aggienaut | Entries tagged with work

4/07 3313 active cases in Australia, 113 new in last 24 hours
4/08 3150 active cases in Australia, 105 new in last 24 hours
4/09 3066 active cases in Australia, 90 new in last 24 hours
4/10 3009 active cases in Australia, 100 new in last 24 hours

   Well it's official, we're over the hump here. I'm still waiting for the day when there's actually hand sanitizer on grocery store shelves.

   Cristina went with her motercycle-taxi-driver today to get him fuel so she can get to work. I think I mentioned her doing this last week, at that point the military controlled the gas stations. She couldn't get any gas at the first one but was finally able to persuade the officers at a second one that she needed and had a right to fuel as a doctor. This morning when she went for fuel the gas stations were controlled by "collectivos" -- pro-government militia, and she was unable to persuade them to give her any fuel.

   I drove into the bigger town of Geelong the other day for the first time in a month. There was a noticeably larger number of people out walking than I've ever seen before. I suppose even if they're limited to one walk per day, most of these people probably did not formerly take one walk a day.
   My purpose was to try to find more places to sell honey since the tourist-driven places have all closed up shop and gone into hibernation. I didn't really have high hopes but I sold honey to both of the small organic/whole foods places I went into. In both of them I asked if they were interested in carrying my local honey (one had no honey, the other hand "organic honey" but it was from somewhere across the state. Its funny the honey they had was crystalized in layers, which to me looks kinda janky, but to the whole/organic food crowd maybe that looks more authentic), and their principal question was just if I really was local. Then, conversationally, I mentioned that I'd been driven into the city because my usual outlets on the Great Ocean Road had dried up, and they both very earnestly said "oh, we definitely want to help you out." Very sweet of them.
   I've been afraid to even venture into the metropolis of Melbourne, but given this reception, I might try to use the google to identify specifically similar small organic/whole-foods places and hit them up. If I can line up a few it might be worth going down there periodically to make deliveries. For the months that remain to me ::sigh::

The United States now has over a third of all deaths (37%). Yes, I know there's probably a lot of deaths going unreported in underdeveloped countries (Apparently at-home-deaths of undetermined cause are up 8x in NYC), but it's not good. A number of countries are either over the hump or flattening the curve (Italy looks like it's nearly there, Spain looks very close to the hump), but the US is still on the same upward trajectory its been on with no sign of flattening.

March 25th -- 2,423 cases currently in Australia, up 287, which is actually less than the previous two days.

   In fact this chart seems to indicate its the second day of a fall in a row and lowest in five days. But I'm inclined to also think it's too good to be true. Possibly the more stringent stay-at-home orders caused fewer people to notice or report themselves or something like that.

   This morning I noticed a news item that the Australian PM had declared that "Level II restrictions go into effect tonight at midnight!" but couldn't find anywhere what those level two restrictions entailed. My friends informed me it basically just meant beauty salons are no longer classed as an essential service. Basically the interpretation thus far has been pretty much "if you have a job that's not in hospitality/entertainment, you're an essential service." ("that's a direct paraphrase" as my friend Greg put it). There did seem to be fewer cars on the roads today. Today there seemed to be really really hardly any cars on the road.

   Went to work at nine as usual. It was cold and dreary so I took the work truck home to maybe do some bottling or other such futzing around while waiting for it to get warmer. But looking at the weather app I realized Saturday would be a nice day in the upper 70s while today was supposed to peak at 63. It's not like I'm doing anything more important, so I decided to take today off and work saturday. I thought about emailing el boss man this minor reshuffle of my hours but he's never seemed to have any interest in such matters.

   But then two or three hours later I was sitting at my computer when I happened to see the exact make of his car drive by -- a blue toyota hilux with these beefy chrome roll bars that seem to be a standard option here. It's not a custom job, there's a few such cars around, but it was the exact same car he drives as far as I could tell. It would be wildly out of character for him to spy on me, but all of a sudden I started having paranoid thoughts that sitting at home with nothing to do, thinking about canning the beekeeping department, he had hthought to himself "what's Kris donig with the truck with weather like this?" and went on a driveabout to see if I was home. I really think it's not like him and its just a conspiracy theory but... I'd have to have had seen the license plate to distinguish that car from his.

   This weather today really didn't help the whole end of the world situation. I was already feeling a bit depressed about it, before my job came into question, and I miss Cristina a lot, and then for the weather to be extremely dreary and cold today really was the icing on the cake to make for a thoroughly depressing day. And you know there's a lot of missing in a long distance relationship but I think we handle it pretty well but I would have liked to be with her while civilization is ending.

   The sun finally came out around 3pm. I scampered outside and was meerkatting on my porch listening thoughtfully to the eerie silence of the new world, when my dear friend Koriander happened to send me a recording of herself singing the Mingulay Boat Song. It is a lovely somber and melancholy yet hopeful sea shanty that we would often sing on the boats at sunset as we headed back to dock. I wish I could share with you Kori singing it but she'd kill me, but she's a really beautiful singer. So in the sunny silence of our ruined world I closed my eyes and listened to her sing the Mingulay Boat Song.

Current Music: Mingulay Boat Song

   So "everyone knows" in marketing these days you need to have "a social media presence." However, even so-called "experts" don't seem to explain to me the finer details of exactly how and why. I strongly suspect things like twitter and instagram may be a waste of time for a lot of businesses, but then again I have never ever ever understood twitter, to me it seems like it should have been born dead and/or died a thousand deaths by now, so maybe I'm just too much of an old curmudgeon for our brave new world.

   As you would struggle not to know if this is other than the first entry of mine you're reading, I am in the beekeeping/honey business. It's an interesting business on the marketing front because a lot of the old established players have not yet entered the internet age. Most big career beekeepers if they have a webpage at all it's pretty basic and just exists because they heard they should. Even the retail brands of honey that make it to grocery store shelves don't really have to advertise. If you're a major player selling honey you're probably doing it purely on name recognition you've built up over the past few decades. Places that really SHOULD have websites such as beekeeping supply stores sometimes don't -- the LA Honey Company, for example, is a second generation honey broker and beekeeping supply store but google only brings up the auto-generated "yellow pages" entry. They are skating by purely on existing beekeepers who have always used them and probably missing out on a colossal amount of hobbyist business in the LA area.

   On the other end of the spectrum there's a lot of small scale and hobbyist beekeepers who probably are more comfortable making a webpage than doing some beekeeping activities, and the internet is full of their slick webpages. Often with a "donate now to save the bees!" button which really makes me roll my eyes because anyone who does so is just donating money to someone's for-profit business and making zero impact on ecology. Another interesting mistake I see people make is they make their webpage look so professional that it no longer has that "local" charm and I suspect isn't as appealing as a slightly amateurish page. Slick stock images stick out like a sore thumb and even if you're a real beekeeper, when every picture on your webpage is just perrrrrfect it's hard to take you seriously.

   Anyway, so I have a website now. I could wish it were a little more slick actually but hey I'm not a web designer, a web designer isn't in the budget, so we're limited to what I can do with the tools Wix provides me. (Actually I have two, I like my Bee Aid International webpage, also made with Wix. Though I feel maybe I should put at least one picture on the landing page). The business also has a facebook page, though I've posted almost nothing to it because I'm really not sure the connection between doing so and $$$.

   I feel like honey sales will always be driven by people seeing it in a shop and deciding to buy it then and there with little effect from social media influence, but I want to push "beekeeping services" as well as beekeeping equipment sales, which will probably be more originating online.
   Though before we get away from honey sales and into website-driven-sales, it occurs to me there's a bit of it that can go backwards, I'm thinking if I make the website more prominent on the label they might go to the webpage when the run out or otherwise happen to be home looking at the jar. They can then become an "engaged" customer/fan whatever marketing terms they're using these days.

