Seeing an opportunity for a lesson in life, I asked both kids to drag themselves away from their books (yeah, I know, I could have worse problems than kids who read) and come outside.  We have a number of outdoor chairs that we never use.  We never use them in part because we never clean them off.  The other part is we hate mosquitoes but that’s not the point of the story.  Anyhow, I asked the kids to get soap and a brush and scrub all of the chairs.

They fussed and whined.  There were ants and spiders on the chairs…and dirt too!  After a bit, I got irritated and grabbed a chair, ants and all, and told the kids to “grow a pair” and just carry the chairs to the driveway.  Isaac knew what I said and smirked, but I had to explain that phrase to Abigail.  Yeah, I got a lesson too…keep my mouth shut!

Anyhow, they got going and had a lot of fun with it I think.  Towards the end, they were negotiating for payment.  I didn’t really have payment in mind when this all started.  I had to laugh at their conversation though…”We’ll do it for a dollar a chair”, said Isaac.  ”No, I’d rather do it for 25 cents a chair.”  Back and forth they went a few times but they settled in on 5 cents per chair.  There are only 6 chairs so they were looking at 30 cents each.  Heck, with that sort of deal, I could be persuaded to pay!  I gave them each a buck for the humor.  Well, 70 cents for the humor and 30 cents for the work!

Typically it is a pretty straight forward process and is actually pretty safe (for me…I know what I am doing.  Do not try this at home unless you know what you are doing…10,000 angry stinging insects in a typical swarm will not end well if you do it wrong).  Usually I survey the bees a few minutes before digging into the capture.  The only hairy part of catching a swarm is usually climbing into the tree with a box of some sort in which to capture the bees.

I have caught two swarms recently that have been interesting though.  A few weeks ago I had a message on my phone from a family who had a swarm of bees in a tree outside their home.  They had small kids and were nervous of the bees being in the playyard.  It was 8:30 pm or so when I discovered the message so I headed to their place a town west of where I live.  By the time I got to their place, it was 9:15 or so at night.  After driving, I wasn’t about to walk away from a nice swarm, dark or not.  The man of the house left a spotlight aimed up in the tree while I climbed into the tree.  I was able to scoop the bees into my box and climb back down in the dark.  Luckily, that went off without a hitch.  Catching a swarm after dark is not a good thing though.  Usually bees disturbed after dark assume the perturber is a bear or other critter which has bad witchery in mind.  Luckily, I did not smell like a bear I guess!

Sunday, I was at our place in the country for a little bit to do some work and I needed to attend to the call of the water gods.  As I completed the…uh…task, I happened to turn my head to the right and not 18 inches from my face was a huge swarm of bees.  I was near the bee yard so I assumed the buzzing noise was from the bee yard, not from a swarm hanging right beside me.  It was pretty exciting to see the swarm pretty close to ground level but I was without a bee suit.  ”What should I do?” I asked myself.  ”Be a honey badger (some language)of course!”  So, without a suit, I proceeded to gently cut the inch thick branch from the tree and move the swarm to the hive box I happened to have sitting in the bee yard.  A number of bees fell on my sleve but I only got one sting…one sting from a bee anyhow.  Somehow in the process of moving the swarm, I skidded the handsaw across my hand which left a lovely opening in my skin.

Well friends, I do love catching swarms but I cannot really suggest that anyone catch swarms after dark or without a bee suit.  In both cases it turned out fine, but unless you are a fool or a beekeeper who rocks like KISS (I will leave you to decide which case describes me), you should catch swarms in the usual and safe manner.  Sometimes I get swarm-drunk (Wasn’t KISS drunk a lot of the time?  hint, hint) and can’t help myself!

Some other swarms I have caught

Even when we lived in KY and TN, we upheld the tradition, even if it was just the 2 (then 3, then 4 when Abigail was born) of us.  When we moved back to WV, we petitioned the gang (yes, they are a gang) to add a new part to the tradition.  For the last few years, on Derby day, we also wear “fancy” hats.

I take great pride in making my hat each year as do most of the gang.  Abigail made ribbons for the hat-wearers for the best hats.  I am proud to say I won 3rd place this year.  My hat was…well, you tell me.  I don’t know what it was other than Derby-worthy.

Those drunken women at the real KY Derby have nothing on our hats…and we aren’t even drunk!

Anyhow, before soccer started, we made some good progress on getting siding up on the side of the cabin Emily calls the back (but everyone else calls the front…except me, I support me wife of course!).  Siding is pretty easy thankfully so we made pretty quick progress.  The plan is to build a covered porch on the back(front) so we sided up to the point where we will tie the porch roof to the house.

We had a covered porch at our place in Nashville when we lived there.  Even better than being covered, it was also screened in.  We haven’t officially decided whether to screen in a portion of the new place but I suspect we will have some sort of mosquito shelter.

