The view from the back of a police car pretty much never means good news. In the ambulance in front my wife is receiving treatment on two shattered wrists after a very hard fall while we took "a quick hike before dinner." We were miles from the car, but thankfully along an easy to find road.
We did the full show: 911 call, ambulance ride to an emergency room with a 4-hour surgery featuring the full Home Depot catalog installed in each wrist... and once the initial panic ended, reality started to set in for what this injury would mean for our autumn plans.
She started with zero use of her hands but soon regained enough finger function to put in her own contact lenses and some other simple things that are hard to have someone else do (no picking up anything of any weight though, including toothbrushes, utensils, etc.) No driving any time soon either.
The recovery will be long and the days are very, very full with one person trying to do all the work of two people in a very busy lifestyle and labor intensive hobbies we can't neglect.. like those nine beehives lurking just out of sight of the house.
We were also adding in several hours of occupational therapy a week, further crunching what we used to pleasantly refer to as "free time." It's all very necessary but very exhausting. We've had help along the way that is greatly appreciated, but now 5 weeks post-surgery we're mostly back on our own.
Before getting into what this means for the bees, I want to point out that taking care of my wife is actually the very best part of all this -- I enjoy the "inadvertent closeness" of brushing teeth, hair and eating meals.
It's kind of like how the pandemic meant the "bonus time" of having our kids remote learn from home with us, which allowed for a lot of daily moments together that we would never have had under normal conditions. This injury has made it acceptable and necessary to be together the vast majority of the day when I'm not physically at work. I hate that it happened, but what a blessing came with it, as being with my wife has always been my favorite place to be.
SOooooo... The bees.
We don't know. The long-term hope and expectation is that we'll both be back in the apiary and BOTH be able to lift boxes, manipulate frames around and do all the really intensive finger-hand-wrist strength moves that are necessary to properly care for our little ladies. We are not yet considering what happens if that is not possible... All energy is being focused on rehabilitation and the work to get back to normal, not the "what ifs."
The near term reality is that the bees need pretty constant care RIGHT NOW and I have been doing all of it alone. That includes the autumn honey harvest. YES there will be autumn honey this year-- but as I write this is remains in our home's side hallway while I figure out how to manage the extraction and (likely) coordinate some help. I can't really begin to guess how much, but I'll say maybe 50 pounds? That's a pretty wild guess though.
Our previously announced presence that NHIPA will go on AS SCHEDULED. We will be there!
We will be selling honey here! #honeybees #honey #rawhoney #beekeeping pic.twitter.com/EpIYtirySO
— DandelionApiary (@DandelionApiary) August 29, 2022
It is likely to be our ONLY sales event until 2023-- so DO PLAN to come and buy honey if you are interested. I'll update on Twitter if I'm able to get the autumn honey ready for sale in time or not-- it is my goal. There will definitely be plenty of awesome Spring Honey available too so:
Come get some H O N E Y !!
However, as previously mentioned: Limited delivery in the McKnight Road / Route 19 (North Hills, NA) is something we can probably work out. We are also willing to ship via USPS (see the Current Prices page) with payment in full, in advance. Please contact us by email FIRST.
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