jdmidwest

We have a local club that meets once a month. It is headed by the Beekeeper of the Year in MO, Grant Gillard. Great guy, pastor of the church we hold meetings in. It is a very informal club, but has a great bunch of people. Great place to bounce ideas around and keep up with what is going on. I have a mentor, an 88 year old fellow that has been keeping bees for about 50 years, he is alot of help. And I remembered the basics from my grandfather when he used to keep bees. I have just been going for about a year now this month. I just doubled my hive count this month and am actually ahead of what I planned to be at now. Weather keeps up I may make another split or two for a couple of more. I will start moving them out to the country later this summer and start scattering them around on some of the family farms. I have access to over a thousand acres on just the immediate family farms, so I have plenty of room to grow. Many of them are begging me to bring the hives over so they can watch them. It is just a hobby for now, still trying to decide to go sideline or full blown in the business. I have never met a rich beekeeper or one that did not have another source of income for support. But it is good, fun, honest work that gives you alot of reward.

I am suffering from the cost of doing this new little hobby of mine. I went thru the hives on Sat. and did alot of work on them without a sting. There were 2 bees that were really mad and chased me around the yard with my suit on, dive bombing my face mask. I did the usual, walked away from the hives a good distance to where they normally lose interest in me. Those 2 suckers kept at and one got the clapping hands and a good stomping. The other gave up. Sunday around noon, I walked down and checked in on the girls. All of a sudden, there was this buzzing in my ear. Then it bounced off my hair, which usually ends in entanglement and a sting, but I dodged it. I went running back up the hill with that buzzing noise still loud in my ears waving my cap at it. Around the pine trees and what should have been safety, then it hit me. Fire shot into my finger. I looked and pulled out the poison sac, then the barbed stinger. He still made a few more whacks on me but he was disarmed. The finger started swelling and I applied the sting relief. By the afternoon, the whole finger was swelled tight and throbbing past the knuckles into my hand. Here is what I have today, looks like a huge blood blister. It itches like the dickens and I still can't bend the finger.

I spoke with a couple of the employees and was wondering why they were not carrying certain items. Both stated that they did not receive as much stock as they had ordered because they were not expecting the store to perform like it did. They did a pretty soft start with only some TV and a mailer with a $10 off any apparel or shoe purchase. The parking lot was packed every time I was there. Grand opening is slated for the weekend of July 15. I had never been in one, but had always heard good things. When I checked the website, they are offering free shipping on all orders over $39 too. That shipping kills me on ordering alot of stuff, that alone is a big plus. They were out of some of the things I was looking for. They had 22lr, but it was limit of one box. About everyone was getting the one box, which on Sat. was a 50rd box. Bricks were gone on Fri. That is some of the first 22lr in the area since Nov. that is normal price unless you can catch it at Wally World when a truck delivers.

Look around your area, there should be a local guy near you. Check out farmers market next month as keepers will be bottling soon.

Yes, it is in Cape Girardeau by Sams and Kohls.

Academy Sports opened on Fri. locally here. First trip in was to buy a Heritage 10' sit on top and a Malone Yak Stacker 2. They are not stocked up fully yet, so I walked away with the Yak Stacker and some lures. Went to town last night for supper and decided on treating myself to a 50 year Bday present and walked out with a Lowrance Max 4 fishfinder and gps. I came home to install and realized that I did not get the one I wanted. Went back today and exchanged it for the one I was looking at, Max 4 DSI that went on sale for $30 less last night. Picked up an Ezset 10x10 canopy for about $44 while I was at it. This area has sucked for sporting goods. We have nice gun shops. We have a great fishing store that stocks what you need or can order BPS stuff. But,. for the niche, Academy seems to fill the bill. I wonder what the rest of the store has to offer. I have only seen a portion of it.

Academy Sports opened on Fri. locally here. First trip in was to buy a Heritage 10' sit on top and a Malone Yak Stacker 2. They are not stocked up fully yet, so I walked away with the Yak Stacker and some lures. Went to town last night for supper and decided on treating myself to a 50 year Bday present and walked out with a Lowrance Max 4 fishfinder and gps. I came home to install and realized that I did not get the one I wanted. Went back today and exchanged it for the one I was looking at, Max 4 DSI that went on sale for $30 less last night. Picked up an Ezset 10x10 canopy for about $44 while I was at it. This area has sucked for sporting goods. We have nice gun shops. We have a great fishing store that stocks what you need or can order BPS stuff. But,. for the niche, Academy seems to fill the bill. I wonder what the rest of the store has to offer. I have only seen a portion of it.

Last night we were watching a preview for a new show on Nick. White family moves into a house that it haunted by 3 ghosts. I said "look, 3 spooks" and was tongue lashed because they were 3 black persons portraying ghosts. And one of them seems to be a cross dresser and the homophobe came out in the conversation too.

Honey will be sold here locally when I get it. Trust me, you tell someone you have bees, the honey is the first thing they ask for. Honey production is alot of work. You pull the supers at the right time when they cap them. Then you have a short time to uncap it, spin it out of the comb, filter and bottle it, label it, then sell it. I am honestly looking at the other side of the business, production of bees. There is a good market for bees, queens, and other starter stuff. Bees are catching on and many new persons are getting info it.

One week later after splitting the hives, the queens have settled in and the new hives are doing well. The parent hives are no worse for the loss of bees either, the queens are busy making the replacements. Plenty of rain this summer, things are green and blooming. Bees should have a banner season this year unless it turns dry later.

