[Image courtesy of http://www.dreamstime.com]The City (as most cities) doesn’t have any resources to perform the logistics of a relocation, so when anyone calls the City (or County) for help, they will exterminate (public safety reasons).
Bees are interestingly resilient because their lifecycle is so short (only the queen lasts up to 7 years – which is why people like eating/consuming/rubbing royal jelly on themselves hoping to live longer – but it’s a integral genetic modifying hormone in the food that does that). Most bees last 3 to 5 weeks, so what is being observed is when a productive hive is sprayed in the daytime, 80% of the colony is usually out foraging. They return and smell the poison and try to figure out what is killing their sisters (the males are only useful once in their lifetimes and that’s to pollenate/impregnate another queen, once. Then they die.)
What happens next depends on the numbers. They will not usually attempt to reoccupy a sprayed nest, but they tend to gather nearby, similar to what happens during normal swarming (when a hive gets too crowded and they generate one more queen and the old one takes 1/2 the colony with her to make a new hive). But in the case there is no queen (because she’s been killed by the insecticide), the existing workers will still swarm, and relocate and attempt to re-raise a new queen within that 5 week timespan. If there were one or two drones left in the mix, they can impregnate a worker (who normally could only lay infertile eggs) and begin rearing a new queen (by feeding royal jelly and propolis to the larvae).
Otherwise, that particular colony just gradually dies off because the workers need sufficient numbers to maintain sufficient heat inside a new hive to raise the larvae. (workers can gather food, produce drones/males and build wax, but they can’t lay eggs as fast as a queen to regenerate an entire colony).
What you could do, if you happen to have a suitable backyard available, or another tree, is to make up a bee box home and place it up where it would be out of the direct path of anyone nearby (we even use cardboard boxes with a small 1-inch hole punched in it when we just want to relocate a colony). Then you try to get a few slabs of the old comb from the old colony from the inside where it was least likely to have been sprayed and take half and just lay it in the box, and the other half and kind of rub the honey and wax around the inside of the box. (This procedure is based upon there being an absence of bees around, of course. If the bees are still active and you do not have prior experience handling bees, I would always recommend you let trained people handle this part – they can help you learn how to do it properly, if you wish to learn about bee management.)
The smell attracts the remaining foragers and they will usually try to rebuild the colony inside the box. (which is how we end up adopting new feral colonies, if it’s not swarming season.) We can use the same technique to “capture” a wild swarm (they dont’ sting when they’re swarming because there’s no new home to protect yet). By basically taking an empty frame box and making it smell good to them and placing (or dumping) the swarm directly into the box with frames for them to build comb upon.
Without the frames, they will just attach their comb to the top of the box and build a naturally-shaped hive. You can also contact http://honeylove.org/ – which is our new parent organization throughout Southern California. Go Bees!
nb: a friend said this was useful to them, and thought it would be nice to have a permanent place to post it for people to refer to in the future.
jhlui1 – 2014-November Shinnyo Podcast – Sales and Selling How I Came to Know Something About Selling Stuff Establishing Rapport Qualifying the Prospect Closing the Deal Overcoming Objections Everyone Can Be Satisfied What Does Selling Have to Do with Spirituality? Subscribe to this Podcast (RSS) or iTunes or via Flipboard From this month’s “Shinnyo Teaching for November […] http://ow.ly/2Q5Yjo
From this month’s “Shinnyo Teaching for November 2014”:
Everyone — each and every individual person — is equally precious.
This is because deep within us we all have “buddha nature,” the nature of becoming a buddha.
As a “child” of the Buddha, everyone has that potential, which is called buddha nature. It is what makes you so precious.
And if you are precious, then it means that others, who also share this quality, are also precious.
Recognizing the value in each of us—that mutual recognition—is one of the meanings of the hand gesture—the gassho mudra—that we form, in which we place our palms together reverently toward each other.
Buddhism, and in particular the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, teaches this principle [that we all have buddha nature, something that we should cherish in each other.]
So, just as you are precious, so are others. When we all acknowledge this, that’s when we will have true harmony, true friendship, and true respect.
One of my many forays into different career paths took me to the auspicious sales rooms of one of the most polished and misunderstood selling organizations on the planet – The Guitar Center (aka Music123, ZZounds, MusiciansFriend, and a whole cadre of other pseudonyms from acquisitions and mergers over the years.) Few people understand how the professional salespeople that inhabit Guitar Center come to roost there, selling musical instruments and equipment of all sorts.
