Everyone is Looking Forward to the Honey Harvest

I picked up the extraction equipment this afternoon. After setting up the equipment and bringing the supers over, I decided to take a break and went inside. When I came back out the supers were surrounded by bears. The bears were devouring honey, enjoying happy hour, laughing at the beekeeper and talking politics and sports. Totally amazing sight to see all these velveteen bears - eating , drinking and yucking it up. The oldest bear (Ted) offered me a seat, a glass of wine and asked me to join in the honey gorging and bear talk.

We had a wonderful time - we talked Tour De France, NFL and NBA lockouts, and Politics. We even had a few bees join us.

It is unanimous the bears, bees and the beekeeper all want to see Andy Schleck win the TDF. We also agree that Fabian Cansellara is going to crush people in the time trials (after all he is the reigning time trial champ). The bears told me I should eat one of those "special" spainish steaks and have the "special" whiskey prior to racing Beach to battleship in October. These are the lame excuses that both both Alberto and Floyd have used after testing positive. We all laughed at how ridiculous the excuses have gotten for failed drug test.

Regarding the NFL and NBA lockouts - a few bears are interested in seeing the NFL get a deal. However the majority didn't care if they get a deal or not. We all had a hearty laugh when someone said that the NFL is a pay cut for some of the players coming from SEC schools , UNC or Ohio State. Universally we agreed that we won't notice the NBA lockout - but for the sake of our friend Bobcat Doug we want the issues resolved and a deal.

Once we were deep into the bottle the topic turned to politics . I made the mistake of using the word circus when I described the brewing fiasco in DC. The bears didn't appreciate me using the "C" word - bad memories of relatives wearing hats while dressed in overalls, bouncing balls and stale popcorn. They also said it was insulting to compare "C" bears to the payso's from both parties on Capital Hill and in the White House.

With that the bee's said they had to go, and wished us well with the extraction efforts. They said they will stop by Saturday as they are curious how many pounds of honey they produced. They also thanked me for leaving the deep supers for them to eat.

Enjoy the 4th of July!