My wife has observed that I am “unobservant,” which is a strange thing to call a man who correctly identified a picture hanging in a different spot by the second guess. Plus, my first guess was partly right–she had painted the room a new variation of beige, just two years ago and I had just now noticed.
Apparently, I am not the only person who is unobservant. Our house sits on the side of a fork in the road. Every day, every hour, every ten minutes somebody heading upstream on the second prong fails to observe the stop sign. They crane their necks to see if anybody is coming up the primary prong, and if not, they just blow right through the stop sign. If I ever discover some priceless treasure in all my farm junk that I want to keep hidden and secure–let’s say, for instance, a Picasso painting–I would hang it on the stop sign. Sure, my wife would notice if it was hanging a little crooked, but certainly no one else would stop to steal Pablo’s work.
“The right side is just a hair too low,” I could imagine my wife saying.
“Nope, that is just Picasso–he liked cockeyed shoulders,” I’d reply, but it would do no good because soon she would have me retrieving the level.
The problem is my wife observes things in the actual world, whereas I mostly just observe things in my head–and there is a lot going on in my head. In one corner, people are conversing over matters of great importance, and one of those people looks and sounds a lot like me–except my head’s version is extremely witty, articulate, and persuasive. Then in another corner of my head, all the things I need to accomplish are swirling around like a little whirlwind, battering the inside of my noggin with logistical details. In the top of my head, larger storm clouds are gathering and thunder is rumbling. With each flash of lightning on my mental horizon, I’m counting the seconds to predict how far away the costs of major life purchases are, such as the cost of replacing our cars or our twenty-year-old heating and air unit.
In the back of my head are the stables where I keep my high horses. High horses need a lot of tending because I ride them into battle every ten minutes to vanquish all the people in my head who disagree with me. Occasionally, amidst all the vanquishing, funny thoughts pop up in my head, and, like a hound dog, I must follow those thoughts until I find the punchline or someone, usually my wife, punches me in the arm and tells me to pay attention.
“You need to pay more attention,” she says.
“I am paying attention, thank you very much,” I reply. “I’m paying attention to the three-ring-circus in my head, and currently the ring master is being chased by a hound dog riding a high horse in a whirlwind. It is pretty hard to pay attention when I’m the ring master.”
I should probably spend more time learning from my four-year-old son. Thomas is the most observant person I’ve ever met, even more so than my wife. Every two seconds he is observing something in the actual world. I know this because every two seconds he is providing fresh commentary on his observations.
“There is a chair!”
“That’s great!” I say.
“There is a spider web in the corner of the room.”
“That’s great!” I say.
“You’ve got a hair in your nose.”
“Thomas, focus!” I say. “We’re trying to put on your socks!”
Apparently, four-year-olds pay too much attention and forty-year-olds can’t pay enough. I’m not sure what happens between four and forty, but I’m pretty sure he observes more in sixty seconds than I do all day.
I admit; I have sat here for a good 60 seconds or more trying to come up with a B&the B reference . . .something with Chip preferably–like “There’s a girl in the castle. . ..told ya so”. But, it’s not quite working for me. Living with my own four year old, yes, they observe everything–especially when tasked with something they may not be interested in doing! But I do love how much he notices and hope I don’t discourage that curiosity.
Yep, to a four-year-old, everything is a Cave of Wonders.
Can’t help but observe that picture looks more like a Van Gogh than a Picasso. 😉But I certainly can relate to the 3 (possibly 5 or 6) ring circus in your head. Mine center on different topics but I definitely have the high horse one galloping around up there too!
On another note, how are your bees? The die-off is a worrying.
That’s funny–I’m so unobservant, I didn’t even pay attention to what the wordpress AI picture generator generated.
My bees are mostly good. I have lost some five or six overwintered nucs, but it was my fault since I didn’t get them heavy enough in fall. All my production hives seem as good as I’ve ever seen them though, so I’m hoping this will be a good year. I haven’t seen any unusual die off with my hives or any of the other sideliners. But the large die offs that the commercial guys are reporting are definitely alarming. Seems very similar to CCD type symptoms? How are your bees faring?
We had major issues with mites last year, despite treating. I know they were fine going into winter 2023-24 because we had them inspected and he did a mite count on all of them. But just after we moved, and a week after we treated with Formic Pro, we did a count and several were scarily high — like I stopped counting when I got to 20! We treated with OA three weeks in a row because didn’t want to repeat Formic so quickly, and they barely dropped. So, then we did Formic again, and it knocked them down. Here’s the kicker -although in the past we never counted (because we knew we’d treat if we found any, and of course, we knew we’d find some), we’ve always treated them. OA in late winter or early spring, formic in summer, and then OA again before closing up for winter. So now you know why it matters so much to do a count — because treatments apparently don’t always work.
At first, we thought it was the new location, but then realized it couldn’t be because the timing didn’t track with the mite lifecycle. So, we have no idea what happened. One of the worst afflicted had been robbed, and that could have been part of it. And we also did some Demaree splits, which takes away the break in the brood cycle from regular splits, so it might have been partly that. We ended up euthanizing the worst afflicted because it had dropped so much in population, and we combined two. So we went into winter with four.
I was very worried about them getting through because all this was happening when they would have been hatching winter bees.
But, they are all flying, so if we can get through March, we’ll maybe be okay. It’s going to be quite warm this week, so I’m hoping we can take off the wraps for the season, and remove the top boxes to see what’s what. Don’t want to go through top boxes because we’ve got fondant on the frames and they’ll still need that.
We’re looking forward to recommisioning our long hive so we can begin learning on that.
Sorry for the long answer. Not many people would have a clue what I’m talking about it, so you’re paying the price for asking. 🙂
Most of the people we know who lost bees were new beekeepers or people who had stuff going on in their life and weren’t able to give their apiary the attention required. But the commercial lossess are scary. We were at a bee conference last week and one of the speakers, a researcher in La, said Amitraz doesn’t work anymore, and that’s what many commercial beekeepers use for mites, so that could be a big part of it. We’ve never used hard chemicals, although I was beginning to think we might have to last year with all the mites. So glad it didn’t come to that.
I’ve usually had pretty good luck with Formic Pro knocking out the mites. In the past, I used Apigaurd and the results were inconsistent. Doing counts after you treat is definitely a must, which I’ve learned the hard way as well.
I have used Apivar (amitraz) once or twice in the last few years and it seemed to still be effective. However, I bet in large scale commercial operations where that is all they use primarily then those mites would be the first to become resistant, which could explain why the major losses seem to be hitting the commercial operations mostly.
Good luck with your bees–won’t be long till swarm season!
The stable with the high horses! 🤭
Only two guesses? You’re just bragging. That is so far fetched, I almost stopped reading there.
I knew I should have gone with three–sometimes I get a little carried away when stretching the truth