Various Forms of "Social Media" Marketing
   SEO - "Search Engine Optimization." The company I used to work for in California dumped literally thousands and thousands of dollars into "SEO specialists," which was important because bee removal was the money maker and people by and large go to the top google search result on that. But I think we all felt these "SEO specialists" were a bunch of overpriced money spnoges, and the main "secret" seemed to be inserting key words into text throughout your webpage until it looked like it had been assembled by a spammy computer even though it hadn't. Despite that I feel like this SEO business was a waste of money unless you absolutely depend on being the top google search in a competitive market, it's certainly true that if no one ever finds your webpage it's pretty pointless.
   Blogging - Hi. I'm a "blogger," you're a blogger, we're here in the blogosphere. And yet. I feel like blogs are a very pointless aspect of a business webpage. I don't know how many blogs I've seen on business webpages that are so feckless I feel embarrassed for them. As far as I can tell the intention with business blogs is not actually to expect anyone will ever read them but to power the unholy magicks of SEO by churning out absolute crap entries which once again are stuffed so full of keywords they're barely grammatically coherent and will convince anyone who does read them that you are just a machine.
   Facebook likes to always remind me it's getting clicks and views and people even clicking on "shop now" and such, but the question is, would being overactive on facebook drive sales in any meaningful way? I think a facebook ad campaign could cause new people to become aware of the brand in a useful way but other than that is there a plausible reason spend extra time with facebook? Also of note, I've notied a number of beekeepers who an't be bothered to create a real webpage solely using facebook as their webpage. It is true that I've heard you should absolutely minimize the number of clicks a user has to go through and if they can get to your services without ever leaving facebook they'll probably be happier (but as far as I can tell if you have a "buy now" function on a page it can only work be sending the user to an external webpage??)
   A beekeeper here who went huge and then went bust used facebook very effectively, he actually created the "Beekeeping Victoria" facebook group (which has outlived him and continues to be vibrantly active as the corpse of his business decomposes) solely as his own marketing fiefdom (he sold lots of bees and equipment and services to people just getting into beekeeping), but of course he crashed and burned (declared bankruptcy, left a lot of bitter people who had paid for things that weren't delivered because of that) so he may not be the one whose example one should follow too closely.
   Instagram this is the one I feel like everyone really considers to be "hot" right now. You simply "must" have a company instagram page. But even if I were to be aggressively tagging and acting like an "influencer" tart, how is this going to translate to sales? I realize any degree of getting the name out there increases "brand awareness," but does instagram create that to the degree that everyone acts like it does or would my time be better spent graffiti-ing bathroom stalls? I am also up against the technical problem of that I don't know if my extremely feeble phone could wrap it's brain around having two insta accounts on itself, and it would be a crime to deprive the world of the one that features mainly pictures of Cato. ;-3
   Twitter I really really really don't understand twitter. Do people who aren't celebrities hang out on twitter? If you're not a celebrity does anyone ever see your twizzles? Why is twitter not dead yet?

   I can envision a future in which people in the area so familiar with "the Great Ocean Road Honey Company" that it is their go-to for beekeeping supplies and services, but I'm just not sure I undestand social media enough really to see a clear path between a "social media strategy" and these outcomes. I distrust all the marketing "experts" who think you should have a blog without really being able to explain why and similarly encourage the use of each and every one of the above mentioned social media forms just "because." I don't want to hear "you should have instagram because social media!" I want to hear a specific coherent proposed effect.

Gratuitous picture of Cristina

Update on Cristina and I's planned vacation: after both nearly going out of our minds trying to sift through the many many many hotel options in the Cancun area we settled on this one I think is the clear winner and we're very excited about it. We booked half our time there and actually plan to spend the other half in another hotel in Cancun itself (the one we booked is actually in nearby Tullum) but we were burned out on hotels by the time we got as far as settling on this one. Having done all this work sifting through them I thought I'd share my findings on the remote chance anyone else is going to Cancun soon: this one also seemed very nice (and incredibly cheap!) though the rooms looked pretty bare bones, and if you wanted a hostel experience this hostel actually looks really nice. Am super excited! I go back to California on the 20th, and to Cancun on the 31st -- less than a month!! Meanwhile over here it's been too cold to go out unless absolutely necessary for as long as I can remember ): ): ):

Current Music: Azelea Banks - 212

   One thing I've enjoyed about this job is for the first time I'm doing so much more than merely beekeeping, especially marketing-wise from designing logos and getting the labels made to making the sales pitches in person at shops. The latter I never thought I'd enjoy --being a salesman-- but honey basically sells itself and people are usually super friendly. I've actually come to enjoy driving around the countryside, pulling over when I pass a general store I didn't even know was there, walking in with a jar of honey and making a sale. It's fun to explore the countryside, and often the people in these little country shops are a pleasure to talk to.

An atypical encounter though: last week I realized there was a general store at a crossroads not terribly far from here. It seemed kind of unlikely because it's not THAT far from the bigger town of Colac and there's doesn't seem to be enough habitations out there to support a dedicated general store, but I decided to swing by on my way in that direction. Sure enough there's a general store. I go in and eerily all the shelves are about 60% empty. When the proprietor asked me if she could help me I said
   "It appears you have no honey!"
   "Oh.. umm.. we have this" she indicates a brand x bottle of "golden syrup," which apparently is the lighter fraction of liquid byproduct of sugarcane processing (as opposed to the heavier molasses). Australians seems to like it but to me its just sugar syrup.
   "Oh actually I'm here to sell you honey!" I say putting the sample jar on the counter.
   "If you want honey probably you could get some in Colac I guess" she is continuing
   "No, I mean I sell honey, I am here to sell you honey. This is a sample of it here."
   It seems to take her weirdly long to comprehend this. Finally she says "ohhh I would like to but.. you know, there's so many loopholes to jump through with health and food safety" (keep in mind my jar does NOT, imho, look like some fly-by-night garage product)
   "Oh I'm all certified by the shire health inspectors and all that." I say
   "Do you have the paperwork with you?" she asks
   "Um.. no?" I'm getting a bit confused, literally no one has ever asked for this before. At this point I'm already backing towards the door when she comes up with a completely different excuse:
   "I don't think any of my customers would buy honey anyway. You might have better luck with, I don't know, I think there's a fancy deli in Colac" she's saying as if I'm trying to sling the most hipstery thing her good no-nonsense clientele would never deign to purchase.

   I find country folks are _more_ likely to buy local direct-from-a-beekeeper honey than city-slickers. My theory is this woman has inhereted the store from a more competent relative and literally does not know how to make arrangements with new distributors and/or run a business.

In totally unrelated news Cristina finally can get away from work for a week so we're meeting in Cancun the first week of September. If anyone happens to have any inside tips on hotels they particularly recommend or other Cancun secrets please let me know!

   Hours are funny things. By which I mean, the hours you are "clocked in."

   Today my assistant and I were driving to a bee site and diverted just a little out of our way to the Moriac Store for lunch. In such a case I consider myself "clocked out" for lunch starting the minute I go off course for my lunch spot, but it occurred there is nothing inherently different for my assistant between sitting in the passenger seat on the way to the bee yard and sitting in the passenger seat on the way to lunch. I reckon my lunch break began when I diverted off course and hers began when we got there?