I have only puttered in my new to me Tracker Pro 17 with a 35hp. I have not gotten to run it full throttle since the test drive at a private resort. All of the lakes I have had it in are 10 hp limits. Puttering the boat seems to load up the carb somewhat and may foul some. The 10 hp limit has always puzzled me, a boat running on plane does not create much wake. But a big boat puttering makes some waves. And a 9.9 on any boat running full throttle will put out more waves than a boat on full plane because a 9.9 will never really trim out. I know most lakes that have the limits are small ones that would be pretty dangerous running on plane if you did not know where the stumps lie. Some areas do it because the waves create erosion on levees or banks.

This little hobby may amount to an income in a few years. Honey sales. Queen bee production. Nuc sales. Looking to a retirement project.

Picked my first cucumbers today. One mountain fresh table tomato and several grape tomatoes. Corn is about waist high. Squash is starting to bloom. Plenty of moisture this year. Looking at a cool spell this weekend. Okra is foundering like last year. Beans are not doing much, growing slow. At least the rabbits are leaving them alone. They keep the lettuce bed mowed down short. It is in another part of the yard next to the house. I used to have fun with the ground hogs. They don't call them whistle pigs for nothing. Catch them out in a row, whistle and they stand up real pretty for a head shot.

This heat has the girls out on the front porch for some air the last few days. It is called bearding, a big wad of bees outside the hive. Normally they are inside maintaining the temps of the brood, fanning the honey to dry it out, or other duties. With the heat, they come out for some air as they are not needed for those duties. New queens are released and the new hives are coming along. 2 are strong, 2 may need some reinforcement this weekend. I will probably move a few more frames of brood into them to build their numbers.

Turning a motor on and off will surely create more noise, the jerky motion always pops the mounting of the motor. But I seldom troll with a trolling motor, I use it to get where I am going or position a boat for the drift. Then I use a wind or current to move the boat silently into fishing waters.

Pawn Shop? Looks like he lost his train of thought. Or thought this was craigslist.

I get to see them on Friday, one opens up here locally in Cape Girardeau. Never been to one, but have heard some good things. I would rather have a Gander, BPS, or Cabela's that close.

The mean breed of queens are still in the 2 original hives from this spring, somewhere. I hope I did not get one in the nucs as they will sting the store bought queen thru the cage and kill her. I actually worked them for the first time yesterday without a sting. Maybe I am getting better at handling them. No honey this year, I am making bees instead. I did have about 6 deep frames of honey drawn out and filled on the one hive. I dispersed it amongst the 4 new nucs to feed them. I have $360 in bees alone this year between the 2 nucs I bought back in the spring and the 4 queens I bought this week. I should have done the splitting back in early May, but I decided to try for a little honey. The original queens in the 2 new hives swarmed and took off with about half of the work force in each hive. Now they are built back up, I decided to split into more hives and forego a honey harvest this year. With 7 solid hives going into next spring, there should be some honey next year. I don't really have the time or facilities to mess with honey production now. I still have to build the honey house to store the extractor and equipment to bottle it. I still like to do a little fishing from time to time and the bees tend to cut into it. I have been outside all morning making some new hive equipment. Mother Nature dumped a flood on us yesterday and fishing waters were blown out.

Wouldn't that make you a coon a s? How did that term come about anyway?

Sweet ride.

That went about like I planned. I could not find the queens in the two hives. I split one hive into 3, and the other into 2 and used my 4 queens on the new splits. I now have 7 hives and plenty of bees and equipment to spare. Nothing like roasting in the heat of the day working a bunch of bees. At times they were attacking the veil to where it sounded like hail bouncing off of me. I tried nitrile gloves today and did not get stung once. It took about 2 hours to complete my job but my armor worked today.

Like all of the current Admin stances, I tend to be against all of the. They tend to be what is worst for the country in general.

And 2 spare speed loaders to boot. That man was prepared for anything. Never met him, but looks like a great guy. You have to admire the wheel gunners, they are a dying breed. I switched from speed loaders to loader strips a few years back, they are easier to carry concealed. But they are not as fast to reload.

I tend to glean my news from several RSS feeds from Reuters, Yahoo, Stltoday, and the local newspaper. The local TV is worthless. My weather comes from NWS.gov and Intellicast. We had a little conversation the other day coming back from the 11 Pt regarding the local TV. They will break in and state "Car wreck on Hwy 60, 2 killed. Details at 10." Now anyone that has anyone traveling on Hwy 60 gets worried that someone they know may have been killed and they have to wait till they break it at 10. Or they show up on the scene of something and start spouting off the report, but they don't have any details. I quit watching the news on a local station about 15 years ago. We were sitting at a little bar enjoying our late night meal watching the tube. There were several major international events taking place that really had an effect on the whole world and the lead story was about a kid that was too fat to make it too school all of the time. He had missed too many days that semester because he spent too much time shoving breakfast down his fat little face and the school decided he could not graduate because of his tardiness. It was a 10 minute tragedy that spilled out on the local station while the whole real world stories only got a blurb. May make a good Facebook story, but it was not newsworthy of a major media station.

Toss some vinegar on it, it cools and tans the burn. Unfortunately, I have had to use it from time to time on a burn. You smell like an ole douche, but it really helps and is something most people keep around the house.