March 7, 2017 5°C Photo: Marco Moretti
“The flower doesn’t dream of the bee. It blossoms and the bee comes.”
– Mark Nepo
Last night I had another bee dream. This may be a reflection of hunger for my bees, for the smell and sound of the beeyard. Or maybe, as I secretly believe, they’re calling to me. In any event, I woke up longing for spring and a strong desire to ‘nest’, which for me means couch-time with beekeeping catalogues. Like gardeners who obsess over seeds and garden accouterments, beekeepers, too, can drop headfirst into beekeeping supplies. No matter to spend a half a day reviewing new items, and buying things I don’t really need. But I might! My honey house currently is storing a hive-sized net whose purpose I no longer remember, a pollen trap I’ve never used, an instrument for cleaning queen excluders (which I should use), an 8-frame spacer I used once, a nuc divider which turned out to be only good for deeps (I use mediums), and sheets of drone foundation I would never use. But a person can always use new gloves or a shiny hive tool and maybe some new, previously unthought-of gadget, can’t she?
In any event, today I spent the morning thumbing (e-wise) through a site I found here in Ontario, Bee Works https://www.beeworks.com where I found an assortment of things to entertain me. They have some nice manipulation cloths for calming hives, which I thought I would try again. I bought one from Brushy Mountain years ago that was so cumbersome I threw it out. But these look handy and are reasonably priced. I also got a few Porter bee escapes. I’ve heard mixed reviews about their effectiveness, so they may join the ranks of Things That Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time. I rely on escape boards in honey harvesting, though, which are expensive, so if these work at $1.90 I’d be a happy camper. I also bought some nice gloves that came in sizes 6 and 7, a good size for my hands and the young people who beekeep with me from time to time.
And then the Uline catalogue arrived in the mail. Don’t get me started... Oooh, traffic cones!
Snacks are very important to the process of buying things you don’t need. We got a new espresso maker at home, so there you go: I’ll blame my purchases on too many lattes. And of course, chocolate covered biscuits because there’s science now that says chocolate and caffeine are good for “attention, motivation to perform cognitive work and feelings of anxiety, energy and fatigue.” Works for me.