aggienaut | Entries tagged with ole greg

Some quick venting about work. The other day I spent a nine hour day going through a trailer and a half of hives, pulling out frames of honey and checking hives that looked either unusually weak or strong (and thus in danger of swarming). When a frame is full of honey the bees cap over the cells. Back home I'd generally not pull off a "super" (box) unless it was 90% capped. Here it seems most beekeepers will just pull out practically anything that has any honey in it at all when they're going through the hives.

So I went through about 50 supers, pulled out the frames that were about 75% capped, which came out to about 7.5 boxes of capped honey.

The next morning Trevor (my boss) calls me up and starts saying, in a very patronizing tone "you keep saying things about cost effectiveness and efficiency, but you had all these 60% full frames of honey in your hand and put them back in the hive, where's the efficiency in that Kris?"

But the fact is, I would have gone through all the hives no matter what, to inspect them, but it takes about a minute and 12 seconds per frame to put it through the extracting process, whether its 90% full or 60% full. The last extracting run I did, with only 90% frames I'd pulled, I got 17.1 liters of honey per box. The first run we did, when I was working with "Old Greg" (remember him?), we got 8 liters per box. EIGHT. And that was something like 400 frames -- 40+ boxs -- a 13+ hour day of extracting.

In conclusion, it is completely a false economy to get excited about pulling more 60% full boxes instead of 90% boxes -- if left in the hive the bees will continue to fill them and then I'll waste a whole lot less of my time in the ~~sauna~~ extracting shed. d:

Also, and I suppose this is turning into a rant no one will read because its fully of technical details, but honey and frames do a LOT better in hives -- sitting in the warehouse without bees taking care of them they get all chewed up by wax moths and beetles. Also Trevor alleged I wasn't even turning him a profit after he pays my wage, but by my calculations the honey pulled should pay more than three days of my wage, and in those three days I'd probably continue to pull as much more .... Today I pulled all the 60%+ frames I came across, which totalled sometihng like 12 boxes. He should be excited about that, though in fact its the same amount of honey but he'll be paying me for more extracting time, and during that extracting time I won't be pulling honey........

Hopefully he's just temporarily pissy on account of his house and farm getting flooded. That and I think the beekeeping is the only farming operation that is able to function at the moment so he's apt to give it too much attention. d:

   So this guy Greg I work with... I don't really mind that he's crotchety and sometimes speaks to me quite rudely and disrespectfully, I don't even mind terribly that he thinks he's my boss when he's not --I have a pretty thick skin-- but what is driving me absolutely insane is that he has many extremely erroneous ideas about proper beekeeping that he absolutely insists we adhere to (because he knows better because he's been beekeeping for "fifty years".