   When you drive to work you're obviously not paid, but when you get there you're paid for time in transit to whereever you're working right? I used to work for a guy where, we were all staying on the home farm but would drive nearly an hour every morning to the bee sites where we were working. Also of note, we definitely _would_ be working before we departed on said trip, just ten minutes or so loading the truck up but its still work. I initially started my hours when I started work helping load the truck ... but then a week later when he looked at my time card he said no I should start my hours when we arrive there. An hour there, an hour back, two hours a day where I sure am not at my leisure in any form. I quit shortly due to this and many other problems (he wanted me to pay $100 a week to sleep on the porch!)

   The other day I had to move some bees at a bee site about half an hour west of my house, which is half an hour west of work. After moving the bees I arrived back at my own place at 10pm and called it a day. But the next morning I still had to complete the return leg back to work, where the work truck lives, which I reasoned meant that in THIS case I was actually justified in "clocking in" the moment I got in the truck in my driveway. (Which for practical purposes meant instead of leaving at 7:30 to arrive at eight I felt justified in lollygagging about until 8 and THEN getting in the truck and heading off to work)

   And of course, you don't clock out when you run to the bathroom, so I've always made sure to only use the bathroom when I'm NOT on my lunch break, why waste valuable time!

   And I've never been sure if I should be considered on the clock while tallying up my hours. Which is a bit recursive, but mainly its more convenient to do it while at work than some other time on my own time. But today I was putting my assistant's hours into an excel spreadsheet to send off to accounting and it occurred to me that I'm definitely on the clock while tallying someone ELSE's hours so clearly we should all just do eachother's hours. ;)

   Anyone else have any interesting thoughts on the metaphysics of hours?

Vaguely Related Picture of the Day

And here is the aforementioned Elyse, my assistant, inspecting a hive today like a boss!

Current Music: Coldplay - Clocks

   This morning I finally got through to the Victorian Apiarist Association (VAA) -- the beekeeping club of the state of Victoria. I'd been calling them between two and four times a day for the last week because their annual conventions begins, well, tonight. They don't exactly have _any_ information about the convention on their website or anywhere on the great wide internet. Apparently it was in their newsletter, which I don't get since I'm not a member yet. My only lead had been that I'd gotten the date from the Geelong Beekeeper's Association newsletter, but they said to see the VAA newsletter for details. So all I had was the date.
   And I can tell you I was getting increasingly concerned as by this morning was pretty much the "eleventh hour." And granted the voicemail on their phone line does mention that the phone is only answered on a part time basis but boy had I been trying to get ahold of them.
   Anyway, so they finally answered and told me the town and hotel it would be in and that I could indeed register on arrival. Turns out the convention was in Wangaratta, at the other end of Victoria, four hours drive away!

   So I finished up making frames around noon, told Cato to hold down the fort for a few days, went home, threw a bunch of clothes OUT of my suitcase (it was all in my suitcase still since I just moved in the other day), and I was off!!

   Now this is certainly the most memorable thing to happen during the drive. I look in my rearview mirror and see nothing but the bull-bars and grill of a big rig right on my ass. So when I get a chance I merge into the lane to my left, the slow lane.
   But then I watch as this truck gets right up behind the next car, until it gets out of the way. And then it does it to the next. I'm talking literally half a car length, which is closer than you should get in a small car much less a giant truck. AND keep in mind that none of these cars were slow-poking it, myself and them were all going almost exactly 100 kph, the speed limit.

   Soo notwithstanding my earlier post about driving, there ARE apparently _some_ asshole drivers in Australia.

   Traffic was annoying as I passed Melbourne on the outer ring roads but then once I was out of town on the "Hume Highway" headed north it was less trafficky. The weather was off and on drizzle, but the road was pretty straight, and the scenery on either side was cow pastures and sort of sporadic tree cover. It was weird to realize I'd apparently already been this way, on a random roadtrip I went on with a friend earlier.

   Australia has some great funny place names, and when a sign came by announcing the next two towns to be "Violet City," and "Dookie" I grabbed for my phone to take a picture of the sign for y'all, but was far too slow.

   Unfortunately it was getting dark by the time I pulled in to Wangaratta, but it was about six and the initial social evening event didn't begin till 7:30. so I walked down the street to find dinner. Happened upon an indian place which sounded good. I was the only one there when I walked in which was a bit alarming but it later got quite a few more people in. The dining room was cozy and being the first one tehre I got to snag the table just beside the brick fireplace that had actual logs crackling in it, which was just delightful.
   And then when my food came (some kind of chicken stewed with fenugreek and garlic naan, and lassi to drink), omg it was to die for. Possibly the best indian I've ever had, including that place in Addis Ababa I've been raving about for years. If you're even in Wangaratta, Victoria, Australia, I highly recommend Tandoori Paradise!!!
   Spent ten minutes trying unsuccessfully to log in to yelp to give them a rave review (at the end of a tedious registration process it told me my email was already registered, but didn't like any of my usual passwords paired with that email address) and eventually threw up my hands and gave up on being a good yelp contributing citizen.

   Once the social evening began I determined there were probably about 100 people there. As usual they were mostly old stodgers and I could quite possibly have been the youngest person in the room. The few people I talked to often led off with "so you're getting into bees are ya?" which I thought was funny.

   Anyway, the conference proper begins in the morning, I'm looking forward to seeing how the Victorian Apiarists hold a convention! (:

Current Location: Wangaratta, Vic

It's time for another edition of Crazy People I Have to Deal With! It seemed popular last time so here we go again ;D

Pictured: me, not dealing with crazy people

So. I answer the phone for the Orange County Beekeeper's Association. People mostly call because they have bees in their yard they want someone to come remove immediately and they want it done for free; then there's a lot of bots that as soon as I pick up greet me with "please do not hang up the phone!" or "you will want to take this call!" and I really can't hang up fast enoug; and then there's the humans who call and want to speak to "the owner of your business or advertising manager" to which I try to invoke withering coldness in my voice as I inform them "this is not a business, this is the Orange County Beekeepers ASSOCIATION, we do not have an owner, and we do not take out advertising"; and very occasionally it's actually a person with a real reason to be calling us. Anyway, here's a particularly crazy lady who called me today:

Me: "Orange County Beekeeper's Association"
Her: "Hi this is ____ from the city of _____ and I have bees dying by the lamp in my back yard and we all know they can't see in the dark so how are they flying to my lamp and dying there? [five minutes of mostly completely irrelevant exposition before I can get a word in]"
Me: "The bees are flying to your light and getting dehydrated as they try to crawl on it and dying."
Her: "But how are they getting to the light? They can't see in the dark!"
Me: "Do you leave the light on at night?"
Her: "yes but it's completely dark all around"
Me: "Well that light is the only one they see so they fly to it"
Her: "but it's completely dark out"
[Me thinking: WTF is wrong with you?]
Me: "Well they can see that light from as far away as you can. If they have a line of sight they can see it a mile away. They fly to the light, they dehyrdate and die"
Her: "Well it never happened before"
Me: "You probably didn't have a bee colony located nearby before"
Her: "No that can't be it I've always had bees all over the flowers here"
Me: "That doesn't mean they lived there. They'll fly three miles to visit flowers."
Her: "No I think it's pesticides that are killing the bees"
Me: "Bees killed by pesticides would be dead all over, they would not be flying to your light to die"
Her: "No it's not the light"
Me: "The bee death you are observing is directly connected to the light, you can't argue that there's not a connection between the light and the dying bees."
Her: "I can't believe you don't care about the dying bees. I thought you would care about the bees dying" (!!!)(she is starting to sound very argumentative )
Me: "I do care about bee health but I'm telling you from my knowledge of bee behavior they fly to lights they can see at night and die under them. I get calls about it regularly, I see it at my own house, from my experience that clearly is what is going on here."
Her: "No it's definitely not the light"
...

