Bee a trainer

In my travel I look for the 'Trainee' badges on the work shirts worn by people with sometimes awkwardly smiling faces—the probationary wait staff at restaurants. It is not so much that I change my behavior when I get a less experienced person assigned to help me, but I try really hard not to do anything that would add to their stress level, working as a newbee employee.

Less often I spot the "Trainer" badge on the staff person who is distantly hovering to make sure that nothing goes wrong, and to answer questions. Any new job requires that we learn hundreds, no, thousands of bits of information—from food servers to bank tellers to keeping a hive of bees. There is a special skill set needed to be a good Trainer. You need to be patient, you should listen carefully so you understand the Trainee's question or issue, and you absolutely need to know what you are talking about, at least at the level you are expected to train.

I am not an instinctive trainer, but had to learn—in some ways the hard way. Both of my parents were active volunteers, mainly in 4-H programs in Kalamazoo County but also for the entire state of Michigan. I know that together they gave over 100 years of their time to the young people in the community, and now that I am back in the area, I continually meet people who are eager to tell me that Mom taught them how to put in a vegetable garden and can tomatoes, or Dad helped them learn about woodworking. They were great instructors for insect study, with Mom as good at insect identification as I was, and Dad in charge of making wooden display boxes to enter into the county and state fairs. Together, they helped many young people earn blue ribbons.

About a decade ago my life was in pretty drastic evolution (newly divorced, asking who am I and what do I want to do when I grow up?) so I tried to start a new career path, and ended up as a coordinator at a local hospital. It was the best paying job I have ever had but I got fired, walked to the door. I was hired to be a trainer, but was still a trainee myself because my unskillfullness in handling one employee’s noseyness lead to a justifiable termination. I was not my best in front of the people I was hired to coordinate, and they did not need to be exposed to any more skills that caused hospital management further headaches. They were good at that when I was hired, in fact, that is why I was hired. Oh, well.

My evolution continued. Unemployed, I sold off my bee book collection (about 48 linear feet of great books) and wrote. I wrote about a lot of different things, and even have a novel out there that nobody buys. Gradually I got reconnected with the beekeeping I had always done and focused on writing two monthly articles as well as three bee books. That’s my new life plan: write and travel, as well as fix and eat some great food and drink with friends. I did a lot of acting and directing at the community theater level, painted, went on spiritual retreats and cleared some long-term cobwebs from my brain. In many was it was good that I got fired that day.

Mark Nepo

I’ve just started a five-month class with Mark Nepo (www.marknepo.com), a poet and spiritual leader. I discovered his The Book of Awakening (2000) when I was in New Haven the day after the last SNEBA (Southern New England Beekeepers Assembly). The book was for sale on the church bookstand. I read that he had been a teacher in Albany, NY near where my son went to college, and where SABA meets every year. But the final dot was connected when I saw that he now works for Fetzer Institute (www.fetzer.org), a Kalamazoo based foundation that puts on programs about love, compassion and forgiveness, using such people as Desmond Tutu and the The Delai Lama as speakers. The class I am taking is not part of the Fetzer program—my fellow classmates are not the rich and famous (well, maybe they are, and I just don’t know it), but ordinary people who know some of the same beekeepers I know and have instructed.

The first weekend was filled with a lot of reading, sharing and personal journaling, something I was doing more regularly a decade ago. Maybe blogging is the new journaling—it does not feel the same typing on the laptop rather than scratching in a bend and weather-worn notebook.

Nepo’s one reading was a repeat of the “you know you are getting old” email forward most of us have received. It is the one where “you know you are old when your back goes out more than you do”. The lesson at hand was the reference to “you know you are old when you get to the top of the ladder and you realize that you put the ladder on the wrong wall”.

Is your ladder against the wrong wall?

If, like me, you have been putting your ladder against the wrong wall—something you do not have to be old to do but often older to recognize—then this may resonate with you as it does with me. When I put my ladder against the hospital coordinator wall I had clearly picked the wrong wall. This was a great paycheck, but a stressful and unhappy place for me to work. Of course, it took my abrupt termination for me to realize how unhappy I was, and how wrong that ladder was for me to climb.

Nepo’s reading explored the fact that many people, men traditionally, fail to realize that they have put their ladder against the wrong wall until they are ready to retire. I think that is why some people, like me, announce that they will never retire. Others look at the ladder they climbed over the decades and getting nothing back from it. Too many people look at the wall and don’t look for another one by dying. This is such a waste.