   During swarming season every hive should be checked at least once every sixteen days to look for and destroy any queen cells they are making in preparation to swarm ... he refuses to do this and when he's around (which fortunately isn't always -- I didn't see him at all last week, but he's been haunting me all day every day so far this week) he keeps us busy with dumb stuff so I can't get the real work (such as checking on swarm cells) done. He continued to insist its "not swarming season" even after we caught two swarms in one day!
   Two weeks ago he declared we were going to start pulling honey. "uh okay" I thought, I hadn't seen anything that was ready to be pulled out of the hives but surely he'd find that out himself right? NO! I was horrified to find he just merrily proceeded (with me unhappily in tow) to pull out half full and less than half full frames of honey out of hive after hive. I reminded him that honey is not complete, and the water content is too high, until it is capped, but he brushed that off ("that's only if there's moisture in the air lad!") and I noted that the honey isn't going anywhere, and if we waited until it was full we'd spend the same amount of time harvesting it for twice as much product, but that similarly had no effect on him. I even tried "Trevor said X" to which he'd respond "Well Trevor's wrong." And he's far far too headstrong to just tell him "no we're not doing that" (read on for tales of what ensues!)
   So I talked to Trevor, the farm owner and our boss, and Trevor talked to Greg (this is the next morning), and told him not to extract (technically, Trevor told me it was my call, but I don't know what he told Greg), so instead Greg insisted we spend the next two days throwing supers (additional hive boxes) on top of hives. I'm .... not sure why we did this. That's something you do if the honey is coming in faster than you have time to go take it off, or some hives are about full up but not others and you want to do them all at once ... AND in America we put the new box on top of the stack, so they finish the one they were working on but move up. In Australia they lift up the old box (which presumably is full or will be by the time they have time to take it off) and put the new box under it, and the bees start on the new box before finishing off the old box. Greg insisted that, of course, I was an idiot and did it wrong with the boxes I did the American way, and that all the boxes be done the Australian way. This I just chalked up to maybe being an Australian thing but later I was talking to Trevor (who does know a fair thing or two about bees) and Trevor was like "why'd you guys do that? now they're really not going to finish that half finished honey in the top box for a long time" ("yes!")...
   So anyway, basically, Trevor told him not to do any more extracting so Greg turned around and wasted several more days of my life on completely counterproductive supering. Then he disappeared for a week because he seems to hate inspecting hives and there was nothing else useless to do, so I was able to catch up somewhat on the inspections. There were still some more to do THIS week.... but come Monday morning I find out that Greg is rip roaring to go with more extractions.
   ALSO on the subject of extractions, the times I've worked in the extracting shed with Greg we've turned out a hive every ten minutes (and a dismal 7 liters per hive) -- the time I worked in the extracting shed myself I turned out a hive every 12 minutes (and neglected to note the volume but I reckon it was at least twice as much per hive since I only pulled frames that were actually full). Surely you don't need to be an MBA to see that if twice as many man hours are worked for only a 20% increase in productivity.... someone's time is being god damn wasted. BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!
   Greg insists that all extracting be done the same day it's pulled out of the hives (or else "it'll get cold" bloody bullshit DO YOU KNOW WHERE WE ARE???) so we were both in the extracting shed until 11pm yesterday and the day before (when, again, one of us could have not been there and productivity would have been very marginally reduced). AND, when the chain uncapper inevitably fails to uncap some of a frame, you use a "scratcher" to quickly scratch off the cappings -- but he insists it only be used to scoop under the caps to lift them off. He says "its like taking the lid off a jar!" but see the thing is, nicking the tops of the caps with the scratcher is like using a can opener to open a can whereas scooping under the caps with metal prongs that are a siginificant portion of the width of the entire cell is more akin to trying to open a can by hacking it in half with an axe. Siginificant damage is done to the combs, and it takes much much longer. He also insists on loading the extractor (a centrifuge) with the tops of the frames at the center. We agreed that cells are angled slightly upward, but where we disagreed when it came to an argument was that he insisted (as usual, quite rudely, calling me an idiot and saying I wouldn't understand because of something-no-doubt-very-derisive-I-couldn't-make-out) the centrifical force pulls things inward. Obviously I could have demonstrated how centrifical force works but at that point I just dropped it because it was getting far too unprofessional and stupid for me.

   So the other day he was merrily packing away half full frames of honey and I was kind of feeling irresponsible for not standing up to him -- after all Trevor has been quite clear that I have his permission to insist things be done right. So that day when we got to the extracting shed I tried to put my foot down on both the scratcher and extractor issues ... and on the scratcher issue it came down to him saying "just do it as I say, alright?" and me saying "well. No. Trevor has given me clear instructions to do as I see fit." To which he responded "Well I'm going to have to talk to Trevor then" (in a "I'm going to have you fired" kind of way. And on that subject I've talked to Trevor about having Greg fired but we can't because he's the trustee of some land Trevor wants to buy so we can't completely blow him off) ... and then he didn't let go of the scratcher for a long time.
   Now, who should walk in a few hours later but Trevor himself. And what should Trevor happen to say to me, as I'm painstakingly misusing the scratcher in the manner Greg thinks it should? Trevor says "Kris why don't you use the scratcher the right way??" to which I responded with a grin "I'd love to Trevor!" and what happens next but Greg about flies across the room and bellows at me "NO! I TOLD you not to do that! If I see you doing that again I'll have you replaced with a Vietnamese person who by the way would be much faster at that then you!" And there followed another argument in which Trevor and I together tried to get Greg to relent but he wouldn't. At least I feel a lot less bad about not being able to turn him around when I see that even Trevor can't. Trevor then engaged Greg in a more thorough debate about the nature of centrifical force, this time there WERE physical demonstrations (and Trevor saying "now Greg, I called up the manufacturer of this bloody thing, and HE said the tops go outward!). Greg was very obstinant even in the face of mounting demonstrative evidence but I was shocked to find he actually DID give in and start loading the extractor the correct way

   To save us all from more unnecessary extracting, Trevor has instructed me to inform Greg no new drum to put the honey in is coming tomorrow, though really it probably is. I was hoping Greg would disappear without extracting to do (which he seems to strangely love.) but looks like Greg is rip roaring to help me install new queen bees tomorrow (or as he'd probably think of it, have me help him install new queens).

