Mama’s business, more new bees, online class

Mama’s business is doing very well. She has so many parties going on that I cannot keep up with them. Thankfully, she can, but to do so takes her a lot of time. It is time well spent. I would estimate that she spends more than six hours every day following the parties and providing the communications required to keep things moving. For Mama, it has become a labor of love and encouragement as she watched her hostesses succeed. Last week she got her first real payday. The amount was more than she was earning every two weeks when she worked for the church school. It was not a huge amount, but it was enough to help with our ongoing needs as well as supply some of her business needs. Right now, every little bit helps. Paydays will follow weekly. That will keep Mama encouraged. Coming in May, she already has several more parties scheduled. I do not know how long this will keep up, but there are ladies in her organization that have been doing this business successfully for years. That is encouraging.

On our way out last night – we had to run to Walmart – I backed the Sequoia up the road towards the gate to the quarry property so Mama and I could get a look at the swarm trap I had put out. Mama and I was very excited to see that we had already caught a swarm. How great is that? We had been told that we were at a perfect location to catch swarms. We had been told correctly. Now what? It is kind of like having a skunk in a live trap. We had to call a local beekeeper to find the answer to that question.

He advised that we get the swarm rehoused in our hive within a couple days. Sadly, I am not prepared to do that yet. To the best of my knowledge, the bees have been in the trap for a couple days at least. Perhaps one week. It will be as late as Saturday before I can make that happen. He thought that would be okay, but he was concerned about the proximity of the hive we will put them in to where the swarm trap is located. Where they are building their home right now. The two locations are potentially to close to make it work and the longer I leave the bees in the trap, the more difficult the successful relocation will be. The bees are very directionally astute. They will have a very strong tendency to go to the hive location they have been servicing (the swarm trap) rather than the new hive location. I will build the remaining parts I need to assemble the two hives I can put together and move the bees into one of those two hives and see if it works out. The beekeeper advising us, James, told us that with swarm traps the rule of thumb is that you move the swarm either two feet or two miles. We did not plan for that contention. If this is a fail, we will try again. It was just nice to see the trap succeed.

I am participating in another online class this morning. We are testing a different system for the training. It looks like it will work well but we are experiencing some difficulty getting it to function as presented. Today will be the pilot of the system with multiple users in separate locations. The last online class we presented was to six users in one location. This morning, the attendees (users) will be in individual locations across the United States. This should be fun. I am here to help with the class and to learn the program. Next week, I will be presenting in the same fashion.

Oh, what FUN!