Anyway, that's not even the half of it, and I remember it began with quite a bit of "the lamp is killing the bees" "no it's not" "yes it is" kind of back and forth. My coworker Jeremy was so amused by the whole thing he actually started videoing me on his camera-phone. I think it ended with her saying she was going to call someone else, in a huff.

But then this came in the mail today so I guess it's not entirely thankless ;)

And this afternoon I helped someone move a colony of bees from his composter into a hive box we provided him (sold him at cost). The bees were a super gentle exposed colony which had been in the composter about a month, just lightly smoked them and didn't have to suit up at all. The guy was really excited about it. Its fun things like this that make up for the crazy people.

But lest you start thinking I'm too nice, here's one more picture from today:

My coworker hates pickles and onions (?!?!) but loves altoids, and asked me to get her "both" flavors of altoids when I said I was stopping by 7-11. It's also a running joke that I always get her order wrong if I go pick up lunch, so I had to use my creativity to get this "order" wrong.

Disclaimer: to all you trolls who are just waiting to tell me not to "feed the trolls" again, I consider you to be trolls.

   As a sort of epilogue on that last story, about the ogre neighbors who were obstructing my attempts to help a nice old man, apparently they called the next day to say they did not consent to the bee colony being removed from their shed wall. I should have just done it, they'd never see it on that side anyway.

   Now, hives come in a wide variety of temperaments, around here. I mentioned the lovely bees in a beehive earlier which I relocated to my own yard. The day after the events of the last entry, which I think makes it Wednesday, I had another birdhouse full of bees. This was a friggen huge birdhouse full of bees. I was looking forward to another easy collection of some bees.
   When I went to go look at them the first time several stung me though, so I came back with the full suit, and as soon as I started trying to put screen over the entrance I was in a veritable blizzard of bees trying to sting me. This is the kind of bees you don't want to keep and you don't want contributing to your local gene pool.
   Now, some of our competitors insist they save "all the bees," and on any account it wouldn't actually be legal for them to kill bees as they don't have pest control licenses; but this is where I can and do and think anyone that would insist on saving really aggressive hives of bees is nuts. So I gassed them and took the bird house.
   But wait, there IS a happy ending! I still had those bees from the mailbox because I hadn't had time to shake them in to anything yet ... so at the end of the day I got home and put this big beautiful birdhouse up on the hill (sorry I don't have a good picture of it yet), and shook the postal bees into it! I guess I'll have to call it the post office or something.

   Thursday I had another swarm I didn't feel bad about killing -- I arrived at the exact moment the swarm did, which was kind of crazy timing. The guy, who was pretty cool, a captain in the naval reserves (we talked maritime stuff for a bit), had called about the "heavy scouting" that preceded the swarm, evidently, but as I showed up this huge cloud of bees was just approaching and zeroing in on one of his vents. Normally you can stand right in the middle of such a cloud of bees and be confident you won't get a single sting, but they were stinging me!! That was crazy. I knocked them right out of the gene pool I tell you what.

   Today (Friday) though, I have another happy example for you. What turned out to be my last call of the day, around maybe 3:30, was a big swarm on the fence streetside of a school. Bigness is an indication of a lesser degree of africanization, because the africanized bees tend to make many small swarms, so it had that in its favor, and when I walked over to look at it, I don't know, from a million subtleties of behavior I can just tell when I'm looking at nice bees. A bystander asked me one of the typical "aren't you gonna suit up?" questions, and partly to demonstrate their docility, and partly to test it myself, I put a finger right through the middle of the mass of bees. No stings, nice bees.
   So I get out the live capture vacuum and vacuum them up.
   As I'm just putting the last of the equipment back on the truck a guy parks behind me and comes up, asking if I'm gonna sell the bees.
   "Nah, if someone wants to buy bees they ought to get good bred bees from a beekeeper" is my response.
   He asks a few more questions and I realize he is in fact a beekeeper. "Do you ever go to that bee club?" he asks, "the one that had that speaker from Africa?"
   "I AM that speaker from Africa!!" I exclaim.
   Anyway, if he's a beekeeper that changes things. "I won't sell you these bees" I say, "but I'll give them to you."

   I call the office and they say I don't have any jobs lined up after this one (though that could always change at any moment), so I follow the guy to where his storage unit is a few miles away. He's retired, sparse white hair but very able-bodied, friendly face. We rustle up his beekeeping equipment (he'd had one hive but it had eventually failed), and well, then this happens:

And, well, I ended up spending an hour there playing with the bees / making sure they got well situated. Eventually found the queen and put her in.

Seen here we've purposely propped up the lid with some sticks to aid the rest of the bees in climbing in, Virgil said he'll go back later and remove them for the proper tight fit.

I was just having fun playing with bees at the end of a nice day and talking about bees with someone who was interested in them, but then to top it all off he tipped me $100!! O:

AND I was able to meet up for lunch today with the lovely >Anna Banana pineapple coconuts. So today was pretty much an A+ day.

Well people seemed to like my story about the other day so how about another daily adventure.

This one involves some people behaving like ogres.

I started at 0730 in the city of Orange, and from there I was sort of all over the place, but mainly in north county. Meanwhile, down in the office someone from the German national radio station ARD came by to inteview Dave (boss). Two weeks ago a German documentary crew had come by.. I guess we're "Big in Germany" ... like David Hassellhoff ;D

Anyway the highlight of the morning calls was when a homeowner tipped me this hatfull of tangerines from their tree:

This image hosted by instagram, which I'm not experimenting with. Hopefully the link stays functional.

And then I had this call up in Brea, the very northern end of our territory, practically in Los Angeles County (ie the edge of the world). The very nice old fella had bees in his back fence. But first I got thoroughly distracted by his sweet model ships!!

That is a sweet ship!!

   Anyway it turns out the back fence where these bees were was not a fence at all. High back-to-back neighbors had a shed the wall of which was the property line. The outer wall of the shed was decaying, though the inner looked intact -- looked like it would be no problem to remove just enough of the outer planking to remove the beehive. Just had to go talk to them.
   So I drove around to their side, and knocked on their doors. Almost immediately a cacophony of yapping dogs erupted from inside the house. Eventually an ogrish girl who may have been anywhere from 16-21 appeared behind the screen door and shouted "WHAT DO YOU WANT??" over the yapping dogs.
   "UH... THERE'S ... THIS BEEHIVE! IN YOUR SHED!!" I tried to explain over the din.
   "YOU'LL HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL MY MOM GETS HERE AT FOUR THIRTY!" she told me.
   "ALL I NEED IS YOUR PERMISSION TO CUT INTO THE OUTER WALL OF THE SHED" I explained.
   "I CAN'T TELL YOU ANYTHING UNTIL MY MOM GETS HERE, COME BACK AT FOUR THIRTY!" she said again. I said okay and goodbye and beat a retreat from that infernal din.
   I know there's a lot of dog lovers on here, and I've met many a very sweet dog, but I really really can't understand what's appealing about living with the kind of yapping hellbeasts that make such an abominable racket like this.
   Anyway, so I returned to the nice old fella and told him I'd have to come back at four thirty (it was around noonish).

   So then I went about my day, which involved these bees on a mailbox:

"you've got mail!"

   Which I'll have to know I removed live. When I informed the homeowner of this she said "well that makes me happy I guess, I don't know why, but it does."

   Went about my day and returned to the call in Brea just after 4:30. Took some pictures of it so I'd have a visual aid for the neighbors and then drove around to their side. On their door I find a sign, which I took a picture of but for some reason it's not transferring off my camera as an image anything else can process, so alas you won't get the full effect.
   But it read:

Do NOT KNOCK
DAY SLEEPER

Bee exterminator: please leave your number and we will call you, thank you.