   This afternoon Trevor called me to say the queens were in and I should pick them up (and that there was no honey drum), and Trevor and I agreed I'd proceed to the "Moorepark" farm to install them. I relay this to Greg, who's there with me at the extracting shed hoping for a honey drum, and Greg vetoes Moorepark and says we'll go to "606" (another property in the opposite direction) to install the queens. I forget what his reasoning was but as usual he was entirely unimpressed that his boss had just told us to go somewhere else.
   So I get the queens and catch up to Greg, who has already killed three queens to replace them and is working on a fourth. He thrusts a frame at me with a queen on it and instructs me to kill her so we can replace her. Now I'm really not entirely confident that replacing these queens will help anything, but there was nothing for it short of calling into question (or making it apparent that I call into question) the entirely of Greg's "beekeeping" skills, so I crushed her between my fingers and tossed her into the shrubs.
   "WHAT DID YOU DO THAT FOR?? ARE YOU AN IDIOT???"
   "Uh, I killed the queen and tossed her away from the hive... what part of that do you object to"
   "NO!! You put her back in the hive so the bees know she's dead and accept the new one"
   "...uh, what. Greg, there's no 'dead queen bee pheromone,' a dead queen bee smells like any other bee and they still smell HER so they don't think she'd dead. It's not like bees see her dead and go tell eachother"
   "Well how do you explain swarming with your queen smell theory?" -Greg
   "uh, what??" I was seriously at a loss as to how to respond to that because it's not really related.
   But seriously, I don't know whether to laugh or to cry. They... see and/or smell the dead queen and therefore look for a new queen? That's ass backwards.

   So here's the question of the moment. Tomorrow I'll apparently be hanging out with Greg again and this requeening situation is likely come up again. I am strongly inclined to once again make a stand and come hell or high water refuse to place any dead queen bees back in any hives. As a professional beekeeper I know with certainly that it is contrary to all accepted industry practices and will lead to the bees thinking they still have their old queen and thus not accepting the new queen.
   I anticipate Greg having an absolute kiniption if I refuse to do it his way, which may not be solved until one of us actually walks off the field, but on this matter Greg is very very wrong, and our boss has on a number of occasions made it clear he wants me to steer us in the direction of industry best management practices and call Greg on his bullshit -- though causing ole Greg to have a meltdown seems also not entirely desireable.

   Thoughts, advice?

And here's an unrelated picture of an upside-down jellyfish, which would probably be a more pleasant work companion.

Current Mood: frustrated
Current Music: Red Army Choir - If War Tomorrow

   So this old guy Greg I work with. I've given basic descriptions of him several times so I'll spare you more than "old crochety set-in-his-ways beekeeper."

   At the end of the day Friday he said nothing about what we were going to do on Monday, so I assumed he'd get in touch with me if he wanted to meet me somewhere. Anyway, and again, he's not my boss, so I'm not going to hunt down his validation before I start my day if I haven't heard otherwise.
   And talking to Trevor (the farm owner) on Saturday, we agreed that Greg was pulling too many half-full frames of honey off and really we ought to be supering (adding additional boxes onto) the hives rather than trying to extract half full frames. Trevor said when he talked to Greg he'd tell him not to come in this week since we're not doing the extracting.

   And so I went about my day on Monday without any word from Greg and that was fine by me.
   BUT. It turns out he was there. He... GET THIS ... assumed I'd assume we were going to meet at Bucca to continue extracting there and so he went there and waited there FOR THREE HOURS, and then, AND THEN my dear reader, he proceeded to the honey extracting shed and WAITED THERE FOR THREE MORE HOURS. Keep in mind the extracting shed is a five minute drive from the home farm, where he could have been guaranteed of finding someone who knew where I was (that and I think if you rub a lamp or something Trevor will appear).
   IS your mind blown as much as mine was when I heard how he spent his day? Trevor called me this morning at 6:20 and briefly related it. Apparently his reaction when Greg told him was "There's no way you're that stupid???"