Compared to a decade ago, there are more beekeepers now, and many seem to better prepared to deal with the issues of green beekeeping, supporting local food movements, urban beekeeping, and providing more education for the general public and the beekeepers in the community. When I compare my Mother’s involvement in training youth with the lack of involvement with family, neighbors, and friends, I realize that she had a special ability to push herself into a teaching/mentoring position even when in her 90s. These ‘coaching’ positions kept her going. She had lists of things to do every day of her adult life, and that included people to call to ask to help with her vision of what needed to be done. I was on that list often. This has encouraged me to make up my own list, and use it as a blueprint for teaching others about bees, or whatever I happen to be doing in the future.

1. Build Teams—How many organizations are run by a strong leader who refuses to ask for help? Often these same people complain that nobody will help with local meetings. We all need to learn to include others, even if we do not think that a person will do as good a job as we will (and that is a pretty common view that our Ego’s provide). Make that list of jobs that your organization needs to have done, getting input from the rest of the club. Include everything from finance to cleaning up after the meeting. If you are using an outside speaker develop a plan to host, support and compensate the invited person.

2. Ask the single person counting the spots on the ceiling! —If you are in a meeting and you find someone all alone and counting the number of holes in the ceiling tile, go over and ask them to help. At the registration table, with the newsletter, with the coffee, with folding chairs at the end of the meeting. You will be in the best position to see how that person responds (there are very few people who really want to be ceiling spot counters), but most do not. “Could you help me for a minute?” is one of the questions most folks are ready to say yes to. Just ask.

3. Bee Social—Ask to be a host/hostess for a speaker by inviting some of the club members to join the speaker for dinner before or after the program. Many clubs need to cut expense, and if you are able, offer to host the speaker in your home. Some will decline for a variety of reasons (John Kefuss offered to put me up in his hay loft and I flatly refused). Some of my favorite bee clubs like the BYBA in Connecticut and the CCHBA in northern Texas host the speaker at a local restaurant. It can be a bit awkward to ask someone for dinner at 4:30 pm but allow time to eat, have a conversation, drive to the meeting and get everything setup by 7 pm.

4. Master and share technology—My former life as an extension specialist included the policy that all slide projectors be set up and focused BEFORE the speaker starts to speak. It really annoys me to go to a meeting and see someone fumble with the laptop computer, projector and remote as people sit and wait. Volunteer to set up all the equipment before the speaker starts, and hand the the speaker the remote with a clear set of instructions of what to push (and what not to push).

5. Offer to run the light switch—Okay, this is extreme. But how many times have you been at a meeting where they send for the hotel or facility employee to find out how to dim the lights? Offer to do this in advance and be ready to work with the speaker(s). In this and the example above, for every minute you save for the speaker, you provide a gift to your follow attendees so they have more time to hear what the speaker has to share.

6. Bee A Trainer—Even if you are a new beekeeper you can share what you know, however limited. If you have put together a few boxes of bee equipment and frames, you probably can show someone else how to do it.

7. Bee A Teacher—In spite of the bad things people say about teachers, not everyone can teach. If you have BOTH the knowledge and the ability to share that knowledge, you should be teaching. A friend of mine is very knowledgable about bees, but he fails routinely as a teacher. In fact, he has scared folks away from bees and beekeeping because he is such a poor teacher. I have suggested he mentor a few folks who use his ideas and let them teach. Making up a powerpoint presentation is just the start. Can anyone read those slides? Does the program make any sense?

8. Bee A Mentor—Mentors are teachers too, but often in a one-on-one or small group situation. I like to think this is how I do field sessons with bees, since I ask each beekeeper to work the hive, open the colony, smoke the bees, remove the frames. I already know how to do this, and I will Model the way I do it if I find the new beekeeper struggling. But then the hive tool goes back into the hands of the newbee. Only with patient and clear instruction will folks relax a bit and enjoy the process of opening the hive. Mentors are needed by all new beekeepers to share local conditions. When do the dandelions bloom? What is in bloom right now? Several bee clubs have mentor sessions an hour or so before the main program. Like the attendants around the queen bee, a small huddle of beekeeper trainees form around each mentor to obtain local knowledge.