   So after I rearranged my day, including trading jobs with other technicians, so I would be free to do this job at 4:30, after I drove up to the far corner of our territory (for the SECOND TIME) in the very middle of rush hour traffic, which would also cause me to be working late ... they want me to just leave me number so they can call me whenever they feel like it? And when does someone who gets off work at 4:30 have time to be sound asleep almost immediately and be a day sleeper? Getting home from work at 4:30 sounds to me more like normal person schedule.
   I heard someone walking around in there but I didn't want to arose their wroth by knocking againts their very specific instructions so I tried tapping insistently on the window but they ignored it. I left my card and couldn't resist noting on the back that I'd just driven through rush hour traffic from the other end of the county specifically because I was told they could meet me at this time.

   Went back over and killed the bees.. we'll have to remove them later I guess. It was tempting to just remove them anyway, I could have pulled those rotten planks off with my hands, but probably best not to mess with these obviously ill-behaved neighbors.

   As I was leaving I drove past the ogre neighbors house again -- they had taken down the sign and my card... but hadn't called me. Yeah do they take signs off their door in their sleep?

   In conclusion these people were being colossal assholes to me for no reason at all. Ugh.

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:

   "Sweetheart? Sweetheart you don't need to do this!"
   In response I hear only the ominous whir of a band-saw.
   "We can talk about this!!"
   Sweethea-- auuughh!" I feel a sharp stabbing in in my side.

   Though it feels like I've just been stabbed, I grimace and very carefully put the frame full of bees I'm holding back into the beehive. Once it's safely out of my hands I quickly scrape the stinger out of my side. The bee is still buzzing angrily about, though I can see the rupture in the end of her abdomen where she lost the stinger. As I flick the stinger to the ground, in my head I say to her "I think that was relatively unnecessary dear." She tries to sting me again, but I ignore her. "Yeah good luck with that pumpkins.'

   "Ah there you are Vindaloo! Everything is going well I see!" I am excited to find "Queen Vindaloo," with her distinctive slightly-burgundy colored back, on the second frame I've pulled out of the brood box of hive # 378 (nicknamed "Vindolanda"). It's like seeing an old friend I've been waiting all week to catch up with, and I'm very glad to see she's doing well, with many eggs in the frames I've looked at so far.

   When I'd met her a week before, on the last day of 2012, she was going for a walk in the grass near the hives. This is highly bizarre, because queen bees DON'T leave the hive except for a few mating flights in the first few days of their life, or with a swarm of bees to start a new colony.
   It had been a very bizarre day as well. Earlier I had found a hive with two queens co-existing in it, and just a few boxes later I'd find a bee with a bright red back, a very rare genetic mutation:

   Now I don't by any means name every queen bee, but every now and then it makes life more interesting to give one a name and follow up on her. I'd long since run through all the bee puns I could think of (Beeopatra, Stingerella, etc), so Vindaloo was kind of randomly pulled out of the air. My hypothesis is she was a virgin queen out on a mating flight, caught in the recent rain squall that had just passed through and thus grounded.
   So I temporarily put her in an empty powdered gatorade container and set about finding her a home.

   I found one hive that was a possibility. It clearly had been queenless, and had a bunch of queen cells lined up like missile silos preparing to launch their contents. Several queen cells already had the door thrown open (or at least a hole chewed in the end), implicating recently released queens (of which Vindaloo might be one?), and then I found a queen bee in the act of being attacked by worker bees. They do that sometimes if they think they have a queen already. Well okay, this hive is a bit of the wild west I see. Nevertheless I decided to try to introduce Vindaloo into this anarchy and see what happened.
   I placed her onto one of the frames. She looked around and took a few cautious steps ... and then a worker bee started quite rudely pulling on her leg.
   "Hey! Don't be a jerk!" I said to her in my head, with perhaps a real life glare. "Come on Vindaloo we'll find you somewhere nicer." I push her assailant away and put my finger in front of her, she climbs aboard.

   I found another much more suitable hive, with all the signs of queenlessness, some hatched queen cells, and none of the brawling "we're-in-the-middle-of-a-shoot-out" behavior of the anarchy hive.
   "Here you go, how's this one Vindy?" She cautiously took a few steps on the frame. A worker bee approached her and she cautiously backed away, but another worker came from he other side ... and started grooming her. When last I saw her she disappeared between two frames with three workers being very sweet to her. Now I just had to wait, since its best to not go through a hive in the week after a queen has been introduced so that they can get settled.

   It had been Christmas week. One of the hottest weeks of the year, and a particularly lonely time out in the fields. Even if I don't work directly with anyone, usually there's been people coming and going and working in the fields, but Christmas week no one was out there. Not out of any sentimentality for everyone's favorite mid-winter celebration that had been strangely transplanted here, but because all the crops had been harvested and new ones not planted yet. So no one was in the fields, and when I was in what passes for town around here, all the shops WERE closed for the holidays. And I'd drive past the plastic snowmen and reindeer in front of houses filled with relatives gathered for the holidays, and feel weirdly disconnected, since with no relatives here and weather I don't associate with Christmas, it felt like just another day to me.
   So it was just me and the bees out there. And I found myself talking to them more and more. Usually not out loud, that makes me feel a bit too crazy, though I'd often greet them in the morning with a vocalized "good morning bees!" And in my head I'd thank them for being patient with me when they were well behaved as I took apart their home and examined it "room by room," or I'd chastise them for being rude or saucy if they were a bit over-enthusiastic about stinging.
   "Old Greg" whom I used to have the misfortune of working with, used to gleefully exclaim to the bees things like "How do you like THAT bitches?" and "this will give you something to think about bitches!!" but that seems a bit rude to me. In my head, any bee, even if its in the very act of stinging me, is a sweetheart or a dear (though perhaps a bit impertinent) -- I try to avoid "honey" because that would just be cheesy, but sometimes it slips in.

   This week it looks like there'll be no talking to bees or anyone else for me though. "Ex-cyclone (tropical storm) Oswald" is paying a visit. It's not even 10am and we've gotten 4 inches of rain today, the main road into town is out and its not even worth looking at the narrow roads among the fields much less the mud tracks within them. As I look out my window it looks to be coming down sideways. Hope the bees are doing alright.

Current Music: Billy Joel - You Might Be Right

   42 queen bees showed up on Thursday morning. I hadn't been expecting another load of queens, and when they arrived I wasn't sure I'd be able to find a use for all of them .. we didn't have terribly many queenless hives left and not enough boxes to make terribly many splits (ie, making two hives out of one original, for which you of course need a new queen, as well as a bottom box). And we're getting these queens for $12.50 I guess, which is a really good price, but that's still $525 in queens and one doesn't want to waste a number of them.

   And it only occurred to me a little later that if I hadn't found a use for them all by the end of Saturday, I couldn't take the day off on Sunday -- since they don't do well when not installed in a hive there's no way I can take a day off leaving queens yet to be installed somewhere.
   And thus began a frantic effort to inspect as many hives as possible to find places to put the queens. And I thank my lucky stars I didn't have to see Greg all of last week because he probably would have just used half of them to kill and requeen hives that weren't doing terribly well -- but the thing is the queen is by no means necessarily the problem with every weak hive and a lot of good queens would be wasted that way. So anyway I was able to pile through hives by myself to sort it all out.
   Saturday morning I still had 12 queens left. I skipped "smoko," the mid-morning break you get even if you don'[t smoke, and I skipped lunch, and by around 3pm I had used them all and added four or so more splits to the growing line of new hives (26 this week).