   But anyway, the call at 6:20 was to inform me that Greg was expecting to meet me at Bucca at 0700 to super or extract.. or something. Trevor basically left it up to my discretion. Which because Greg is an overbearing ass and I don't have the heart to boss around a guy who's like three times my age (okay maybe not quite), means that its still probably going to be whatever Greg thinks we should do.
   And keep in mind Bucca is like 30 ks away on small country roads and I still had to load up the truck. So I got to Bucca at 0800 and, as expected, Greg was PISSY.
   So my day was filled with fun interactions like:
Greg: do you know where the queen in that hive is?
Me: No, that's why I'm going through it (the hive was missing the "queen excluder which would ordinarily keep her in the bottom box)
Greg: She's going to be in the top box, always the top box (which I had placed on the ground while going through the bottom box)
Me: I've found 3 out of 3 queens in a row in bottom boxes
Greg: She might end up on the ground too you know
Me: Then I'll see her on the ground
Greg: She'll have a circular cluster of bees around her
Me: Yes. I know.
Greg: Well you just said you didn't know. Do you know or don't you???
Me: What did I say I didn't know?
Greg: Where the queen is.
Me: I don't know which BOX she's in.
(She turned out to indeed be in the bottom box. I don't know where he's getting this "always the top box" thing)

   Or my favourite interaction of the day:
[I begin to open a hive on the trailer we did half of on Friday]
Greg: "Are you on drugs?? We already did that hive on Friday!"
Me: "I don't remember which end we started on"
Greg: "Well isn't it written in your little book" (Trevor has gotten on Greg's case about not taking any notes, now there's a notepad of notes, to which he's disparagingly referring)
Me: "You were holding the notebook all day, it doesn't say anything about what was done." (PWN)

   And anyway, there were lots more unnecessary pissy and caustic comments from ole Greg all day. Anything I did which wasn't exactly how he thinks it should be done was stupid and crazy, apparently. Meanwhile, might I note, that somehow, despite being a beekeeper for "50 years" he doesn't know to load an extractor (centrifuge) with the tops of frames facing outward (thus pulling the honey "up" and out -- he insists on loading them the opposite way, resulting in longer extraction times and more exploded frames), nor some other things which to me seem fairly basic.

   Fortunately Trevor knows enough about bees to already be aware of the incorrectness of Gregs opinions on extractor loading and other things. And I guess when he talked to Trevor after the day I "didn't show up" he tried to claim I didn't entirely know what _I_ was doing, to which Trevor apparently responded "I don't know Greg I think he's doing everything exactly the way it ought to be done" or something similarly entirely positive.
   And I feel less bad about not having the chutzpah to put Greg in his place because Trevor basically said that he himself had been unable to completely corral Greg and tell him to just absent himself for a week.
   And here's the real unfortunate part. I mentioned that, you know, at this point I'd rather just not work with Greg, he gets in the way with his incorrect ways of doing things and on days like this is quite unpleasant to work with. To which Trevor ruefully admitted that here's the thing -- Greg is the trustee of the estate the Bucca farms belong to, and we've already invested a lot of money into the farms there under the assumption we'll buy it when that becomes possible ... so we can't just completely blow Greg off and/or fire him

   So I might have an awesome boss but it looks like I might also have a relatively permanent thorn in my side.

   Also I found out that there was another relatively recent former beekeeper -- "the kiwi," whom I've only ever heard the vaguest references to thus far -- who apparently only lasted two days or so. He's the one who almost caused me not to take this job because he had reported into the bee grapevine that Trevor was "an asshole," and I heard that through the pipeline when I was still looking for a job (and thus ended up working for that real asshole WHO STILL HASN'T PAID ME...) . So I'm very curious to hear Trevor's side of THAT story.

   And in conclusion, today sucked. Now here's an unre--- well actually somewhat related picture!

   You see that, that is one of the sweet bee hive trailers we have. There are currently 18 of them, with number 19 under production back at the shop.

   So today started out pretty good, considering its a Saturday and I had to work. But then there was a little... incident.