Well, it’s a “cool” job. The estimate is that approximately 30% of all professional sales people from well-trained fields such as food and beverage, car, truck and motorcycle sales, real estate and even luxury goods (jewelry, fashion, marine vehicles, etc.) have also at one time or another in their lives also wanted to be musicians or vocalists at some point – Rock Stars, so to speak.
Heavy-duty sales jobs often lead to burn-out after having to deal with haggling customer after customer, or failing to meet quota because of a lowered interest in getting out there and hitting the target yet one more incessant day. And at some point, they realize that the same stores that they browsed and wandered through in their youth, picking up and playing (affectionately known at GC as “wanking”) multi-thousand dollar instruments and momentarily living out the fantasy, also happen to require the very same skill sets that their other lines of business required, with pretty much the same potential income. Sell a few hundred thousand dollars worth of audio equipment, and you, too can have one of those Top-Dog Corvettes just like the other selling organizations like to dangle as “carrots.” The difference is, you might be selling to other cool big-name musical artists (or more often their show producers sent on acquisition missions), all the while actually “living the dream” by being surrounded by the industry of a billion musical fantasies.
Image courtesy of stores4music.com
Whereas working at a Ferrari dealership probably doesn’t get you the opportunity to drive around in an California T every night, working at a GC actually does put someone into contact with the very same instruments that the dream artists use (albeit usually the salesperson doesn’t quite have the same chops or skills to sound like their object d’ musical worship)
Musicians tend to be very emotionally-driven customers, and unlike a painter visiting a local art supply, most musicians like to feel comfortable when they’re committing to new equipment, a sort of psychological connection with the instrument (or even software, in the case of DJ’s these days). Developing that connection is the task of the musical sales professional (or MSP for short).
Every person who walked in the door of a store is a prospect, whether past, present or future. The primary goal of the MSP is to make a positive memorable impression on that person and cultivate the sale into its next logical stage (whether that is thinking about buying, figuring out how to buy something, buying something, or buying more afterwards). The goal of this impression is to establish trust and a return relationship with the customer. You “break the ice” of this cold-start relationship by demonstrating interest or concern for the customer.
As the customer may be at any of the 4 aforelisted stages of buying, the MSP then needs to figure out where that person is in the buying cycle. Is it mere casual curiosity about the item? Or is the person down to the last two contenders and they’re still not sure which to pick? Do they even know what they need to achieve their goal? And what is that goal?
If the person is at that pivotal moment of committing to buying, they usually need to have evaluated the purchase as being exceedingly positive in comparison with the investment cost of the item. This evaluation is often emotionally-driven, so the person must feel “right” about buying or there is no point in trying to finish the transaction.
Image courtesy of fearless-selling.ca Blog
At this point, there is often all of the premature purchase regrets that settle into the transaction. “I can’t afford this.” “I won’t be able to use all of these features.” “I’m not good enough at playing to warrant this.” And even, “My parents/spouse will freak if I bought this.” The MSP deals with each of these, hopefully with redirection and assurance so that none of these aversive thoughts continue to plague the customer.
Ultimately, the MSP becomes a partner to the customer, both supporting the sales process itself, as well as guiding the customer to an ultimately more positive experience with the new item of possession. Having the item must feel better than the regret of walking away from the purchase, and that is the single-most important goal of the MSP to ensure that it happens, otherwise the dreaded eventual return for credit or refund will boomerang next.
Image courtesy of wikimedia.org
What did all of this have to do with your spirituality? As a person on this planet dealing with all sorts of people every single day, our own enlightenment depends a lot on how others see us as a demonstration of our own beliefs. Effectively, we are virtually selling our personality or presence to others, and if we are not actually doing the right things to assure that process is continuously productive and positive, we can suffer the very same failed sales, over and over again (the cycle of Karma continues.)
Next month we’ll take a deeper dive into each of these stages and see what we can do to assist our own greater chances for success at achieving our goals. But think about how you feel the next time you’re interacting with a salesperson – you can tell a lot about that person’s awareness of you just by how you feel.
For more information feel free to e-mail me at jlui at jlui dot net, or twitter @jhlui1 With Gassho _( )_, James
If you Care a Little More, Things Happen. Bees can be dangerous. Always wear protective clothing when approaching or dealing with bees. Do not approach or handle bees without proper instruction and training.
Thoughts from James H. Lui 