   Unfortunately, by the time I HAD eaten and showered and recovered from my day, I wasn't in Bundaberg itself until 6pm. I was once again intent on staying overnight in a hostel in town to be able to go out and drink and socialize with people other than my alcoholic roommate and crotchety coworker.
   Unfortunately nearly all the hostels' receptions closed at 6pm. In one of them there was still someone sitting at the reception desk but she pointedly ignored my tapping on my window and finally waved me preemptorially away (the hostel staff in this town seem to be infamously callous and rude).

   It was beginning to look like I might have to just head right on back to Moorpark! A whipped out the laptop and broadband modem and started calling down the list of hostels, starting with those with the most stars. Most didn't answer.
   One near the top of the list I had skipped over because it was just a bit out of town -- East Bundaberg Backpackers. They actually answered their phone, and said they don't usually take one nighters but if I came right over they'd fix me up. Long story short, having to resort to calling them was the best thing to happen to me in that town -- Christine, who manages it with her husband, was and is soo nice, and all the backpackers actually seemed really happy there (as opposed to the "serving time in the gulag" atmosphere in the other hostels I'd been in in town). Everyone was all hanging out together for the Saturday night and a whole bunch of us went out to the one club in town (the Central). Altogether it was just fantastically fun.
   Also they had a young cat hanging out on the premises. I forget his name though. I miss having a cat about.

   Sunday morning I called the guy about the room for rent in town... but it turns out someone already took the room. So instead, after having breakfast in town, I spent the day driving around the area being touristy. First I headed up to Port Bundaberg / the Port Bundaberg Marina to look at the boats, then followed the coastal road up to Burnett Heads, where the Burnett River meets the sea. Walked around the jetty there, and saw a sailboat with tanbark sails that tugged at my heartstrings.
   From there my plan was to head clockwise around the "peninsula" -- it's not really a peninsula but as there's no bridges across the Burnett past Bundaberg, and the sea is on the other, it, well, sort of is. Passed a turnoff for the Mos Repos turtle rookery and decided to check it out. No turtles were rookering, since I guess they do that at night, but it had some very nice beaches (pictures tomorrow maybe).
   Continued on to the town of Bargara. I called that fellow who lives there who I'd met in Brisbane but he was busy. Had lunch there, and determined that they didn't seem to have a nice beach. The beach in front of my front door may well be the best one in the area!!
   From there I headed back to Bundaberg, but stopped at "the Hummuck" on the way -- apparently it's the remnants of an inactive volcano, and is the reason this whole area sticks out from the sea.

   Arriving back at my place in Moorepark I was immediately reminded why I wanted to move out -- I walked into the house and immediately wanted nothing more than to get out again. It was hot and stuffy in here and Sam was running his rice cooker again, a thing which seems to take hours and makes a constant loud hissing noise.
   I stuck around just long enough to drop my stuff and change into swim trunks and I was back out the door again. Walked down to the surf, wasn't sure I was going to go swimming, but the water was so warm and inviting I just kept walking out until I was floating in the surf beyond the breaking waves. Probably swam around out there for at least an hour, maybe closer to two. The sun was just setting when I went out, slowly did the backstroke watching a trilobite shaped cloud turn yellow pink and orange and findally dissipate amid the stars and giant fruitbats of the night sky. Was reminded why I don't want to move out.

   I am seriously considering moving into the East Bundaberg hostel though. It would be a 20 minute commute as opposed to my current 4 minute drive, and rent would be $160-170 a week as opposed to 100 here, but it seems like it would be such a fun place to live. Wouldn't be able to go on random sunset swims anymore though.

   Also found myself actually NOT dreading another week of work starting tomorrow ... until it was confirmed I'll be working with Greg again tomorrow. Its not even not getting along with him so much as things don't get done right when he's around. He doesn't understand that I'm supposed to be in charge, and he doesn't seem to understand a lot of important things about good effective efficient beekeeping. It drives me insane the amount of time that gets wasted working with him and things that get done wrong. Though Trevor did give me permission to say that he (Trevor) said anything I'd like to pretend he said about what we need to do, so that should help.

   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.

   Had my last day of work at the Bee Caves today, at least for another six months or so. About ten hours from now I pick up whirled from the airport. (:

The Other End of Hiring
   I wear a wide variety of hats at work, and today it was the Human Resources Hat. We're starting to get into the busy season so it's time to hire some assistant technicians for the bee control business (and ideally someone competent enough to be trained at beekeeping as well).

   I posted a job on craigslist the other day, intentionally vague as per Dave's instructions, for "Field Technician." Within an hour we had 40 applicants, 24 hours later we had 107.

   I sifting through these today to identify the ones worth following through with. It was interesting to be on the other side of hiring, being as, like most people, I've been on the applicant side much much more.

   Looking through the apps, there were lots and lots of electricians for some reason. Also, I always felt kind of sad to see people in the apps who were in their fifties and seemed like they were clearly qualified to be doing something that pays better and is less labour intensive.

   With so many applicants I didn't have time to give them much of a look, so had to find ways to rapidly skim through them.
   People who just attached a resume with no comment I'm not taking the time to open the document and investigate. A few people just emailed asking "I'm interested in this job how do I apply?" Uhh you just DO, dumbass. You think I have time to ask you to do the obvious?
   While the job doesn't require exquisite writing ability, the way I see it if they can't string together a few error free sentences to try to impress me, they are not someone I'd trust to do anything well.
   Had SEVERAL applications for male applicants coming from female named email addresses. This makes me picture some lardass sitting on his couch while his fed up girlfriend/wife says "I'm tired of you sitting on your ass all day I'm going to apply you to some jobs!!"
   A few had their job objective as "to use my skills as an electrician..." or "use my skills as a forklift driver..." or such. Sure write something specific that fits what you're applying to... but make sure you change it before you use that same app for somewhere else!!! Doesn't impress me very much that I know you really want to be a forklift (he seemed very qualified to drive forklifts though)
   One applicant mentioned he had several years of pest control experience, mentioned having the licenses our guys have, and even mentioned specifically that he had experience with bee calls ... needless to say we're definitely not hiring him. Yep. I asked the guys if he was one to follow up on and they all said no in unison. People who already learned somewhere else come in thinking they know how to run the place and give everyone a headache. We'd rather train our own people.

   As to who I did move to the "follow up on" pile, the magic words were "likes hard work" "totally fine with long hours" and "not afraid to get dirty." The "high score" if you will:

Labor intensive? Weekend shifts? Extended hours? This is exactly what I've been looking for! I'm not afraid of getting my hands dirty and would enjoy some actual work as opposed to a desk job tucked away in some office. If what you posted was true, I'm excited!

I'm a hard worker looking for a job.

   By and large people who go on about how perfect they are for this position (which I had givin them no information about mind you) and how they'll be the best thing for the company kind of turned me off, but things like the above, that's what I like to see.

   So we made a pile of a dozen or so to email to come to inteview. Before we do that though there are two we emailed immediately and will interview before even contacting the other ones.
   These two are the two former marines who applied.

One is supposed to adjust the curves so the black on that label that I know is actually very black looks as black as it should in the picture right? I don't actually know how to do that.

   People are funny. They do a lot of things just because other people are doing them, and sometimes they don't do things specifically because other people do them. Once upon a time I wondered why suspenders ever went out of style and looked it up. Turns out it was better fitting pants around the turn of the century ... and the fact that women started wearing them so men abandoned them. Apparently men had worn their hair long for most of history, until the first world war -- then if you were drafted you had your hair shorn short (for lice) and if you had long hair you were a suspicious draft dodging hippie (not that hippies had been invented yet), and that perception continues today even though it's long since no longer suspiciously abnormal not to serve time in the army.

