of small possums in the trap.  I put the trap in the bed of my pickup, drove a few miles out of town, and released the animals.

Finally, the numbers started to dwindle.

My neighbor began to complain about the cat population.  The cats were monitoring his wife’s bird bath and eating the birds.  He asked if he could borrow the trap.

For the next few months, he trapped cats.

A short time later, we began hearing noises in our attic and between the walls.  Wife’s parents had carpeted the old house, and we knew the house had wood floors.  So we pulled up the carpeting in preparation for getting the wood floors finished.  The molding between the wall and the carpeting was now hanging about a half inch over the floor, while we waited on the workers to come in and sand and finish the bedroom floor.  That night, we could hear noises in the walls in our bedroom. 

Henry and PD could hear and smell something, too.  They began barking at the wall.

I got my flashlight, lay down on the floor and shined the light.  Little eyes were shining back at me.  The rats had returned.  I was able to pitch some rat poison through the gap between the wall and the floor, and then removed and replaced the floor molding.

For the attic, I bought a Rat Zapper.  The Rat Zapper was a cool trap that electrocuted the rats when they went in for food.  We killed several.

I finally “got it.” 

We needed the possums and coons to keep the cat population in check.  We needed the cats to keep the rat population in check.  Once I quit trapping animals, we were able to return to a natural balance.  The rats were gone.  There was an occasional possum killed in the back yard by the dogs, but for the most part, the possums left us alone.

Well, then there were the occasional skunks.  I had no mercy for the skunks, and they had no mercy for us.  You can read about poor Henry and his skunky encounters in a previous post (#27, I believe).

But, for the most part, I developed a “leave ‘em alone” attitude unless they became a nuisance.  It wasn’t as much fun.  But at least we had no rats. 

Not even Christian Rats.

Post #52 Bee Having

A Beekeeper is someone who “keeps” bees.  Today, that means that the beekeeper cares for his or her bees, and provides for the bees those things that help a beehive stay healthy.

When I had bees in the 1980’s, I was what is now considered to be a “bee haver” rather than a beekeeper.  I went out to visit the hives every once in a while.  I was aware of the diseases that bees were prone to back then, but did nothing to watch for the disease or treat it. 

Back then, the major concerns were American Foulbrood (AFB), European Foulbrood (EFB), and Wax Moths.  AFB was the most deadly.  If a hive was found with this dreaded disease, it needed to be destroyed and the woodenware burned.  EFB could be deadly, but burning the boxes and frames wasn’t necessary.  Wax Moths were messy, and difficult to come back from.

I usually harvested honey from the bees whenever we began to run low on honey.  I would pull a couple of frames from the honey super and stick them in my solar wax melter.  I made sure my bees had empty frames with wax foundation to work on.  But mostly, they were a novelty, and very easy to have.

The whole family became involved in the bees.  I was even able to get Wife suited up and sent out to do a hive inspection.

 

The last time I went out to check on the hives I was surprised to find a huge mess inside the hive.  Ants had made their way in.  And so had the wax moths.  There was webbing all over the hive.  Small grubs, baby moths, were crawling in and out of the comb, and the wood had long grooves eaten out of it by the hungry moth larvae. 

My bees had left, and in their place was this mess. 

This was 1991 or 1992.  By now, the Africanized Honey Bee (AHB) had made its way up from Hidalgo, Texas and was present in my county in South Texas!  There was a lot of fear associated with AHB, and counties were being placed in quarantine as the AHBs infiltrated.  I probably could have imported a new hive from Weaver Apiaries, but the novelty of having bees had worn off.  The mess made by the ants and the wax moths seemed really big.  And finally, my life had become really busy. 

By now, I was working in a new job and I was back in school.  So, I walked away from the bees, and left them alone for 25 years.                

Post #51 Harvesting Honey

I don’t really remember which books or other resources I used to help me with my bee keeping in the 1980’s.  But I do recall giving some thought as to how I was going to harvest the honey the bees made.