   But going back to yesterday first. Yesterday morning I had to call the beekeeper I've been working with here, Greg, to talk about what we were going to do. Now Greg is a rather crotchety old man with a bushy white beard. He can be amusing and funny, or bristley and contankerous. He likes to mention he's been beekeeping for "50 years," and also he doesn't own a computer OR A PHONE.
   So I had to call his wife and ask for him. "Hi is Greg there? This is Kris the beekeeper" I says.
   "Who?" says she
   "Kris the beekeeper on Cross Farms"
   "You mean you work with the beekeeper on cross farms" and then I hear her yelling to Greg in the background "hey this guy on the phone thinks he's the beekeeper on Cross Farms, I told him he means he works with the beekeeper..."
   ::eyeroll:: What I said does not necessarily translate to implying I am THE one and only beekeeper on Cross Farms.
   As it happens, I am. This morning Trevor and I decided to give Greg the week off, because his crotchety self was getting in the way of things.
   He's not so bad to work with, but he doesn't seem to have gotten the memo that he really isn't my boss -- I've been given very specific instructions to countermand anything he thinks we should do that I disagree with. And he no doubt has a lot of experience beekeeping in his own particular way, but I think he's become far too set in his ways and fails to appreciate certain ways the rest of the world beekeeps.
   But there's something smugly satisfying about working with someone who thinks they're your boss, and are sometimes rather bristly about it, and knowing that, in fact, you are more akin to their boss than vice versa.

   So that was a thing that happened this morning, when I showed up at the "home farm" to get some rope and ended up talking to Trevor (the farm owner). It also turns out my pay is being readjusted, and/or is not what I thought it would be...
   ...he had initially mentioned a set weekly rate which I wasn't complaining about. It turns out I am to be paid hourly instead. And given the loong hours I've been working, that should result in an approximately 20% raise for me!
   Then I drove to the bee shed to load up with boxes (supers) so I could take honey off some hives and replace the boxes, and drove down to the field known as Goombarra (or Gumbarrum? Gummy-bear?) and Trevor was THERE. This time I remembered to ask him if I could have next Sat off for Thanksgiving (a bunch of Americans here in Queensland are getting together on that Sat to celebrate) and he totally didn't even hesitate to agree. So by now I was on top of the world, thinking everything was just perhaps maybe TOO good, and how could my boss be so amazingly nice?

   Removed the boxes full of honey and drove back to the honeyshed.... when suddenly CRASH!!
   Stopping on the two lane road to let a car in the other lane pass before I crossed that lane to turn onto another road, the car coming up behind me failed to break in time and slammed into me from behind. ):
   I pull over and jump out of my truck to make sure the other driver is okay and who is there before I've even gone ten steps? Trevor. I'm starting to suspect he has some kind of magical ability to be everywhere at once at this point.
   Also my housemate / coworker Sam drives by at that exact moment.
   Anyway the occupants of the other vehicle were okay and readily admitted to being at fault. I was a bit concerned because, while in California the behind vehicle is automatically at fault in a rear ender, I'd heard here that its possible for them to claim the forward vehicle stopped too fast.
   Their car was a bit mashed up but my pickup ("ute")only had minor damage. I was able to proceed from there to the honey shed while Trevor straightened things out.
   I was sure I had just used up all my good will with that Trevor fellow, but when he came by after finishing with it and talked to me at the honey shed he seemed just as cheerful as ever.
   Unfortunately the vehicle IS going to need to go over to the home farm in the morning so our mechanic (who works on Sundays??) can fix the damage (one of the taillights was knocked off and a bit of the exhaust pipe had to be removed, among other things) which means I'll be without wheel for me "weekend" (ie, Sunday). So I won't be able to go into Bundaberg, which I'd been looking forward to all week. ):

   Several hours later, thoroughly covered in honey from extracting, I drove home and got supplies for a weekend at home -- Season 2 of "Walking Dead" from the video store, a six pack of Coopers Pale Ale and a bottle of Southern Comfort. Looks like its just me, booze and zombies this weekend!! Oh and that god damn tropical beach ;)

   Picked up a burger too (from the same place that made that delicious South Seas Pizza, had a hawaiian burger) (oh and guess who was down by the shops?? ....No just kidding Trevor wasn't there too. But his son Cody (9 or 10?) was), and once again plopped myself on the beach as soon as I got home. Looked a bit stormy out, with low clouds scudding swifty in over the water. I hope it's nice tomorrow, if I'm going to be stuck in town for the day I hope I can at least finally get some swimming in.