Road trip

Road trips rock

Tuesday April 24, 2012 was road trip day. I got on the road a little after four o'clock. I put the coordinates into the GPS and it said 2 hours and 15 minute drive time. I did the math and it was looking like a long night. I couldn't have predicted what that really even meant.

I tuned the radio to NPR and hit the road. About an hour and half into the ride I started getting really drowsy. My vision was super blurry and I just couldn't seem to keep my eyes open. I couldn't decide if it was the late night lesson planning or the taco bell meal to blame. I decided either way it would be a good idea to pull over and at least stretch a bit. I pulled off into one of the rest stops on I-84 and ended up sleeping for 30 minutes in the back seat. Kind of a weird experience. By the time I got back on the road I was feeling like a million bucks. I guess a roadside nap was exactly what I needed.

I pulled through the little town of Milford, Mass looking for a little dead end road where Nick lives. The place was exactly what one pictures a small Massachusetts town to be. I pulled up to a small two family house and Nick met me in the small yard with a queen cage in hand and sipping from a glass of barley wine. He looked like a hardworking guy. We stood in the yard talking about my clueless queen mishap and beekeeping in general. I got a little support for my current 'go it alone and learn from experience' attitude. We talked about how some many things in beekeeping lay in a gray area. What one person lives by, another thinks is hogwash.

He told me I could direct release the queen if I wanted to, but with my queen release record I thought doing a candy release would be best.

We walked to his backyard and he showed me his personal hive he had set up next to a little vegetable garden. It was really cool. I left thinking only about how I would go about installing queen number two. I had a few options; I could go directly to the hive and install her in the dark, I could wake up really early and do it the morning before work, or I could wait until the next afternoon. Considering how long the hive has been without a queen I went with my first choice with doing a night time excursion out to the farm. This may be the most important lesson I've learned yet.

I picked up Melissa, threw the dog in the backseat, and went on an evening drive out to Acorn Hill. We got there and it was kind of spooky. A bunch of wilderness at night, a box full of bees, and only one small led flashlight equals a weird kind of experience. I opened up the hive and went to work. I removed the cork from the candy side of the queen cage and squeezed it in the middle of the frames. Just as I was going to close things up I hear Melissa yelling and the flashlight is moving all over the place. I hear Melissa yell, "MY FACE!" and then many kinds of ouches and screams with a little crying in between.

It turns out bees are attracted to white light and they targeted Melissa as a threat. She got stung in the lower lip once and flailed around enough to avoid being stung a second time. This was a really freaky thing mainly because you can't see the bees that may or may not bee readying themselves for an attack.

I threw the hive together and we huffed it out of there as soon as possible. Some bees followed us but it was hard to wipe them off because it was so dark. The chaos of the walk back and getting in the car made us both really edgy. I was stung in the stomach as I was taking off my veil. We got in the car closed the doors and took a breath. Melissa was in pain from her lip sting and we were both STRESSED.

Before I pulled away though Melissa realized her cell phone was not in her pocket and must have fallen out somewhere between the hive and the car. "GREAT!" I take my phone out and call hers as I walk back with the flashlight. Luckily I wasn't stung on my retrieval mission but I felt like I was in a scene right out of a cheesy horror movie. On the way back to the car with her phone, which was right on the path, I heard some loud noises. I thought my mind was messing with me because of the horror movie mindset. I turned around and I saw two reflective eyes of a big deer staring at me through the trees.

You would have run too.

I ran back to the car.

We drove home, both of us were edgy and we argued a bit about what we could of and should of done to avoid all of this suffering. This is not where the stories ends however.

I pull into the Walgreens in Woodbridge thinking that we should get Melissa some benadryl soon to avoid her face swelling up like a balloon. Getting back into the car I noticed a bee on my sweatshirt. She hitchhiked a long way. I thought I would be nice and shoo her off in the parking lot to give a chance at life. Sitting back down in the car she did not return the favor, she stung me right in the hand.

New lesson, hand stings are the WORST.

We drove home both still heated. I suppose every night can't be awesome and perfect. These are the kinds of moments that make those perfect nights even more special. I have learned my lessons so far in my beekeeping adventure and they keep on coming. I hope I have gotten all the painful ones out of the way.

Tuesday was a really long night.