Harvesting honey can be a messy job.  You pull a frame of comb out of the hive, and it can be filled with baby bees (brood), or it can be filled with honey.  If it is a brood comb, you leave it in the hive so the brood will develop fully and keep your hive going.  If it is filled with honey, and the honey has been capped, then you can either leave it for the bees, or you can steal it from the bees for yourself.

Once you steal the honeycomb, you have to figure out a way to get the honey out of the comb.  The ideal way to get your honey out of the comb is to use a honey extractor.  This involves using a special knife to cut off the caps, thus opening the comb.  You’ll need some kind of a tub to catch the caps you cut off and to collect the bit of honey that comes out with the wax caps.

You place the opened frame inside the extractor.  The extractor is usually a large bucket with a basket to hold the frame.  The basket is situated such that it has a central axis, around which the frames can be spun.  There may be room for two frames, four, six, and so on.  The idea is that the basket needs to be balanced, so that it doesn’t go crashing into the side of the bucket when spun.  Once you place your open frames in the extractor, you spin the basket, and the honey is pulled out of the comb by centrifugal force.

The bucket should have a spigot at the bottom so you can pour the honey out easily.  There will be a lot of debris mixed in with the honey, so you can’t just pour the honey directly into a bottle.  Instead, you pour the honey through one or two filters into another bucket.  Allow the air bubbles to rise to the top, and then pour your honey into bottles.

After all of this, you can put your “wet” comb back into the hive for reuse by your bees.  But you still have some wax that needs to be taken care of.  You have the cappings as well as any other comb that may have broken off during the extraction process. 

More equipment is needed for the wax.  A double boiler should help melt the wax without burning it, and more filters to get the debris out of the melted wax when you pour it into whatever containers you have at hand.

Whew!  That was a lot of equipment to buy.  I didn’t have the kind of free cash to make those purchases, nor did I have a place to store all of that equipment.  And, it all sounded like a lot of work to me. 

Aren’t bees supposed to be fun?

I came across something called a Solar Wax Melter in my readings.  Somewhere in there, my head re-imagined this term as Solar Wax Extractor.  I found a simple, inexpensive solution to honey harvesting.

A solar wax extractor was something I could build.  It was basically a box with a plexiglass lid!  I followed somebody’s plans and used plywood that was probably left over from some other project.  The box had legs on one end, to give it a slant.  I painted the box white on the inside, black on the outside to maximize the sun’s ability to heat my wax.

What I lacked was a tray to put the frames on, and another tray to catch the melted wax and honey.

I used my connection through my father-in-law to get the sheet metal trays built.  I just had to hope the friend who constructed these understood that a lead solder shouldn’t be used.  I never asked.

Now, I just needed a good filter to keep all of the debris from spoiling my honey.

Speaking of my honey, she was teaching at the local high school at the time.  This was back in the 80’s and 90’s, and teachers were expected to wear dresses and … pantyhose!

I found my filters!

I’d wait for Wife to get a run in a pair of hose (I didn’t cause any to happen, honest), and then claim the hose as mine. 

Yes, the hose were always laundered before use.

I could stick one frame of honeycomb in each leg, then set both frames in my Solar Wax Melter (“Extractor” in my mind).  Within a couple of hours, the wax had melted and drained into the receiving tray.  I’d lift out the tray of honey with fresh yellow wax on top. 

The empty frames would be returned to the bees so they could produce more comb and honey.

The hose made their way to the trash.

The honey made its way into bottles.

The wax made its way into some other container.  I never really did figure out what to do with the wax.

It was 25 years before I learned that this wasn’t the proper way to harvest honey.  We had turned raw honey into cooked honey.

I can say that the honey was still sweet and good.

Post #50 Installation of Royalty

The new queen had arrived, and I was anxious to get her installed before the bees flew away.  I put on my coveralls and boots, grabbed my bee gloves, veil, hive tool and smoker.  I drove the new queen out to meet her subjects.

