Beekeeper Projects Winter Preparation

“Go to the bee, thou poet: consider her ways and be wise.”

~ George Bernard Shaw

Sitting on the front porch stoop on a summer evening, you can see hundreds of forager bees showing a visible pattern of flight, zipping to and from the apiary’s entrance. It looks like geometric lines filling the sky. Their industry never ceases—all for the goal of building up stores of honey to survive the winter. For millions of years, bees have endured challenging conditions and climates. And, yet, with a beekeeper looking in periodically to assess the hive’s health, the apiary can be much stronger entering into a season of cold. Like most creatures, honeybees begin their winter preparation from August through to October.

CLEAN THE HOUSE

Not every hive check requires an intrusive look into every box and frame. If you remove the top cover, the layer of protection is a quilt box made from wood and wire. Beekeepers can smell the hive and know it’s well. If you look down upon the thousands of tiny, mobile golden bodies, you will notice each one has a particular job within the colony.

• All the workers are female, living between four and six weeks. They clean, moving the dead, adding “propolis”—a sticky glue-like substance to seal cracks—and force the drones, the males, out before winter. In addition, workers collect matured nectar from forager bees, place it in cells, transform it into honey, and seal the capping.

• Nurse bees comfort, protect, clean, and feed the queen bee while she lays 1500 to 2000 eggs per day. Without the queen, the colony would collapse and die.

• A mature worker bee can transition to guard and protect the entrance from intruders, such as bears, mice, or wasps; however, on cold nights, the guard will freeze and die.

• The most challenging job is performed by the forager bee. acquired at the end of its life. They leave the hive to pollinate one-third of the food we eat.

BY LISA S.T. DOSS

ELIMINATING THE BAD PESTS

Honeybees need human assistance to defeat the infestation of a deadly predator—the parasitic Varroa mite. It preys only upon honeybees by lodging on the bees’ back, crippling it until death, or entering the brood, where developing larvae will hatch. The Ukrainian-designed propane fogger is one instrument of prevention, which uses a long probe to shoot seconds worth of oxalic acid, mixed with 190-proof alcohol, into the opening of each hive. After three treatments, one per week, the mite-free hive has a remarkable chance to thrive! Fogging occurs in the early spring and late summer.

THERMAL BEES ARRIVE

Honeybees are miraculous creatures! They self-regulate the interior temperature in summer and winter. Bees engage in an act called fanning, where the insects will face one direction fluttering their wings to move air in or out.

As nights become cooler and the pollen levels drop, the queen bee begins laying the winter brood. She is a specialized honeybee that aids the colony’s survival through to spring. Numbers within the hive will have significantly dropped; as the bees bond together to form a tight, ball-shaped cluster, the winter bee inserts her enlarged abdomen into the comb and radiates heat, ensuring warmth.

FEEDING THE BEES

By October, the colony is ready to embark on the most challenging season. Each apiary has had an intrusive check to ensure the honey stores were enough to satisfy the bees, and a feeder was added, providing extra nourishment. Honey boxes, light in weight, are often extracted from the tower. The bees need limited space and smaller areas to heat. Quilt boxes, empty all summer, receive handfuls of cedar chips as a means of breathable insulation. Adding the top cover, all beekeepers can do is pray, and await warm days when the bees take off from the bottom board and fly!

A Heart of Gratitude and Generous Giving

FOCUS YEAR-ROUND ON THE THANKFULNESS IN THANKSGIVING

BY SUSAN B. B. SCHABACKER

Those two special words, “thanks” and “giving,” combined, help us to remember the art of gratitude. Those two words remind us to stay thankful, and when we fill our hearts with thankful gratitude, we reap a multitude of health benefits for mind, body, and spirit.

However much or however little you have, adopt a healthy, positive perspective. Appreciating who you are and what you have will pay dividends of bountiful benefits. Practicing the art of gratitude can enhance empathy, raise your energetic vibration, alleviate pain, reduce stress and bring many more benefits on multiple levels.

