100% Local Ohio | Your Cincinnati Bee Connection
Posted in Beeyard on Dec 29th, 2011
With the bees all warmly and happily tucked away for the winter, I’ve been up to this, Reader: Yes, I’m on a metal-chair buying binge (should I hyphenate all three words? “Metal-chair-buying binge?” I don’t know). I brought these six beauties home in a rented cargo van yesterday. Eighteen (18!) metal lawn chairs now hang [...]
Posted in Poetry on Dec 11th, 2011
What to Do the First Morning the Sun Comes Back BY ROSEANN LLOYD Find a clean cloth for the kitchen table, the red and blue one you made that cold winter in Montana. Spread out your paper and books. Tune the radio to the jazz station. Look at the bright orange safflowers you found last [...]
Posted in Beeyard on Dec 2nd, 2011
I’ve been handing out the coolest business cards ever. Seriously. Ever. And they all contain the address that leads to this blog. Which will (honest-to-goodness) eventually be a full-blown website. Jerod and I are working on it. But for now, that web address leads folks right here. So I’d better provide something worth finding once [...]
Posted in Poetry on Nov 20th, 2011
First Thanksgiving BY SHARON OLDS When she comes back, from college, I will see the skin of her upper arms, cool, matte, glossy. She will hug me, my old soupy chest against her breasts, I will smell her hair! She will sleep in this apartment, her sleep like an untamed, good object, like a soul [...]
Posted in Poetry on Oct 23rd, 2011
Equinox BY ELIZABETH ALEXANDER Now is the time of year when bees are wild and eccentric. They fly fast and in cramped loop-de-loops, dive-bomb clusters of conversants in the bright, late-September out-of-doors. I have found their dried husks in my clothes. They are dervishes because they are dying, one last sting, a warm place to [...]
Posted in Winter on Oct 14th, 2011
Reader, I thought you might like to see how I plan to winterize my hives. I’m probably a week or two late with these preparations—it’s already getting chilly, and I want to give the bees time to propolize the shim so cold air doesn’t come blowing in, but there’s the plan: This is the top [...]
Posted in Going Naked on Oct 10th, 2011
I think I’ve probably inspected the bees for the final time this season. Now we give the colony time to set its hive in order for winter. Which means it’s time for the colony to propolize the gaps between the boxes and to move honey to wherever it’s wanted and to cap the honey for [...]
Posted in Poetry on Oct 9th, 2011
Everyone Is Afraid of Something BY DANNYE ROMINE POWELL Once I was afraid of ghosts, of the dark, of climbing down from the highest limb of the backyard oak. Now I’m afraid my son will die alone in his apartment. I’m afraid when I break down the door, I’ll find him among the empties—bloated, discolored, [...]
Posted in Going Naked on Oct 6th, 2011
I resigned from my job. I resigned from my job without a plan for another. I think I may be finished working for other people. I am trusting the universe on this one, and so I’m focused squarely on the bees. The bees are in front of me right now, and I’ve learned to handle [...]
Posted in Hive cycle on Oct 2nd, 2010
I went out to the beehives at 3:15 PM yesterday in order to film for you the young Amazon bees orienting. They were so active that I wanted you to see them, too, Reader. I got a brief video of them, but then a bee went in my  ear and freaked me out. I slapped [...]