From what I’d read, I had to kill the old queen first, or the new queen would be killed by the old queen.  I had seen black and white photos and drawings of queen bees, but the queen in the cage was the first live queen I had ever seen.  I didn’t really know the difference between the queen and worker bees, other than that the queen was larger than workers.  I also knew that drones were larger than workers, but not as large as a queen.

I lit my smoker, put on the veil and gloves, gathered all of my bee equipment, and carried the new queen out to middle of the field where the hive was.  I gently set the queen on a rock near the hive under the shade of a tree.  I took a good look at her.  She was cool, she was comfortable, her attendant was there to watch over her.

Then I turned my attention to the hive and the bees.  I smoked the bees, removed the cover and began the hunt for the old queen.  I still did not know much about bees or bee behavior.  I wasn’t sure if I had the old queen or not.  So, I pretty much went through the hive indiscriminately killing big bees.  I looked at each frame carefully.  If the bee was unfortunate enough to be overweight, it got squished.  If it was bigger than its neighbors, it was a dead bee.  I killed bee after bee.  Finally, I was satisfied that I had done all I could do to ensure a peaceable transfer of power from the old queen to the new. 

Peaceable?  After that slaughter of bees?  Well at least I had given the new queen every chance to take control of the hive.  The old queen must surely be dead.  I replaced all of the frames and got the hive back in order.

Then, I turned to the rock to pick up the new queen.  The new monarch and mother of the hive who would rule over the hive with a kind and gentle hand.  The queen who would labor day after day laying eggs and producing generation after generation of bees for the next two to three years.

New Queens have to be installed slowly.  They have to be introduced to the hive properly, or the bees will just see her as an intruder and kill her.

In order to help with the transition, the queen cage has a screen on the side, with the exit on the end.  The exit is blocked by a piece of candy.  It usually takes a day or two for the bees to eat through the candy and release the queen.  By that time, they are familiar with her smell.  They will bring her water and try to groom her through the cage.  They get to know her and accept her.  Maybe they take this time to swap stories and compare relatives (“You’re from Navasota?  I have relatives from there.  Do you know the Buckfast Family?  You are?  We’ll we’re practically cousins!”).

Everyone becomes comfortable with everyone else during the time of the great candy eating.  And what better way to break the ice than over a meal of sugar?  The queen can be released once the candy is gone, and she can get to work immediately. 

So, I’ve put the hive back together, and I turn to the rock, reaching down to pick up the queen. 

And … she’s covered with ants!

The ants were attracted to the candy and decided the queen and her worker would also make for a nutritious meal.

What I knew about hives at this time (which wasn’t enough) was that bees will leave a hive when there isn’t a queen in the hive.  I was desperate.  I had just murdered everyone in the hive that looked slightly queenish, and the queen I had intended to take over the hive had just been devoured by a tribe of wild ants!  Without a queen, I would surely lose all of my bees.

I quickly pulled out my cell phone to call Weaver …

Oh, wait.  We didn’t have a cell phone back then.

O.K.  I put the hive back together, gathered my beekeeping tools and walked back to my truck.  I drove home, cranked up the computer, went online …

Oh yea, no internet, either.

I drove home, picked up the phone and dialed (yes, a rotary dial) Weaver Apiaries.

After they stopped laughing, the Weavers promised to mail me another queen.

The second time, I was able to keep the queen safe.  And I didn’t slaughter as many innocent drones.

I still don’t know if the queen in that hive was my Weaver Buckfast queen or not.  I just know that we had bees.

Maybe now I was really a beekeeper.

Post # 49 Requeening

I carried the bees out to their new home well behind Sister-In-Law’s house.  Now, I needed to worry about the queen.  First, I wasn’t sure if I had captured her.  Second, I was pretty sure the bees would just fly away if they didn’t have a queen.