9. Bee A Coach—Coaches are people to provide encouragement and training. Beekeepers who watch their colonies die during a late winter cold snap will need to be pumped up to get more bees just like a swimmer needs encouragement to make a difficult dive. It is both cheerleading, psychological softening and inspirational motivation that is necessary to keep beekeepers keeping bees. When you look at all the problems bee colonies and the bee industry face you really can appreciate the need and role of good coaches. We lack this in our industry, don’t we? If you have someone who encourages you to stay in beekeeping, who cheers your successes and works you through your unskillfullness or bad luck, you are one of the lucky ones.

10. Bee A Friend—Do you have a beekeeping friend? Do you have any friend? My Mother always said that the most difficult part of being in her 90s was watching her friends and then her friend’s children die. You know you are getting old when you start reading the obits in the newspaper to see if you are sill alive. Jeff and I grew up together being the same age and neighbors. We were not there every day of our lives, but he would call me on my trips and say “What can you see right now?” He was not an easy person to understand, but he was often there for me, first in line. When he died in 2007 to a combination of cancer and heart problems from alcohol and tobacco abuse I knew that I would miss him. Everyday. How many times have I picked up the phone to call him? I have spots over all the country that I revisit and think about my describing the countryside to him.

So now I work on making new friends. Some are beekeepers but many are not. I know that some will move on and be reduced to annual emails in December. I have placed my ladder on the wall of friendships. I value the fact that I am still a friend with my ex-wife; that my kids and brothers are often friends, but not always. I have made many friends in community theater and bee clubs as I work with them. But it is the inner circle of very few close friends that takes the work, paying the great dividends.

January Birthday Party

For years Mom had the neighbors on HJ Ave get together for a birthday party — there are plenty of folks on the street that shared January for a birthday and that gave her an excuse to celebrate her own birthday at the middle of the month. Yesterday brother Jim (the Idaho brother) hosted such a party at the farm and most of the birthday hats were there, except of course Mom. She died two years ago, to the day.

Two years can be a long time or a blip on the time radar. Mom always measured the events she attended by one trust-worthy standard. The food.

"Mom, how was the meeting?"

"Not so good, the meal was terrible. I brought it home if you want it—it is in the refrigerator"

or

"Did you have a good time?"

"Oh yes, it was a potluck, and everything tasted so wonderful."

She might have been given leftovers, but might have been keeping them for herself. She loved potluck leftovers for breakfast.

---

Most of us like potlucks. Yesterday's party had a full range of surprises. Brother Jim baked Sole as a change from the usual chicken/beef/pork/ham options. It was overwhelmed by the home-made chicken pot pies neighbor Cathy made, or the wonderful salads of many kinds, potatoes and ham, and some dips and other treats I ate but did not really know what was in it. Grapes and pears from the farm appeared as home-made wine.

The plates came back clean. Most of the food was eaten. I made a huge dish of Curried Rice and had leftovers. I made it because Jim was worried about lacking a starch for the meal. We should have known better. I toned down the curry and added more butter. A quarter pound of butter seems necessary for three cups of uncooked rice, right?

The party started at 2 pm and folks were there for several hours. Some were in the TV room, others in the living (holy) room, and others in the basement where the wood stove was going. At least five pre-teen girls were in and out of the house sledding on the hill, and later playing hide an seek in the house. It has been a long time since anyone played hide and seek in that house, and it needed to have small bodies crawling into tiny spaces to feel alive again.

Bee talk with Cathy King and Craig and Sandy Fuller took place. The bee tree they removed and I showed in photos in one of the magazines, is dead. The lesson is that November bee removals are not healthy for bees. It is a bit late in the season. The neighbors all like the bee students on the farm. I enjoyed the conversations with all the neighbors, and see the role that Mom filled in keeping the neighborhood in communication with each other.

The neighbors called Mom the Queen or HJ Ave. She worked for that honor and enjoyed the role. They respected this 93 year-old woman and considered her as a role model.

Mom would have liked the afternoon. The food was very good.

Orlando, FL, American Beekeeping Federation Meeting

Friday night and I want to get in a quickie for all the blog monitors out there. Two days of Sideliner program went very well and the room was pretty full if not SRO most of the time. Thanks to a huge bunch of beekprs for helping.

Typical meeting frustration--best weather and I am inside. Will change that in a bit. In the dark.