CREATIVE WAYS TO STAY THANKFUL AND EXPRESS YOUR GRATITUDE

Remember the importance of your faith, family, and friends. Just think how your life would be lacking without them and how they have enriched your life. Slow down, reflect, and make a list of who you’re most grateful for and why. And then think how you can positively reinforce those relationships in mutually beneficial ways. Think of ways to generously give back, and remember that those good wishes may come back to you in positive ways.

One important way to express your gratitude is to pray for yourself and others in your inner circle, allowing the prayer to expand out with a ripple effect. Pray from your heart for the local community and beyond. Pray patriotically for your country and the world. What current pressing issues need addressing? What present problems require solving? How can you help others, starting right where you are?

Another way to stay thankful is to reach out to others with a written message. There’s nothing quite like receiving a handwritten note to brighten someone’s day. There doesn’t have to be a reason to send a card or letter to a loved one or acquaintance. Even the smallest acts of kindness can be fondly remembered and genuinely appreciated.

A card is wonderful, but nothing can replace in-person (or via phone or vid chat) verbal thanks. But, if it’s hard to reach your busy loved one, leave them an audio message or voicemail to express your thanks. Be mindful to stay thankful and raise your vibration in a state of constant gratitude. While the glass might appear half-empty to some, see it as half-full and remember to thank and tip the barista or bartender who poured it. No need to chug it; instead, take time to savor each sip and say “cheers” to whomever you are with.

Be grateful for the blessings and for those sometimes difficult blessings in disguise, as well. Make peace with who you are now, wherever you are, whoever you are with, and whatever you have, and believe it was meant to be. Be thankful your life and situation can always improve. After a storm, the sun still comes out to play and makes beautiful rainbows that light up the sky.

BENEFITS OF GRATITUDE AND THANKFULNESS

Physical and psychological health benefits abound with a healthy, positive outlook, translating into fewer aches and pains, greater overall health, and an increased life span. Eliminate toxic emotions, including anger, frustration, resentment, regret, and depression, that can cause stress and harm your health. Boost your selfesteem, confidence level, and mental strength with thankfulness, mindfulness, and healthy positivity.

Focusing on a short, sweet, and simple gratitude list as you drift off to sleep can make a real difference. Substituting sleeping pills with steady dosages of gratitude can help you catch your zzz’s more easily. Research shows that whatever you focus on just before falling asleep is frequently what you remember first thing in the morning. So, fuel your thoughts with powerful positivity and envision good thoughts and memories to evoke a positive, feel-good morning.

‘Tis the season for a reminder to keep thankful and grateful. Thanksgiving is not just a holiday or seasonal trend for once a year. It’s much more than that when you open your heart and mind to allow for a meaningful and fulfilling life. How you approach life is up to you, so get going on gratitude and remember that there’s always time for thankfulness!

Inflation is already here – and items that are in high demand are dramatically exceeding inflation percentages. Probably more than any other Christmas, you need to look closely at the money you can spend and plan to stick to your budget. In past years, many people overspent and took on higher-thanrecommended credit-card debt. But many felt confident that their jobs were stable and that they would get out from under the debt. Now, the economy, job security and debt are much trickier. This is not the year to arrive in January with excessive holiday debt. Budgeting strategies

Traversing the Holiday Landscape

The advice – back in the summer – for the upcoming holidays was to stock up early. The main culprit, courtesy of COVID-19 and its various variants, was supply-chain problems: • Shipping costs from China to the U.S. were up about 500% – and rising. • A number of manufacturing facilities had to close because of COVID outbreaks or employee shortages. • Pent-up demand was selling out many holiday destinations. • Domestic shippers – FedEx and UPS – were projecting major holiday slowdowns because of demand and worker shortages. Truliant

• Look at your holiday receipts from 2020 and 2019. Determine how much you spent and what holiday categories – gifts, travel, parties and restaurants – the dollars represent. • Decide, looking at your current bank account, how much money you can safely spend in each category. • For gifts, assign a dollar to each person on your list. • Do the same for travel, restaurants, parties and miscellaneous items. • Once you have the numbers, do everything you can to stick to your budget. If you follow this strategy, you will arrive at January and February with your holiday bills under control and you’ll be better prepared for 2022. Travel