I had gone to the library (remember them?) and started reading about bees while waiting for my kit to arrive.

I learned that I should get a new queen after capturing a feral hive to make sure I had bees that behaved well.  I should decide if I wanted gentle bees (Yes!), bees that produced a lot of honey (Yes!), or bees that did both (Yes and yes!).

My Sears and Roebuck Beginning Beekeeper’s kit had come with a book on beekeeping and it had also come with a list of places where you could buy bees.  Buy bees?  How amazing that you could buy a bee!  It turns out that one of the places that sold bees and also sold queens was in Texas.

Weaver Apiaries was in Navasota and would be willing to sell me a new queen.  I called Weaver and visited with them.  According to Weaver’s the queen I wanted was the Buckfast Queen.  She was gentle, she produced gentle bees that don’t get riled up easily, and her offspring would produce lots of honey.

I was sold.  I gave them my credit card number over the phone and they said they would mail my queen to me right away.

She arrived in about two days.  The Post Office called the house early that morning and told me I had a bee waiting, would I please come and pick it up?

Wife went to the Post Office, and was let in the back door before they were open for regular business.  They handed her a large burlap sack.  The kind of sack that people use to run races in at parties.  The 50-pound potato sack variety.

And in the sack was a little wooden box.  The box was maybe 2” X 1”.  The queen and a worker bee were caged inside the box.

Wife brought the queen home.  I was excited.  I took part of the day off from work so I could install the new queen.

Post #48 Why Bees?

I’ve decided it is time to revisit my blog.  I know, the blog says “30 Years of Dog” but it has now been more than thirty years since my first dog.  And I have to admit, there is more to life than dogs.  So, with that in mind, I think I’ll broaden the scope of my blog.

For now, I’d like to talk a bit about Bees.

Sometime in the mid to late 1980’s my sister-in-law’s house was invaded by bees.  They didn’t realize they had a colony of bees until the bees started visiting with them while they were in the bathroom.  Sister-In-Law told Wife and I about the bees.  “Bees!” I thought, as she continued to tell wife about the pests.  “My grandfather used to keep bees on his farm.  Maybe beekeeping runs in the blood.”

I rejoined the conversation and proposed that we catch and keep the bees for the honey.  Sister-In-Law agreed.  The bees would live on their five acres of property and I would take care of the bees and harvest the honey.

A new beekeeper was born! 

If you remember the 1980’s, then you remember that the internet was not yet available to the general public and that cell phones were rare and expensive.  You may also remember that Sears and Roebuck was king of the department stores.  They sold everything.  All you needed was access to the proper catalog.  I went over to our little Sears Catalog store and picked up a copy of the Farm and Ranch Catalog. 

Inside these wonderful pages I found what I needed: A beginning beekeepers kit!  The kit came with a veil, gloves, smoker, hive tool, brood box, 10 frames that fit in the brood box 10 sheets of wax foundation that fit in the frames, a bottom board, an inner cover, and a telescoping outer cover.

The hive arrived a couple of days later.  I put the hive together, painted it white and made a date to get the bees out of the house.  Brother-in-law, sister-in-law and I gathered at the colony’s old home.  All this took place before the Africanized Honey Bee had crossed the Rio Grande River.  So we knew the bees would be relatively tame, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t sting us if they got the chance.  So we were very careful. I lit my smoker and sent smoke into the colony.  The smoke is supposed to make the little girls scared and start filling up on honey, in case there is a fire and they have to leave in a hurry.  Of course, drinking all that honey gives them a full tummy, and makes them happy and gentle.

We opened the soffit of the house and pulled the bee comb and all the bees out of the house.  Well, maybe we pulled most of the bees out.  It seems I had to just hope that the Queen was in the box with the rest of her bees.

In any event, I was now a Beekkeeper!

Why bees?  Because it is in the blood!  Thanks grandpa Hamilton.