The drive down was long but not eventful. I took three days and stopped in Boston (GA) to visit the Bests, a beekeeping family from Michigan. There are also here at the meeting.

The new book is selling well, so this is good.

Had a great meal at Fish Bones across from the Hotel. Some of the best lamb chops I have ever had. Rest of the meal was average. Good company though. I have trouble paying $40 for a fish dinner when daughter Beth can pull something out of the freezer that is just as good and we know who handled it...

More will follow after the meeting is over.

Cheers!

"Give yourself the right to be happy"

George said that to me a number of years ago. And I wrote it in an essay I now have in my hands. It is something I wrote in the first part of the last decade—I found it today because of my resorting of the piles of stuff I have in my house. By hiring a housekeeper twice a month I have been forced to clean house myself. I wrote this when I was writing to feel better, to crawl through the fog I was in, and because I had co-founded a writer's group.

George and I had been in a show together and become pretty close in a short time period, as one often does in a show with a small cast. I was talking to him at a party, leaning against the granite countertop (in a kitchen with an acre of black granite), talking about each other's lives. I figured it was my job to listen to him go on about a failed eight-year relationship. Instead, George gave me a gift.

"Larry, give yourself the right to be happy," George said.

I stood dumbfounded for a second or two as it hit me: that I have made a mission of my life to help other people get through their crises, that I keep forgetting to be happy myself. Also, I have operated on One Day At A Time for the better part of a decade, and maybe for most of my adult life.

I thanked George for giving me a gift by saying that I should let myself be happy. In the following weeks I kicked the idea around. and wrote quite a bit—some of which I will likely share in future blogs. As I watch people I often wonder if they are happy. Others radiate happiness so much I am suspicious it is all an act. When I happen on some talking head on TV or listen on the radio, I often think that there are many unhappy people running our media and certainly our country. Then I turn the TV or radio off.

George and his ex-partner sold their house. George moved to Boston and that was the last I heard from him. Our friendship was brief but intense. It was open and sometimes a bit raw. But our friendship was honest, and since that talk in the kitchen, I have given myself the right to be happy. I know there are days I forget, and I get busy and don't look happy. But inside I am. Especially if I remind myself. Finding this pile of paper was like getting the gift from George all over again. Thanks George.

And if you see me smiling at you, smile back. I'm happy.

Tuesday night dinner and talk

Sheldon and I agreed to meet at Zooroona Restaurant on West Main St. for an early dinner Tuesday night . This is a new place run by the Mandwee family from the Middle East, and who own Tiffany's Wine Shop. We shared an order of Baba Ghannouj that was top rate, with large pieces of eggplant (grilled) with diced green and red pepper in a garlic-lemon-molasses, and parsley sauce. With the Al Dar Zalata (greens, tomoto, cucumber, Syrian cheese and tosted almonds) we should have stopped there.

But he ordered the Chicken Kafta Kabob and I had the Tawook, white chicken, grilled and with a garlic sauce. Both were served on a huge plate with rice and grilled green pepper, tomato and onion. We finished it for lunch today, since he is doing some shipping for me as I travel here in bit. Service was great, and with an order of Iraqi tea with cardomon, we were out the door for $20 each. We decided that a single dinner item split between us would be enough with an Appetizer and salad.

It amazes me to find such a great place to eat in Kalamazoo, and pleases me that the area supports great places like Food Dance, Oakland Bistro and Bells.

The meeting at the Kalamazoo Nature Center went well, with an audience of half beekeepers and half people-interested-in-bees. Mother Nature brought on some light snow and a few people slid off the road, but there was a good crowd for the first week of January.

People want to know what to plant for the bees.

Beekeepers want to know who is selling Michigan-produced nuclei colonies this spring.

I can use more useful information on both topics!

On the passing of Bert Martin and others

It was a 4-H event at Michigan State University a half-century ago. I was in the Natural Science Building for an insect identification contest, something geeky farm kids did then. We were in the general entomology lab under the supervision of Dr. E.C. Martin, known to all his friends as Bert. Events like this were part of the reason I majored in entomology at MSU, and eventually did both a M.S. and Ph.D. with Bert Martin in pollination research on pickling cucumbers for machine harvest, and on strawberries.

As my graduate advisor Bert Martin was a low pressure professor. We discussed research and deadlines and got to work. At the end of the day I often checked in and Bert would have a story or three to share with me. He liked to teach by telling stories, and he shared his experiences with researchers and beekeepers to make certain points.

