August 2, 2016
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last of old hive Daisy
We back in bees-ness.
Bought a box of swarm honey bees two days ago and installed Hive Ivy out in Ashtabula. The last two hive were Daisy 1 and Daisy II, and we figure Queen Daisy I, II, and III have had their say.
Hive Daisy I the bees disappeared the first week of February after giving us 125 pounds of excellent spring and fall honey. We think bee diarrhea weakened them, but there were no bee bodies so we really don’t know. Hive Daisy II started off with a bad queen, the workers killed her, we improperly re-queened and the workers killed her too, so we quit because we couldn’t afford anymore, but Lady’s father bought us a swarm from another beekeeper.
Placed new Hive Lily on higher ground closer to her parents’ house.
Where the old hive had been there is a clump of bees clustered beneath the beehive stand. I think they were the remaining female workers who were out gathering pollen when I moved the mostly male drone hive down next to the pond.
After we were done setting up the new hive, I noticed a strip of wood blocking part of the entrance, and as I knelt down to remove it, a bee stung my upper lip. Pure liquid fire, intense pain. It’s still swelling – I have thin lips, but my upper lip now looks like Angelina Jolie’s bee stung lips. If it gets grotesque enough, I’ll use it as my FB profile photo, though most of the swelling’s inside my mouth. First time I’ve been stung above the neck. Lady was stung once on her right temple and it made her dizzy, woozy, shaky, enough so we were worried.
Should have fall honey this year.
When Lady woke me this morning I went Wow Wow Wow There’s no way I can write this dream down.
I was in an Alice in Wonderland old timey psychedelic Mexican town with a lot of characters who were my people. There were snakes, and shape-shifters, and people with tentacles. We were trying to find a guy named Clay who’d disappeared after telling me what to code but had never gotten back to me on how the testing went.
The people I was helping had come to me because I was the last one to see Clay. They kept giving me small amounts of marijuana and laughing. As Lady woke me I’d just told one of them You can never have too much marijuana and he laughed and said How about a small amount of marijuana and a badge?
When we started out I thought they were angry with me, that I was in trouble because I’d not coded my program right, but I’d taken extensive notes of what Clay had told me as he’d taken me through this strange land in which I’d understood nothing but this time through after awhile I realized we were going through the same places and events as I’d been with Clay, that I’d written good code and now we had to find Clay and save him.
It got so strange I began taking notes in my back pocket notebook and when one of them asked why I said This story is too good not to write and he said Don’t use my name and I promised to change all the names except Clay’s, but after awhile I gave up taking notes because there was too much happening, all of it strange and surreal, the colors explodingly vivacious. I even called Lady to explain I’d be late getting home.
When Lady woke me at 4 a.m. so she could go run 10 miles before dawn, I staggered out here to the keyboard lurching back and forth off balance not quite awake and now I’m sitting in my undies sweating in the heat needing to badly urinate my morning bladder typing away like mad with two fingers and the cursor keeps jumping around so some of this is up and down the paragraph between words so I’ll have to unscramble it but this is the best weirdest most surreal dream I’ve had. I could gladly live in this dream forever.
Dusty Mexican roads, failing antique pickups, intense vibrating colors glowing everywhere, Mexican music, Zeppelins floating in the steampunk air, the dream went from me thinking I had screwed up the programming code to having more fun than is possible, and I contributed to the adventure, figuring out some of the clues, saving a few of my people as we were shot at. They were wearing long ragged earth-tone western overcoats with colorful scarves and earrings with black mascaraed eyes and they were funny folk, droll, witty, would make jokes with serious faces to make me think I was in trouble, then hand me a few buds as they laughed.
I could see the dust hanging in the air from driving falling-apart pickups too fast through the desert, could see the mold on the dimly lit dingy brothel hallway walls, could feel the crystal trichomes on the gorgeous red and yellow and green and blue streaked marijuana buds they gave me. Must have had 20 to 30 pounds of grass stuffed in my pockets, yet none of us ever smoked any of it during the dream – we were too high on the adventure itself, didn’t need it, although I got a buzz through my skin just handling the stuff. One dude handed me a card saying here’s a clue and the card was 9 large vacuum packed buds that had glowing crystal trichomes I could see from two foot away.
This was a three-day dream – 1st day Clay gave me the specs as we walked through the wonderland, 2nd day I wrote the code, 3rd day we went to save Clay. Lost so much of it between sleep and wake but what’s left is pure treasure.
When I was smoking a little every day, I could not remember my dreams, something to do with the short term memory buffers being wiped by the THC – I knew I had dreampt, but not what.
Now I’m in my 4th week of not smoking, the dreams are coming fast and fortunate, and if I wake during them, I come out with lots of detail. This is worth being unstoned.
Could be the best dream I’ve had, although almost all of them are surreal fun . . . darn few bad ones.
new hive Lily
