Queen Bee, Mama Bee, and the ‘Imadumee’

Quickly this morning…more great news on the home front. As you all know, Deb’s bone test came back 100% clean. Deb had to put off her test to check the rest of her body, as her EKG wasn’t quite right. Anyway, she was scheduled for a stress test, and we had the results read to us yesterday…SHE ACED IT! YES!

We now go Monday morning to have the test run in Orlando. This will tell us if the rest of her body is clean of cancer as well, except for the one breast. Two down, great results, one to go!

Thank you all once more for your terrific support and your prayers! All are greatly appreciated. Please continue to keep Deb in your hearts as we proceed along. You all have been just a tremendous help to us both. Thank you all again!

What an Easter week to remember in our regard. To any of you who are experiencing any health or home issues, our prayers are with you as well! God Bless!

Queen Bee, Mama Bee, and the Imadumee
Well, about noon today, trouble come pulling down the drive. In the cab of their truck sat Queen Bee Sherry, and her Mother Melva, or Mama Bee. If you glance back again at the title to today’s column, you’ll see you’ve been introduced to two of the three parties involved.

If this is indeed the case, the only other character missing…is the Imadumee, who just happens to be yours truly! I think by the time they’d finished checking their hives here today, they’d had themselves quite a time.

Imadumee, is an inside joke between Brian at the CFP and me. Though thinking back now, he never uses this term when talking about himself, coincidence or something other than that? Hmmm… I’m beginning to catch onto our “little inside joke,” as you call it Brian…ole buddy, ole pal.

If in the military, or even in college, what I went through today I believe would have been considered a hazing! The “hazer” has a pretty good time, but not particularly the “hazee.” Guess which one I was?

In all seriousness though, these two ladies are very knowledgeable in their work. It has, and will continue to be a very enjoyable experience. We love you two. I say we, shoot, ole Deb won’t go around them dern bees, and for a fleeting moment yesterday…I was thinking along those very same lines!!

Well, Sherry, and her Mama Bee, Mamma, came to basically just check out their hives. This was for a couple of reasons. One, was to see how the bees were doing after being moved to our place and see if they were finding plenty of forage in this new spot.

Secondly, they had split a few hives and were making sure the new hives from their split were doing fine also.

Oh, actually there was a third reason, and I almost forgot about it. This was to generally aggravate me, and make my life miserable for the next couple to three hours, and I have to say they were very successful on both counts!

Honestly, I don’t know if they even checked their hives…they were having too much fun with me! One of ‘em, would have me bent over looking into the hive, acting as if she was pointing out something to me, then the other would sneak up behind me, tug on my pants leg and holler, “LOOK OUT DUB!” Immediately, I’d be GONE!!

Well, just from looking at my picture in the column, it’s pretty obvious it takes me just a minute to get up a full head of steam in regards to running off anymore. With that being the truth, I’ve got to tell you all that it takes just as long, maybe even a little longer to git my engine shut back down, and come to a full stop.

Phew… those two ladies was having theirselves a ball. I’m hoping they laughed so hard yesterday that their dern sides hurt so bad when they got home, that they didn’t sleep a wink last night.

That’s not true about them picking at me, and I have to say I did have one good time with them.

When we got to the hives I asked them if they had a suit that would fit me? You could see their expressions change, then they looked at each other, then back at me, and they both burst out laughing! I took that as a no answer, and it was.

I had already figured that, so I wore a long-sleeved flannel shirt, and jeans. They had a net they put over my head and shoot, I was ready.

I’ve been picking at them this morning some, but honestly, those two took just as good of care of me, as if they’d both been my Mama. They fussed over me constantly, cautioning me over this and that, really trying their best to look after me, the Imadumee, and in regards to bees, and a host of other things come to think about it, I surely am! Thank you both, Queen and Mama Bee, your concern was appreciated.

As I was talking earlier, they were checking on some of their hives that they’d split. Now, I’m a beginner here, so if I misspeak, it is not intentional, only that this is new to me, and I’m still trying to soak it in. Any beekeepers we have as readers, just step up and straighten me out!

Okay, GC, ole Well, I AM ONE, you ought to be just biting at the bit on that straightening me out part, cause you know firsthand that Imadumee.

GC is a beekeeper that has been following us some, and he responded a little while back about the column asking if we had any beekeepers as readers. Also we had several more respond as well. GC though has stayed in touch, and has been a wealth of information to me. Thanks so much GC, and I’ll be catching up with you pretty quick, I promise!

I also promise GC, my suit will be ordered TODAY. That would have come in handy yesterday, and I’ll not be out there again without one.

But by splitting your hives, this is done as the hive the bees are inhabiting is becoming overcrowded. You have frames, and you’ll see these in the pictures today.

But what they do is take some frames out of the hive, or hives becoming too populated, and start a new hive, or “split.” So you get a whole new hive, and as this continues your number of hives, the number of bees under your care, and your production of honey all grow.

Again, I’m a rookie at this, but I THINK I’m beginning to know just a very, very little on the subject. I tell you what though, I can already see that this is going to `bee’, (you like that choice of words for the sentence, bee), really, really interesting.
But this is how they made me a starter hive yesterday. Yes they did, gave me a hive, frames, bees, the whole nine yards! Thanks so much, Sherry and Miss Melva!
They made a split on a couple of hives, and put the frames full of bees in my hive, along with some empty frames with wax, that my bees will build from.

After making my starter hive, I guess they could see I was a little disappointed. They asked what was wrong, and I just told them that if they’d have filled my box up with full solid frames of bees, well, then I could have made a dern split with my hive and started off with TWO!!

Let me tell you guys something else. Those two women are workers. They wore me big ole rear end out. Dale happened to pull up, and I swapped out. My excuse, I needed to snap a few pictures.

Dale is interested in just about anything too, and he thought this was a hoot as well.
But they took their time as they showed us the eggs, the brood or larvae, and explained that if we’d look closely we could see the full pollen sacs on some of the bees. It was very interesting to Dale and I both.

Sherry explained that if a hive lost a queen, you could purchase one, or the bees themselves would make a new queen. I may misquote, but I believe her to say the bees would select a few eggs, coat or surround them with a royal jelly, and make the queen.

Now I’m going to stop there before I do misquote, and I’ll get it down, but as you see, it is pretty neat stuff.

Oh, one other thing. Sherry told us a single queen can lay two to four thousand eggs a day…a single queen. I found just that fact fascinating, and honestly…very Chinese!

I did make four videos of our time out in the bees, but Deb and I live out in the woods with no high-speed internet available. With this the case, we’ll have to wait for Red to get back home from Jacksonville, let him take them to his house and load them for us. Poor ole Red!

It’s a shame about the videos, because Deb and I watched them last night and they turned out good! But we will get them up just as quickly as we can. In the meantime though, we have some pictures we’ll put up today.

Thanks for coming back and visiting with us again! God Bless you all!

Dub and Deb