I made the call to the electric company to get power turned on to the place.  My original hope was to bury a large portion of the line that crosses our property but the price went up significantly since I first talked with the power company.  So, uh, I like the idea of a loverly powerline crossing my view of the forest.  Anyhow, we will soon have power to the place which is sure to make the kids happy…they desperately want a fan they can sit in front of while we work.  Ahh, the life!

Isaac, my Dad and I hauled concrete block out to the place so we can begin the work on enclosing the bottom of the place as well.  There are just so many things that all really need to happen at the same time.  It will be an interesting summer of construction!

See all of the progress on the cabin

For some foolish reason, we had a fish tank in that apartment and felt that it needed an algae eater.  There was a local pet store called Fishy Business…a great place to buy a fish, right?  So we walked in and decided to take a turn about the store.  There in the back, we found our kitten.  I do not like to buy pet store animals, but she had chosen us.  Emily and I looked at each other and decided to take her home.  She was Madeline…Maddie the Cattie.  She was a great kitten.  She sucked on her tail at night, not completely over being taken from her momma too young (I guess).  Imagine getting slapped in the face each night by a soaking wet cat tail. Anyhow, Maddie also played fetch as a kitten.  She was our first dependent and sort of the perfect thing for this newly married couple trying to figure out how married people are supposed to be (still working on that one!)

Fast forward 16 years.  Madeline has moved many times with us as we have changed homes.  She has endured other cats and two kids.  Madeline was old.  Plain and simple, she was old and time had finally started to show itself on the poor girl.  She became incontinent and we could not abide that change.  Madeline was put down on Friday among many tears and memories.  I guess it sounds silly but she has been a part of our family almost as long as we have been a family.  She gave us something to be responsible for and she provided many hours of therapy.

To honor those memories, we decided to bury her at our place in the country and we planted a pear tree over her remains.  The kids were pretty cool about it all and I think it was a good life lesson…for all of us

The view from atop Lowes

Windy...that's a large flag

The problem with the swarm is that it was at the base of the blue metal roof that hangs above nearly all of their stores.  That roof is far too slippery and far too steep to stand on.  Not being Spiderman, we decided to survey the scene from above.  We thought that I may be able to reach the bees by reaching over.

A bee on my finger!

I have never been on the roof of a large commercial building so climbing up on the roof was pretty exciting all by itself.   It was windy as…well, it was windy.  And cold.  Andy windy.  It was clear, especially with the wind, that there was no way for me to hang over the side to reach the bees.  I looked around at the pretty cool view and could not come up with a good solution but killing the bees with pesticide is definitely not a good solution for me.

A good size swarm of bees...it was 3-5 pounds I bet

I have used a shop-vac to catch swarms in other cases so the manager grabbed one off of the shelf and we rigged it up so it wouldn’t just destroy the bees as it sucked them in (yes, bees can definitely ride safely into a shop-vac if you decrease the suction).  With an audience (that’s the best part of swarm catching), I vacuumed the bees off of the roof at Lowes and took them straight home.  I love free bees!

More info about my bees and beekeeping

Mouse house

Where I grew up out in the boonies, mice were a fact of life.  No one really liked them being around much but they were in everyone’s houses.  They mostly ran off when we were around and didn’t usually tear up too many things.

Mister Mouse

He's just so cute

It’s been awhile since I have had any mice around so imagine my surprise when I opened the box with the battery and saw a mouse house.  Imagine my further surprise when mister mouse stuck his head out.  At first he just flipped me the middle paw but after he saw I was serious about evicting him, he scooted out.  I sort of hated to make him move but I figured it was only a matter of time until he caved into the pressure of chewing on the wires that are abundant in his new apartment.  It was pretty obvious where he was coming and going to I patched that up and am hopefully done with my little friend.

Also, here is a picture of some lovely little flowers…we call them bluettes:

Click for a cool video I made!

Anyhow, I opened the bee hives after the move and took a good look around.  I am always amazed that they can survive on the back of a trailer, bumping around up my dirt road and across the hayfield.  The bees did great though.  I took this video with my phone and was super amazed with the quality of what came out.  I hope you enjoy a look at the bees and see how cool they are, even if from across the internets!

More info about my bees and beekeeping

The most interesting man in the world...and that guy from the Dos Equis commercials

Stay thirsty my friends!

The SO-239 connector on the j-pole antenna

I can move the connections up or down the poles

My original version was wrong on many levels but one of the biggest issues was that the little wire between the poles was fixed.  Now, I can move the wire up and down when I get one of the antenna tuning tools (an swr meter if you care).  I am not sure if I will be able to tune in Taiwan but I may get outside of Kanawha county!

Another view of the antenna...'cause it's pretty

Sorry about the dog butt

I still don’t know what I am doing really but I am able to follow the FCC regulations and have met a number of folks on the air who have been fun to talk with and have been willing to help me with information and encouragement.  Emily ad I sometimes sit on the couch and text each other.  I think the next step is to get her licensed so we can talk over radio on the couch.  What do you think?