It was Monday in West Virginia. The wood line of the rolling Roane county hills stood dead and gray, a harsh contrast to the lush green of the Georgian spring with which me eyes were all too familiar. Puffy white clouds attempted to laze across the azure sky, but they were annoyingly nudged along by a pleasant spring breeze, although, it was not pleasant enough to make wearing a beekeeper’s suit comfortable. I stood in Steve’s front yard pulling on the white beekeeper’s suit with its caged hood, a hood that always made me feel like an astronaut on my own planet. The obvious difference being, this suit protected me from the annoying sting of the honey bee rather than the empty bowels of the space outside of the Earth’s atmosphere. In front of me I counted 28 bee colonies in the bee yard and hesitated for a moment, considering the thousands upon thousand of bees that I was about to face. As soon as I zipped into the outfit a thin layer of sweat immediately oozed across my skin. I moved forward into the cloud of bees that swarmed around the yard and stooped to help Steve attack a hive box with my scraping tool. As I bent over, my glasses automatically began sliding down my slippery nose.
A few days prior to my arrival in West Virginia, Steve had ordered a healthy batch of 30 queen bees for the purpose of starting new hive boxes and also to re-queen weak hive boxes in his bee yards. This is a somewhat involved process; allow me to explain the finer details of bee farming.
Prior to the start of the honey season a good beekeeper should always take a close look at all of his colonies so that he can identify the weak colonies and work to build new colonies, optimizing each colony so that it will be able to collect a significant amount of honey that will eventually transform into a significant amount of money for said beekeeper. If a beekeeper wishes to create new hive boxes to increase the overall number of colonies in a yard then he must find strong hive boxes that are bustling with activity and steal a manageable number of frames from that colony which will be inserted into a new and queen-less hive box. The selected frames must contain a significant number of capped brood, or un-hatched worker bees, that will eventually be hatched into the new hive box to help the colony off to a strong start. Shortly after the colony has been created, a new queen will be inserted into the queen-less hive box to rule over the drones and worker bees.
Now, to re-queen a weak hive box the beekeeper must first determine whether the queen bee of the colony is still alive, and if she is, the beekeeper must then assess whether she is an effective egg layer. The beekeeper can make this assessment by searching for capped brood within the frames of the hive box. If no capped brood is found, then the colony most likely contains a weak queen, if she is even alive. If she is still alive, the beekeeper must thoroughly examine each frame in the colony to find the queen and ultimately kill her so that a new and hopefully stronger queen can be introduced into the colony. This process of assessing the hive boxes is long and tedious, but is necessary to have a good honey season.
Does all of that make sense?
As Steve and I attacked the fifth colony in the yard, I frantically squeezed the ancient bee smoker to suppress a possible counter attack from the colony’s angry bees. The din of the bees’ buzz was strong, but fortunately, they retreated further down into the colony allowing us to work without being stung. After separating the second story hive box from the first story hive box, Steve assessed that the colony was weak and that we needed to locate and destroy the current queen so that she could be replaced. We removed a few frames and began poring over them.
My glasses slipped further down my sweaty nose.
“There she is.” Steve called out. He handed me his frame and instructed me to find her. I took the frame and began searching as more sweat collected at my brow. It only took a moment to find the queen scurrying across the upper corner of the frame. Initially, I had been expecting to see some gargantuan creature of great magnificence, but when I saw the queen, I was somewhat disappointed. The queen’s ass was definitely longer and narrower than the rest of the bee population, but otherwise, she appeared very similar to the hundreds of bees over which she reigned and was significantly smaller than the drone bees.
“Kill the queen.” Steve ordered, interrupting my thoughts. As simple as the task sounded, and as non-gargantuan as the queen appeared, hearing the words spoken added an odd grandness to the situation. The fate of this queen who controlled the lives of hundreds was suddenly in my human hands. The bee may be a simple creature, but I suddenly felt humbled and insecure. What right do I have to slay a QUEEN?
