30,000 bees and the training documentation

I recently installed 30,000 bees into two hives. About 3 pounds of bees per hive. I wasn't stung once.

A week later I went to back to check on the hives--one colony was a little smaller, not quite 3 pounds, so I wanted to make sure the queen was alive and well and reigning over her brood. I took apart the hive boxes, found the queen in one frame and again, I wasn't stung. Such friendly bees.




But it’s intimidating when you first open the box and see a frame covered in bees.




You take a deep breath and gather your courage because they can smell the adrenaline coursing through your veins behind that beekeeper's veil.


I'm trying to figure out some potential training material. I feel like 60 pounds of bees have arrived on my desk. The PDFs look the same but the reigning messages are different. We have the marketing bee, the motivating bee, the suddenly-so-much-advanced-programming-detail bee. QJulia set bee-- that one took a lot of royal jelly to rear into a queen. I've just spotted the reductions bee and the familiar Control-flow bee. Okay, this is a messy hive.


I'm now thinking that the new user guide table of contents should be used to rear new queens. Let’s turn those topics into slides with voice over. Yes, we can reuse some of the slides from the PDFs but we’ll disinfect them first like old bee equipment. The user guide table of contents has the makings of a fully-functioning hive. No one wants to get stung. My work is done here.

Fear of Sharks

Six people are killed by sharks annually but in that same time twenty-six million sharks are killed by people.

In previous drafts of my novel, a shark enters the waters of the final chapter. The shark indicates that the main character has overcome a major obstacle in her life-- a portent of positive change.


However, the final draft of the novel has a different ending, for various reasons of which I can't disclose just yet. So no shark. The new ending works well, but I'm partial to the shark. Perhaps I’ll allow alternate endings.

I'm learning to scuba dive, so sharks are on my mind.

Recent lessons in scuba diving have included:

Losing one's mask underwater--everything is suddenly blurry and your nose is exposed to the water, but you're still breathing from the regulator (mouth piece).

Losing air -- the instructor turning the tank valve to the point of no pressure. You immediately signal you’re out of air. A diver equated the sudden loss of air to sucking on a McDonald's milkshake through a Tim Horton's plastic stir stick.
My favorite test, the one that scared me the most, was a failed regulator--air is forced out of your regulator at 3000 pounds per square inch. (The garden hose/fire hose pressure comparison). You have to tilt your head; otherwise the pressure will blast the mask off your face. And with the regulator away from your mouth, you sip the air bubbles. Naturally, it feels like you’re going to gulp water and choke and drown. You need to learn this because you could be a 100 feet down--it's not like you'll hold your breath and swim to the surface in time. After a few tries in a shallow pool, you've got the technique, but you really understand the fear of drowning. And you really understand how it's vitally important that you stay calm. Vitally important.

I think scuba diving is preparing me to stay calm for when the regulator, or the mask, or the valve changes for the novel. Breathe deeply because there might be rejection (or acceptance) of the novel. I might need to find a publisher myself. I might need to self-publish. The fear won’t be from the shark, it will be in me, in how I manage this sudden new reality. Sip the bubbles and surface slowly.

(Shark photos)