Shopping strategies

If you still have shopping to do and holiday plans to make, the best advice is to be flexible and grab opportunities as they arise. But don’t be too disappointed if your options are limited. If you do find a gift that you want, buy it now and don’t wait for a better price after Thanksgiving. Many shelves will probably be empty. One of the developments during COVID-19 has been increasing the world’s transition to online purchases and delivery services. It’s obviously safer to sit at home and order stuff on a computer, but supply and transportation problems are still a significant barrier. Last year, UPS, FedEx and the USPS were overwhelmed with holiday deliveries. This year, they are trying to hire thousands of additional workers. But when pushing and shoving packages through the system, there will be delays and higher costs. The best advice: order now and cross your fingers. Unless you’ve already booked a significant trip – Hawaii, Caribbean or an expensive resort – you are probably out of luck. People who want to get away have already reserved many of these trips and they are fully booked or the prices for the remaining slots are rising each day. But if you want to get out of the house, regional road trips or family gatherings in a home are much easier to arrange. In this region, the beach, mountain towns or cities like Raleigh, Charlotte, Columbia, Charlottesville, Chattanooga and Richmond may offer fun and interesting travel opportunities. Parting thoughts

Staying flexible and keeping a sense of humor are the best counters to deal with the unexpected and difficult circumstances that the world, the U.S. and our local communities are facing. If you can keep your own corner of the world safe, happy and secure you and your family will be in a much better place during the holidays and beyond.

Inspiring Empathy

BY JEAN MARIE JOHNSON

Oklahoma middle school teacher Karen Loewe engaged her students in an activity that profoundly changed the way they interact with one another. Karen had created a space where kids felt comfortable expressing themselves and one day asked her students what “emotional baggage” meant to them. She then invited each child to write down some emotional baggage they were carrying. Respected and protected in anonymity, the kids unloaded: “Things like suicide, parents in prison, drugs in their family, being left by their parents, death, cancer, losing pets…and on and on.”

Then the kids took turns reading the papers, not knowing whose “baggage” they were sharing. Sometimes the child reading would begin to cry, or the child whose words were being read identified herself and spoke from her heart about the burden she was carrying. When all were read, the papers were wadded up and placed in a plastic bag that hung on the classroom door—a symbolic reminder that regardless of who we are, what we look like, or where we come from, we all have baggage. Ms. Loewe added: “As they left, I told them they are not alone, they are loved, and we have each other’s back.”

The impact was astounding: “I firmly believe my kids will judge a little less, love a little more, and forgive a little faster.” “They don’t interrupt or talk down to each other…they’re not rude. It’s completely, completely changed how they treat each other.”

What Ms. Loewe did that day was nothing short of brilliant.

Hard Wired for Empathy Imitation lays the foundation for empathy. Andrew Meltzoff, PhD explains: “When infants imitate, they are becoming ‘like the other person’ in action, with simple body movements…later, that can flower into empathy, which is the ability to become like the other person in emotion and perspective.” The Nurturing is on Us The foundation for empathy is laid at home. As parents, nannies, and caregivers, consider these ways to build a strong empathy foundation:

Start early • Encourage “reciprocal games” with babies. Smiling, opening your mouth wide, and playing peek-a-boo reinforce imitation.

• Praise your toddler when they share their toys with others.

Build from there by “being there” Seize on opportunities to model (and thus encourage) emotional intelligence by listening to your child and getting into the habit of exploring their experience, instead of minimizing or lecturing (we’ve all done it!). When you attend to your child by:

• asking open-ended questions, saying, “Help me understand what happened”; and

• reflecting their feelings, by saying, “You must have been really discouraged,” you model empathy.

Develop an awareness of other points of view As adults, we understand the profound difference it can make when we understand someone else’s experience. We can help to develop our children’s ability to do so by

• asking, “How would you feel if that happened to you?” Or, “What would you do in that situation?”

• reading books that explore experiences and feelings, then talking about them. Continue to ask questions such as, “How do you think this character felt when that happened?”

Look for opportunities for your children to demonstrate care and concern for others. • Provide gentle feedback: “I think Sarah feels sad when she’s not included.”

• If a neighbor finds herself with an illness that makes her suddenly homebound, ask your kids: “What can we do to show Mrs. Wong that we are thinking of her?”