I stared down at her majesty with my scraping tool in hand ready to kill. And…!
I had arrived in Spencer on the evening of the 19th. The eight hour drive from Augusta was long and boring, as it always was and I felt tired and stiff when I was finally able to swing my legs out of my truck and stand on terra firma at Steve’s house. I had returned to Spencer for specific reasons which I do not wish to disclose, but I will say that it was planned that Steve and I would be conducting riding events on a massive scale for the next eight days.
My cycling “spring training” began on the morning of Friday, the 20th of April, as I lazily stretched my arms skyward, yawned, and swung my leg over my Orbea for a 14 mile ride into and out of Spencer. I had decided to warm up for the day by riding into town to locate a WIFI mooch point so that I could do some college work. The warm up was shortly followed by a three-hour ride at Charles Fork Lake, my high school riding (Stomping. Stomping Riding?) grounds. As I pedaled around the shimmering lake, I found it odd that after so many years away from these trails I could remember almost every turn and every climb just like it was yesterday. The awesome thing is that the older I get, the easier it is to ride, although, I am sure that one day I will be saying, “the older I get the harder it is to ride.”
Never say die!
On Saturday morning Steve and I loaded up the station wagon, hitched up the bike trailer, and drove south to Charleston to ride a seven-mile road time trial with the road cycling club, the Mountain Wheelers. The time trial was held in Kanawha State Forest and was relatively flat for the first six miles, but the last mile was all hill, baby. I pedaled beside Steve ATTEMPTING to act something like a road cycling coach, but I do not think I did any good. After the time trial, Steve and I linked up with WVMBA 2003 riding brother, Will Cragg, and his girlfriend Cindy, the complimentary Red Bull distribution expert. As we stood in the parking lot, Red Bull was consumed, old war stories were swapped, and shortly thereafter, single speeding commenced. Steve, Will, and I ended up hammering out a grueling four hour ride in The Forest that included trails like Davis Creek, Middle Ridge, Black Bear (Spectator Falls), Pigeon Roost, and Pine. Aside from a scary moment where a snake attempted to bite Will’s foot, the entire ride was wicked and I was stoked to have had the opportunity to ride The Forest on the Monocog.
Then, I cramped at the end.
Steve, the bike trailer, and I followed Will home to Huntington where he grilled up a sweet chicken dinner bathed in his very own, and surprisingly good BBQ and honey sauce. After dinner, Will introduced me to his personally owned business, the new and improved Franklin Outfitters, which is located in downtown Huntington. I cannot say there was outdoor gear from wall to wall just yet, but Will has a healthy start. After we closed shop for the night, we three proceeded to the Union, a hopping drinking establishment just around the corner from Franklin Outfitters, where I proved to the world that, yes, I am the Army’s worst dart thrower.
Although Cindy had promised us pancakes for breakfast on Sunday morning, Steve and I left without filling our bellies so that we could get an early start on the drive to Marietta, Ohio where we were going to meet yet another WVMBA cycling brother, Rich Holmes.
Rich lives just outside of Marietta and is a trail building MACHINE. Rich has broken his bronzed back to pepper the Marietta cityscape with urban single track that picks up directly behind the grocery store and leaves off whenever your poor little legs become to weary to take anymore hammering. I could not think of a better way to spend a Sunday of riding, except by riding the single track “Tour de Marietta”. The wicked single track is only the cake. The icing is, you guessed it! The Marietta Brewing Company!
The Marietta Brewing Company is the location in which we found ourselves after riding two hours of very intriguing single track without every leaving the Marietta city limits. Well, I do not know if we left the city limits or not, but who cares, eat the exaggeration!
I cannot rave enough about the MBC. Naturally, it is a restaurant and pub that has kick ass written all over it. I do not know if it is the alcohol, the historic building, the high ceilings, the live music, the great food, the atmosphere, or the employees, but the place has “right” written all over its ancient walls. It could have “left” written all over it, but that would not detract from the place one bit. In fact, the MBC was so awesome that Steve and I decided we would make a trip back to Marietta specifically to drink at the MBC one last time before I returned to Georgia.
