photo friday

I won’t be getting my hair cut until Saturday. Is it going to snow? They can’t make up their minds. Have a wonderful weekend!

me, January 1983

My dad used to raise honeybees. There were about a dozen hives before he gave it up. People used to call him to catch wild hives out of their yards. He would let me suit up and smoke the bees when I was a kid (calms them down when you’re inspecting and removing the frames). (I’ve been stung by everything but a honeybee.) There used to be a bee supply store in Richmond and sometimes he’d have to buy a queen or drone and they came in tiny wooden boxes with screen windows and I would hold them up to my ear. The drones don’t sting so he’d let me hold them and put them in the hive. Every year we would use a centrifugal force extractor that would spin and draw the honey out of the combs, after cutting the caps off with an electric knife, then you’d pour it into bear bottles from a spout at the bottom. Their basement still faintly smells like honey.

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