Motivation

Today started out with low motivation.

Belladonna did not go to school yesterday so I had the benefit of her company.

Yesterday, I ran around and took care of first-day-of-school administrative tasks.

Today, on a scale of one-to-ten, my motivation was about -3.

Until I took a walk around the block.  That is three miles, or about an hour.  One advantage of being retired is that I only need to measure time to with fifteen minutes or so.

I picked up around the house for half an hour.

I made at trip to the grocery store and ran into two other retired gentlemen.

I whipped up a bunch of breakfast burritos to streamline getting the troops out the door ready to face the day.

While cooking the filling for the burritos I got a call from my next door neighbor.  We will call him Captain.

Captain supplied the eggs for the burritos.  He dropped off three dozen eggs yesterday.  I think he wants me to know how much he appreciates being able to mow my 4 acres (or so) of fenced in pasture. 

Captain called me to let me know that one of the "trap" hives I had put out in the spring had been successful.

Click on picture to make larger

This is known as a beekeepers dilemma.  A 3 pound package of bees + a queen is worth $80 in mid-April.  This swarm has had no time to build up stores to make it through winter even though we are in the middle of goldenrod, the strongest nectar flow of the summer.  I have about 40 acres of idle field to the east of me that is about 30% goldenrod.

It is 99.9% chance that this swarm is doomed without some intervention.  So do I invest in 40 pounds of sugar to buy a lottery ticket that has 50% odds that they will survive through the winter?

I will need to build a super (top box) to put the sugar in.  I will need to make hard candy.  I found a very-simple recipe on the internet.  Mix a tiny bit of water with the sugar so it has the consistency of damp concrete and press into form.  Wait three days.  Remove.  I want to mold the hard candy into something resembling honeycomb....that is, inch thick slabs with 0.35 inches between them.

Motivation found me.