Bee update
 

1) same number of bees as when I first started
2) a ton of capped brood in my hive, meaning I expect a significant increase in population very shortly
3) new queen is doing fine
4) more hive beetles than before.

Isn't there something you can do to thwart the hive beetle infestation?

Mike, you've been on a roll here. Why don't you say something disparaging about the queen?

Yes. I can make a homemade trap for them. But I need to do some research and probaby buy a soldering gun, so it is going to have to wait.

Interesting, well let us know how that works out once you get it made.

Bees (or Deseret) are the Mormons of the insect world. They never question their leader.

Except bees have female not male leaders. Beehives are not paternalistic institutions. So I expected Waters to say something nasty about the queen like she seemed more a dude than a chick.

Bees are great at illustrating the order of things. The female lays all the eggs. Her daughters do all the work including gathering nectar and pollen, making the wax and feeding the babies.

The males (drones) hang out, eat, and fly out of the hive to mate. If they fail to mate, they come back, hang out on the couch, fart and watch TV. If they do succeed in mating a female high in the air, they die in the process.

Meaning their entire lives are happy, especially the end.

LOL. For those of us with northern European ancestry, this is how Tacitus described our forebears in the Germania. I've read similar discriptions of other agrarian societies. It's not much different now.

Garrison Keillor, in his The Book of Guys, wrote:

"We go around with a sense that our gender peaked in the eighteenth century. The Kings, the Court, the Church, Kighthood, Guilds--all of that worked for guys: in paintings by the Old Masters, guys looked good, whether boy or burgher, hearty and flush, good-humored, bold, prosperous, Guys at Their Best. After that, guys vanished from art, except for troubled self-portraits. Now our gender supplies all the major criminals and all the major candidates for high office; the female gender supplies the goddesses of light and mercy. What went wrong?"

"They (women) can't take over the world fast enough for me. I mean that. Let them run everything. They should take over business and government and manage society and finance and let guys be artists and hoboes."