Bert died last Sunday at 99. His wife Ronnie, a wonderful lady and MSU professor of textiles, survives. They retired to Green Valley, Arizona after Bert took his second retirement from USDA as program leader for the bee programs. Dr. Roger Hoopingarner replaced Bert as the Bee Specialist at MSU and kept in close touch with Bert. He reports that all of the family were able to visit in December.

I dedicated Increase Essentials to Bert, and he was pleased by that, sending me a typewritten note, the typescript covering the entire page. Nothing was wasted. Bert cared about a lot of people, and was passionate about beekeeping.

One of the other participants at that 4-H event was a kid from a neighboring county. His name is Clarence Collison, and he lived on his folk's dairy farm. Clarence and I developed a strong friendship, and we worked under Martin and shared an office. We were fraternity brothers and roommates. Our families vacationed together for several years and we have had some great times together.

Clarence's wife, Sally Collison lost her sister Sherry this week too after many years in adult foster care. It had fallen on Sally to care for her adult sister for many, many years.

Two other beekeeping friends lost fathers this past week. Joe Calme, along with his wife Nancy, had bees on the Farm this summer and have moved them to their farm in SW Michigan. Joe's dad lived in the same condo complex in Kalamazoo so they could be close. They had hospice care at home where he died surrounded by family. And Sheldon Schwitek's father died yesterday in Manitoba. Sheldon and I have become very close friends during the past few months, and he made two visits to Canada to say goodbye to his father. He knew this was coming and was prepared as well as anyone ever can be for a loss of a parent.

I have read that people wait (= hold on) to die until after the holidays or some other big event, like a birthday. From the experience of the past week I cannot argue with that comment. My mother, Dorothy Connor, died two years ago on the last day of January. She had just turned 93, and had been a number of parties and social events in her honor. What I have experienced in the past two years is that you really don't loose these people, for they are part of who you are and how you think. I still want to call Mom and tell her things, and sometimes I just say it out loud.

We loose people we love and respect, and life continues. We carry them with us, and somehow I believe they try to guide our lives, even if it just the memory of them that determines our path.

Why Bees, Travel and Food?

Greetings Blogworld!

I think I set up a blog spot a while ago but then I forgot about it. Now I have a theme: Bees, Travel and Food. Other stuff will certainly appear on this blog with some hope that I will keep it going. Remind me to Blog.

From a serious viewpoint, I am an entomologist who works with honey bees and beekeepers—just which of these organisms is the more interesting creature to study will be a topic of future discussion. I have a book publishing business and I write for myself and for two trade journals serving beekeepers. However, I refuse to be All Bees, All the Time. There are other sides to my personal universe that need to be explored.

The travel is a part of speaking to beekeepers and putting on training events, often with bees. I like to teach new beekeepers. I like to teach beekeeping teachers. I like to teach beekeepers how to make queen honey bees and to breed honey bees. Lately that has become more interesting to more people, and I am happy to see that. Visiting different parts of the country is a benefit or curse of this teaching, depending on my mood. Most of the time I like to get out on the road and travel.

The Food part is part of all our lives. For me this blog is an excuse to dig out a manuscript I purchased at least twenty years ago. It is a revision of the first honey cookbook every written in the United States (as far as I can determine), and was published by a major book publisher. It is time to get this book out and share it with folks, and I decided that one of the focus points would be to print recipes here and ask for responses to them.

Here is my first recipe posting:

Soft Gingerbread

1 teaspoon each of cinnamon,nutmeg, cloves, baking powder and baking soda

3/4 cup boiling water

3/4 cup molasses

3/4 cup granulated honey (I am sure liquid will work just as well)

3/4 cup sifted flour

Mix all ingredients together. Beat 2 minutes or 300 strokes. Bake in 350 degree F oven and serve with honey-sweetened baked apple and cream. Freezes well.

—Juliette Elkon Hammelcourt, The Honey Cookbook.

The recipe does not indicate what shape pan to bake this in: cake pan, bread pan or in a flat pan. I guess we are just to know what to use! It does not say how long to bake this either, so you better watch it carefully or it may burn around the edges with all that honey inside.

Let me know if this is a thumbs up or thumbs down. I hope it is good and you enjoy it.