   I like to wear combat boots. I like having a single pair of shoes that I can wear hiking, out and about, slogging through snow, or polish up and wear when I'm trying to look dashing. Specifically I wear paratrooper boots for a variety of reasons (to protect against landing in a swamp and getting a boot full of water, they are higher and more watertight, which for me means better protection against bees).
   When I first showed up with them at work the lads teased me a little about my alleged "stormtrooper" boots. They all wear standard work boots. And you know what? They all get stung in the ankles.
   When I work with my boss doing something intensive in the bee yard, every single time he has to wrap duct tape around his ankles, because work boots and bee suits don't overlap enough (seriously look at this - he does that ever time). I've never gotten stung in the ankle.

   The other counter argument they've made against my boots is that my boots are black rather than brown. Bees are definitely more attracted to black when they're on the war path (it's the colour of a bear's nose, the only vulnerability on the beast), so they say "yeah have fun with all the bees swarming your feet." And you know what? They're right, when the bees are all good and stirred up I look down and my feet may be veritably covered in bees. But the way I see it, every bee on my boot isn't a bee on my face, and I've never been stung through my boot.

   Really, to me, tall black boots make so much MORE sense than small tan boots, that I think the only reason they DON'T wear boots more like mine is because such boots are suspiciously punkish. They are Good Hard Working Working-Class Americans, and they wear Working Class Boots. Yeah have fun getting stung in the ankles guys.

   Last time we went out to the bees Dave finally had enough of getting dozens of stings in the ankles while remain entirely unscathed, and ordered a pair of paratrooper boots himself.
   They arrived yesterday, and the lads all made fun of him.

Picture of the Day

Apparently this is preferable to god forbid wearing boots that look military

   Two people got fired at work yesterday. And we only employ seven people!

   Well one won't know he's being fired until tomorrow, but we made the decision today.

   So as I arrive yesterday morning boss Dave and junior technician Bob are already having a heated argument. It seems Bob is sick and Dave wants to send him home but he adamantly doesn't want to be sent home. I think he must have been saying that if he goes home Dave is going to hold it over his head or something because somehow Bob managed to escalate getting sent home for the day rapidly into getting sent home permanently. Dave confiscated the keys to his truck and everything and told him to call someone to come pick him up (since he'd drivin the company truck to work).
   Bit of an awkward moment: while Bob was out waiting to be picked up it came time to do the coffee run (Dave buys everyone coffee every morning), so I have to ask "um... should I ask Bob if he wants anything?" ("yes").
   By the time I returned Bob had been unfired (typical), and gladly took a sickday and went home for the day.

   Shortly it came time for new guy Mike and I to go out to the bees to finish what we were doing yesterday. I was looking forward to enacting my plan of subjecting him to progressive talk radio, but I was waiting till he tried to put on Rush Limbaugh before putting it into effect and he never actually tried today (see here for why I planned to do this). But the drive to work was good, I was actually in a pretty decent mood and he seemed to be as well and was yammering about shit I didn't care about and I was politely pretending not to be entirely disinterested in his thorough analysis of how great metal bands are.
   Just around the corner from the bee yard he said "Hey let's stop here and put the suits on before heading up to the bee yard." To which I responded "No the bees shouldn't be riled up yet we'll be fine putting them on up there, I don't want to make a big production out of it."
   Arriving up at the yard I parked in the middle of the yard (we have bees on three of four sides of a relatively square plateau that's maybe 50 yards to a side) and jumped up on the truck to get the suits. He's standing just outside the passenger side door and almost immediately hollers "Man I'm trying to piss here and I'm already getting stung!!!"
   Naturally, my reaction was: "You're trying to piss RIGHT THERE?! ON THE TIRE?!? Why didn't you go to the bushes on the edge of the yard?!? I don't want the middle of my bee yard to smell like urine!!!!"
   Anyway when he'd finished desecrating the vicinity I tossed him his suit and he jumped in the cab to put it on away from the bad bad bees. Meanwhile I took my time putting my suit on standing on the flatbed.
   Finally he emerged and commenced lighting his smoker. I had to wait for him to finish with the lighter so I was just idling about for a moment. I turn around and there's a fire in the brush at his feet ... AND HE HASN'T NOTICED!!!
   Granted this could theoretically happen to anyone.. well, no, because of the seriousness of the consequences I would expect anyone using a smoker near brush to pay extreme attention to whether or not anything is catching fire. And further, due to the overwhelming gravity of the potential consequences (recall if you haven't already that this area is routinely ravaged by national emergency level wildfires), it ain't no small thing to accidentally start a brush fire.
   Anyway, this story is only just getting started.
   So THEN, he has his smoker lit, so I ask for the lighter so I can light mine.
   "No." he says "Tomorrow if you stop before we get to the yard so we can put our suits on you can have the lighter, but because you didn't I'm not letting you have the lighter today." (!!!!!)
   I promptly turned on my heel and called Dave. "Um... we have a problem." had a short convo in which I mentioned that the guy had already almost started a brush fire and was now refusing to give me the lighter, then had to dissuade Dave from coming out there immediately. While I was having this short conversation Mike left the lighter on the truck bed and went over to the hives to start working.

   Awhile later my smoker had gone out, as it is wont to do, so I needed to relight it. I went to the truck but the lighter wasn't on it. Went over to Mike and asked for it.
   "Bring it back to me when you're done though"
   "I think it would be better to leave it on the truck where I don't have to go through you every time I need it"
   "No bring it back to me."
   "Is it... your personal lighter?"
   "Yes"
   "Is there a company lighter on the truck?"
   "No"
   "Well we should get one on it"
   "Yeah you should get one" (but of a background, I ask him every day before we head out if everything is on the truck, since he's the one that cleans the equipment and such, so he's basically responsible for making sure it's all ON the truck. If the only piece of a critical item of equipment on the truck is something of his he's gonna be a weiner about, I don't consider it "on" the truck, and if he's going to give me attitude about how _I_ should make sure it's on the truck, well he's talking like he's fired already)

   Anyway, we went about our work. He had a tendency to every so often go get in the cab of the truck to take off his veil because there was a bee in it or something (note I went through the day with about ten bees in my veil, never felt the need to empty them out). As the day went on he started spending more and more time in the cab of the truck until for the last hour or two he was spending more time in the cab than not.
   Around 3:30 I was working on a hive he had already been through but hadn't found the queen, and he was sitting in the cab of the truck. He rolled down the window and hollered at me "the bees swarmed up and killed the queen!" while making urgent hand motions that I should just get on with it. Well that makes no fucking sense that the bees would do that so I just kept on looking for the queen, but it did explain some things.
   Namely, in the past two days I've found and killed 10 queens and not been able to find the queen in 5 hives. He's reported killing 19 and not finding her in 2. At first I was feeling very concerned that he was so much better at finding queens than me, but after hearing his ridiculous explanation for why this queen should be declared dead I'm more confident his higher numbers are just the result of being more careless ... and no longer confident in the quality of his work at all.

