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I’ve been so busy working that I’ve barely had time for anything else. However, my bees are so important to my future, that I have to make time. (diet details are at the bottom of the blog)

After using the very last of my wax to re-wax 30 frames, I headed out to the bee-yard to make my last three splits.

I always have this feeling of dread when I haven’t been out to see my bees for two weeks or more. “Will the bees be dead?” “Will they have swarmed?” “Did the storm knock any over?” “Have those damned beetles ruined another hive?” “If my hives all died, would the Democrats find a way to blame Trump?”

This dread fuels my procrastination in sort of a Schrodinger’s Cat kind of way – if I don’t look then the bees are both alive and dead at the same time.

Well it turned out that my fears were unfounded. My hives are doing great! All but one split made it… and even the hive that was having trouble with beetles, has rallied.

On that note: There is one foolproof way to kill beetles… it’s with a hive tool! No seriously. I spent 5 minutes the first day and 5 minutes the second day banging each frame out onto the lid and smashing the beetles one by one. 10 minutes saved this hive.

Now I know a lot of people will say, “that takes too much time” but it doesn’t. If you only have a few hives the time is well spent. If you have a lot of hives, this will only be a problem for a few of them – so you have to ask yourself, is it worth 10 minutes to save a hive? “Well is it… Punk!“

Anyway… I made my final three splits just in time – two of the hives were about to swarm. I did my best to move all the swarm cells to the coinciding splits – just hope I didn’t miss any.

I also re-split the hive that didn’t make it. This brought my hive total to 26. (Pardon me while I do a little dance… Ow!)

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I’m going on vacation starting tomorrow and will be gone until next week (My son and his friend will house sitting for me… that was for the burglars out there… they’re big fans of my blog.) However when I get back, there are 12 more hives that will be ready for splitting. I have the lids, supers, and bottoms… but I don’t have the frames.

While I still have lots of old brittle plastic frames, I have run out of wax… and the frames are, well, freaking “brittle”! So when I get back from vacation, I will try to build as many wood frames as possible but I will still probably buy 120 new plastic frames. Either way, my plan to reach 100 hives by the end of the year “and take over the world” is right on track.

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As for the diet: I’ve lost 22.2 pounds in 21 days

I keep having these moments where I ask myself why I took so long to just start calorie counting. However, the answer is, “It’s never been this easy before.”

The Nutrition Labeling and Education Act (NLEA) which required product labels to include calorie count wasn’t passes until 1990. Part of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 also requires restaurants to post calorie counts on their menus.

That combined with one of the many free diet apps, allows me to count calories with ease. This makes for the easiest diet I’ve ever been on. By planning my meals out in the morning, I can easily keep my calories under 2000 a day, while still eating anything I want and not going hungry.

That sounded like a diet commercial pitch, however, there are compromises. Take for instance yesterday. Since it was Easter, I wanted a chocolate bunny. The caramel filled bunny was 390 calories. So I planned out the day:

• Breakfast: Coffee with cream and sugar (90 cal) I should have ate something but I was busy.
• Lunch: Wendy’s Grilled chicken sandwich (370 cal) and small chili (170 cal)
• Supper: 7oz Ham, 2 cups of Greens, 1/2 cup Cream Corn, 1/2 cup Purple Hull Pees, and a 1/2 cup of canned baked apples (700 cal total)… and I was stuffed.
• DAILY TOTAL: 1,722 cal

Now like I mentioned before, I am going on vacation tomorrow. 5 days fly fishing in Hatch, Utah with my buddy, Tom and then my wife is meeting me in Vegas for a 3 day weekend (2 Shows, the Neon Graveyard, and a trip to the Grand Canyon in a Mustang Convertible) The whole thing sounds like a Cialis Commercial.

For the record, I had to buy a First Class ticket because I was scared I might not fit in a regular seat. The last time I flew, I was 340lbs and while I didn’t need a seat-belt extension, I just barely fit in the seat. The First Class Ticket cost $800 each from Memphis to Vegas, while the coach ticket was only $420 but with bag costs it really only cost me about $300 more.

Nonetheless, staying on my diet will be more of a challenge on vacation.

That being said, I plan to raise my calorie limit to the recommended 2,700 a day my diet app originally suggests. This will slow my diet down but not derail it. Wish me luck.