I hath raved, seemingly, like an idiot.
After a few brews Steve and I hopped back into the station wagon and drove south to Spencer to finish the weekend, but Marietta had not seen the last of us.
Monday was designated as a day of rest for the lanky legs of mine. So, Steve and I picked up the slack on his bee farming throughout most of the day, stooping to attack under those lazy white clouds.
On Tuesday though, it was back in the saddle. After some more bee farming in the morning, Steve and I unloaded a mighty 48-mile ride throughout the Roane County countryside. It was fun for me because I got to revisit some of my high school era training routes at a much faster pace. You see, back in those days my road bike consisted of a Specialized Stump Jumper mountain bike frame, outfitted with some fat slicks. Now that I am more financially stable and own a real road bike, I was able to throw down at a much higher velocity. BUT as far as nostalgia goes, the legendary Stump Jumping road machine will forever be untouched by any Spanish made road bikes, blaze orange and black or not. My legs were pretty wobbly by the end of that hilly day, but I looked forward to more single speeding at Charles Fork Lake on Wednesday.
On Wednesday I actually did not ride single speed as anticipated, but I had the distinct honor and privilege of riding Steve’s ancient Gary Fisher Zigguart, complete with Husqvarna chainsaw strapped to the rack on the back wheel, on a trail cleanup mission. The Tour de Lake was quickly approaching and it was time for the local and the Georgian to get out and do some trail maintenance in preparation for the big race. It took Steve and I a solid three hours to clear all the fallen timber from our beloved bike paths: Lakeview, Charlie’s, and Trevor’s.
Would you believe me if I told you that, that night we drove one and a half hours back to Marietta just to drink at the MBC? Well, we did.
Thursday morning at Rich’s house brought us blueberry pancakes, college homework, and the trails of Wayne National Forest. I had never heard of Wayne National Forest and upon entering the area I pondered how cool it must be to live in Marietta and have such a sweet level of riding potential so close by. In Wayne National Forest one can find the North Country Trail and miles and miles of trail produced by the factory known as Rich Holmes. There are multiple other trails to be ridden within Wayne, but we did not ride them and I do not recall their names. I began the ride with a 16-tooth cog on my rear wheel, but approximately one mile into the ride I had to swap the 16-tooth cog for the 19-tooth cog. There was a lot of climbing to be had on the trails and the soggy conditions begged for an easier gear so that I was not constantly spinning out on slippery trail fodder. Overall, Wayne is extremely grueling. It took us four hours to ride 16 miles over those soggy climbs, down somewhat technical downhill sections, and back up long paved road climbs.
16 miles in four hours! Sheesh!
For me the high light of the ride was when I cleaned the tightest switch back I have ever seen, on my first try. I think it was mostly luck, but somehow I pulled it together and kept both tires on the trail while inching around that hairpin turn in the trail. It had been a killer ride and I smiled all the way back to Spencer that afternoon.
On Friday morning, I left Steve’s cabin, destined for Augusta. Things had gone really well for my “spring training” in the “good ol’ hills of West Virginia” and I hoped that my hard spent time in the saddle would pay off during upcoming rides at Andy Jordan’s and possibly a southern road race or two.
Anyway.
…Sweat dripped off of my brow. My target was clearly in sight. I thrust the scraping tool forward, striking the queen directly between her ass and her torso. In the blunt separation her yellow innards oozed out on to the frame. The deed was done. The queen had been dethroned. My glasses slipped further down my sweaty nose.
The moral of this long and drawn out story is; in beekeeping and other things, sometimes the queen bee is weak and you have to kill her so that she may be replaced by a new and better queen bee, and sometimes the queen bee is strong and, seemingly without reason, she swarms off into the wilderness leaving you to stare at an empty hive box and wonder why. Either way that the scenario plays out, you do what you have to: pick up your scraping tool, push your glasses back on to your face, and move on to the next hive.
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