Beau Daggett

And to hear the lamentation of the waiting list...

There are times in your life when movies like Donnie Darko make sense. You can see that inevitable terror of the future paved out before you and you can do nothing but watch it unfold.

Now tell us about the "shart waddle"

Are we putting window air conditioners in already? Really? I always try to hold off till July but we might not make it to June!

Beekeeping is as much about scheduling and timing as anything. For example, I had 3 yards to drop yesterday but I had to carefully arrange my last drop to take advantage of the new road across this secret beaver pond the landowner told me I had to go hike... #Idaho #bees

Easy to sort out the lazy. Fail them. College is overpriced and no longer teaches the things you need to get a job. Higher education has failed us.

Lol, rookies. Anyone tell me why they think this queen wasn't released? Sold most of my nucs and finished my checkbacks on the re-queens. Still have 96 hives to work through and 10 yards to move in but we have company coming and Sunday is Mother's day so swarmy bees have to wait. Ugh. #beekeeping

Wait, did @npr.org say they were following the Pdiddy case "Blow by blow?!?" 🤣😂🤣 Bahahaha, where's that donate button?

"Oh, also, you're fired. But I'm lining up a nice factory job for you."

Starlings nest above
They poop on all of my things
I will not kill them

Rolled through to LaGrande and spent $15/hr for a bed at the Royal Motor Inn till dawn. I need to remember to bring honey with me. Ruby totally would have traded me the room for it.🤣 When I was younger I'd make that trip all night. The people of Washington are probably glad I no longer do that.

Whew! Just over 24hrs for my loop of the interior PNW. I see the "Don't Pave Paradise" bumper stickers in Moscow couldn't outlast the grumpy farmer holding up the 4-lane. Kinda weird to see ribbons of asphalt through wheat fields. I took 55 to Boise to bum dinner off my mom before loading at dusk.

It's a good day to travel the spine of Idaho. I have been driving this road for 30 years now. We have such a beautiful state and the weather is great. Here you see the crystal Clearwater river as it enters scenic Lewiston. #Idaho

Talked me into it. Boring is my weakness...

Heading down the highway to pick up bees for my hobby customers. It's funny, my shop and theirs are both about a mile from Highway 95 but 400 miles apart. The fastest way is to go 395 to I84 through Wa. and Ore. but sometimes I like the scenic route. Who votes I go Idaho today? #Idaho #beekeeping

I am constantly astounded by the selflessness of bees. As my box of queens were dying, the attendants were literally giving up the last of their own water to keep the queens alive. 55/100 were doing fine after a night in a hive full of nurse bees, and are already installed in new homes. #beekeeping

All the food was gone and the water supply sponges were bone dry by the time my box of queens arrived at 5:30 pm last night. Tenders were dead but amazingly, about half the queens were still moving. I pulled the dead and got everyone into the bank. We'll see who makes it. #beekeeping

The sky gods are playing at ninepins today. Thankfully they seem to be keeping it to the mountains. Yarding out the bees into honey locations 24 hives to a yard takes a bit. Artax can hold 64 plus 8 on the trailer so I'm filling 3 yards a trip. 3 down, still a few to go... #beekeeping

Queen bank is ready but there are no queens in it. Claiming weather delays (it's been unseasonably warm and clear here...) UPS has a box of 100 queens that were supposed to be here yesterday sitting on a shelf somewhere, dying. What am I supposed to do with $3k worth of dead bugs? #beekeeping

Bucephalus is ready for his 2 hours of fame. The semi shows up tonight and we'll be hauling them off at the crack of dawn. This truck can carry 128 hives so he'll be able to get them all up to Honeybee Hollow in 3 trips. From there Artax will yard them out. Bucephalus is too fat for most of my yards

Perhaps it's more that we care to spell, and feel embarrassed if we err. Like Pirsig worried, we have lost Quality in our society and the difference now is that it doesn't seem to diminish the perceived worth of your message like it used to.

Bedtime is 7:30-8. My 6yo son is out and snoring in minutes usually. 10yo daughter is a different story. She has always been hard to keep in bed tho and usually takes a while to sleep. Early bedtime is so hard but I'm sure you've noticed it's so much harder once they're overtired and crazy-eyed.

Bees will be back from Washington apple pollination any day now. They'll be swarmy so I need to make a hundred splits right away. I have the equipment ready, except for lids. The lids are all cut but need to be assembled. And some ADD asshat has been dumping all his damn side projects on my bench.

Slushy honey is real lol

From a tiny life. A blink, there and gone. Worth far more to me than $6. Thank you, Lord, for hard lessons delivered gently in soft packages.
The rest of the chicks are doing great, and in the bathroom now, btw 🤦🏼‍♂️
End
#Chickens
#Lessons
#Idaho

But I also feel blessed. Death is part of life. The weak suffer and the strong survive. We have an obligation to the life around us to treat it with care, and dignity, and respect. But you can't save everyone. Sometimes the fight is too much to bear. I am thankful that my children could learn this.+

I have mixed feelings. I feel at fault, but not to blame. At first mad at the store for selling the weak chick, not because of the $6 but because my daughter had to deal with it. Perhaps it wouldn't have lived anyway, but the stress it endured in the few days of life it got was too much.

The smallest chick tho, which had a misformed foot and couldn't stand very well never really recovered. We gave it water from a dropper and my daughter gave it a tiny doll dish with some food but she kept going back to sleep, and this morning she was dead. My daughter, of course, cried. My wife too.

She had seen it on social media. She hurried home from work but it's 45 minutes on a good day. By the time she got there, the chicks were chilled and lying in a pile, except for one smaller one that was all alone. All still alive, she cranked up the heat in her car and with my daughter revived them.

I had an appointment for the afternoon so I put them in a cage in the shop with a heat lamp and some insulation around the sides. Admittedly, probably not warm enough but it was ok till my wife and kids got home. Until wind knocked the power out. I didn't even know it had till my wife called. +