   About ten minutes later I missed a call from the office. I waited ten minutes for him to finally get out of the cab and then I got in to call the office back (can't operate phone with leather gloves on, can't take them off out there). Notgonnalie I was planning on venting to the office about him, but was going to at least say we should return because he's not working any more, BUT ... he hopped back in the cab almost immediately. So I just told the office I was returning their call and we were still working. Then I hopped out and went back to work.
   He sat there for a few minutes I think trying to decide what to do now since he had been assuming it was time to go home but had just see me say it wasn't. Then he rolled down the window and shouted at me "Hey man I'm getting really stung up here we need to go!!!!"
   "Dave told us to stay until this job is done. I wouldn't call it a day if I was getting stung either. If you want us to go home you need to call the office and convince them to tell me to head back."
   A few minutes later I get a call from a rather confused Amy in the office. I walk down the hill so I can talk to her about the whole situation. Do end up saying we should go back due to the fact that he's no longer functioning (and the only remaining hives are hives we've already been through and the queen is probably just in a corner somewhere right now and we'd have better luck another day when she's on a frame). Also I right off the bat noted that it is my recommendation that he be terminated (and she said Dave agrees and they've already prepared his final paycheck).

   Now I try to look at it from his point of view, and he probably thinks I'm a crochety hardassed asshole, BUT, I would never ask him to do anything I wouldn't do:
   (1) He acts like its a crime I wanted to put the suits on in the bee yard, but I did that myself (and of course the appropriate thing for him to do would have been to just have me give him the suit in the cab and maybe go over my head and ask Dave to ask me to stop outside the yard first);
   (2) really, I wouldn't have stopped working myself until either the job was done or it was somehow impossible to continue (such as darkness was setting in, it started pouring, or I got I dunno 220+ stings).
   ?(3) He apparently told Amy he had holes in his suit and had 40 stings (first of all because I think he's a weiner I'm going to go ahead and assume the holes he's talking about are the openings at the front and back of the zipper that every suit has that bees can sometimes get in (also he had specifically wanted THAT suit), second of all I'm gonna assume 40 is an exaggeration). I once got 130 stings on a job and did I stop working for a moment until the job was done? No I did not. I'm pretty sure any of our lads in the bee control side of the business would keep on working for the rest of the day if they got 40 stings. It may seem like a lot to a non-beekeeper, but if you're going to be employed as a beekeeper you need to be able to suck it up and not be stopped by 40 stings.
   Additionally, the APPROPRIATE thing to do would have been for him to immediately inform his supervisor (ie me) that he had holes in his suit. He never told me this. If he had, I would have immediately traded suits with him. When we had only one pair of good gloves yesterday I let him wear them and wore the rubber ones bees can sting through. I've been using the janky smoker. I may apparently be a hardass but I won't ask anyone to do something I wouldn't do and I'll always put myself in the more precarious position than my subordinate.

   So yeah. Today he finds out he's out of a job ... and I'm back to beekeeping directly with crazy hardass Dave.

Totally Unrelated Picture of the Day

Some Guy tries to shoot a plane.

Oh speaking of that downed Air France jet, some Air France life vests washed up on the beach near Dave's house. This was months ago, but it was still kind of eerie.

News Item: Bees Brains Morph to Avoid Mid-Life Crisis

I'm at work right now but later I'll write about the lawsuit we just lost ): and my pet bee, Melissa.

Also I just got a call from my favourite law firm - they want me back (as a temp). It's been a year and a half since I worked for them, I feel honoured they even remember me. (:

   I thought it was rain water.

   I mean, I'd let a bunch of the gallon jugs that had formerly contained jug-wine (before I turned it into brandy) sit outside, and it had rained recently. Sure it had a cap on it, but I'd just moved all the jugs around and have a tendency to put caps back on the jugs (because thats the best way to keep the caps and jugs together).
   So I decided to take a swig of that nice fresh rainwater.

   Firstlyofall, I had neglected to take into account that it had been sitting in the sun, so it was bound to be rather warm. Secondlyofall, it turns out it wasn't rainwater.

   So I lift up this big gallon jug and tilt it back to give myself a nice gulp of rainwater. But instead, hello burning-hot heated brandy!!! O_O

   All distilled liquor comes out crystal clear you see. The colour comes from barrel aging.

   It burned like it was at least 180 proof!! Amid visions of having just consumed a dangerously high concentration of ethanol I desperately spit it out. A quick search provides nothing to support it but I thought I'd heard somewhere that drinking close to pure ethanol is dangerous and can cause that alleged blindness. Perhaps just another alcohol myth. On any account, at the time, in my shock at how much this rainwater burned, I imagined that being superheated the alcohol had somehow risen to the top and I'd consumed pure alcohol, and for a moment the thought of going blind flashed before my eyes. (I think it only tasted stronger than it was because it was hot)

   But then I didn't go blind, and was left just cursing myself for neglecting to label a jug. All brandy has since been contained in the barrel (where it is already beginning to have an amber colour!).

   Now, I was telling this story to the lads at work the following day, and barely had I started when they all looked at me with disgust.
   "You ... were going to drink rainwater?!" ventured one of them. It was clear this was a point of shock for all of them.
   "Um... yeah? Its distilled water?"
   "Around here? Acid rain!!"

   Seriously people. Yes I'm sure we have some pollutants in our rain. In fact, a quick search around the computer internets reveals Southern California rain can have a pH of 4.2 to 4.8 (as opposed to "natural" rain at 5.6), but I can't see any reference to bad health effects from drinking that.
   Now consider, lemonade has a pH of as low as 2, and fresh apples have a pH of 3.3 to 3.9 (source and more!). The fact is, the danger of acid rain isn't that its going to dissolve your face off or is poisonous to drink. The harmful effects of acid rain almost entirely consist of the fact that it alters the pH of entire ecosystems and in extreme cases corrodes things that are constantly out in the rain. Many organisms, from fish to plants, and especially micro-organisms, cannot live in the wrong pH. The loss of some of these causes a cascade failure down the food chain and ecological devastation.
   However, I'm pretty sure I've subjected the contents of my stomach to much more extreme doses of pH. Moreover, in my particular corner of the terra firma, we don't have smog and our rainstorms usually blow in from the sea.

   This discussion, however, brought to mind a montage of recent memories: of every person at work refusing to even so much as smell the honey-brandy liquor I had made, of Jeremy saying he simply would not try the coffee Dave was going to make from the beans on the tree in his yard. Times like this, I can't help but think, wow, you guys are so OC.

   I mean, its RAIN WATER people.

Drops of iodine seconds after being introduced into a bucket of water. Used to sterilize brewing equipment in preparation for bottling.

Ink blot test anyone?

Current Music: Radiohead - All I Need

My co-worker Jeremy and I just finished eating Taco Bell for lunch (I had three chalupas, for those following along at home).

"Was it as good for you as it was for me?" I ask Jeremy (actually I feel rather unsatisfied)

"Oh yeah! I think I need a cigarette now." says Jeremy, pretending to take a cigarette out of his pocket

[Jeremy pretends to smoke for a minute]

"Why are you still here?!" he exclaims.

EDIT: Headline of the Day: "OMG: Russia entrepreneur looks for $$$ from ;-)" -- excerpt: "Other Russian Internet entrepreneurs reacted to the effort predictably — >:( "

Current Location: work (lunch break)

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The Agrinautica

Tales of a Beekeeper Errant

Entries tagged with work

Third Week of Plague

The Autumn of Society

"Social Media Campaigns"

Slinging Honey

Hours

06 of 30 - Bound for Wangaratta!

Crazy People I Have To Deal With II

Yet Another Day in the Life

Ogres Across the Fence

Venting! "Cost Effectiveness"

Too Much Time With the Bees

Weekend in East Bundaberg

Stirring up the Crochets Nest

A Day in the Life... d:

Hiring

23 of 30 - Boots on the Ground

05 of 30 - Firing People

Avoiding Mid-Life Crisis

LJ Idol - Week 18 - Rainwater: It's Not What You Think

Quote of the Day