Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Update on reshaping my writer's bottom and bees

The big news is that a nucleus of bees arrived yesterday. Long time readers of this blog will remember when beekeeping came easy. Then there was the attack of the mice in 2009 and starvation and frozen bees at the beginning of 2010.  A fellow beekeeper knew he normally gets swarms and offered to capture one for us, if we'd supply the hive. A few weeks ago, he captured the swarm and put it into the hive we provided. He then allowed them to expand. Yesterday, he stuffed cotton wool/sheep fleece in the entrance and drove the hive over here. A very brave man is Mr L.
 The bees have a feeder full of 50/50 water and sugar. My only fear is that the wonderful Mr L doesn't live far enough away and the worker bees will fly back to his hive, leaving the nurse bees and larvae behind. This happened when we first got bees. Starvation is never pretty and I learnt my lesson -- always feed for the first few weeks.
The recent cold weather is not doing the bees any good. Mr L was going back to feed his own bees as they had eaten up their stores because of the cold weather. When it rains, bees don't fly.Plus there is often a drought of good nectar plants in June.
My youngest is now in charge of the bees. He says that I am not to do anything because of my lymphoedemia and the potential for getting stung. There is a suspicion that a bee sting or three might have contributed to the problem initially. I will be good.
In my efforts to reshape my bottom, I have started doing the 10 minute solution Perfect Pilates. I did 5 days of their total body blast off which was excellent and had never attempted Pilates before. The fact that Pippa Middleton did pilates gave me the push. Pilates is not easy but it is less intense..in some ways. It takes loads of concentration because it is all about form. As the days went by and I began to understand more what I was supposed to do, and therefore I could work harder. I did like the fact that there was no jumping. And the back of my legs were sore so I was definitely using differnet muscles. Tomorrow means the start of the 10 min belly fat blast off dvd for 5 days. This was the first 10 min solution dvd I tried and focuses heavily on the core. I enjoyed it the first time I went through it. 50 minutes of intense abs work.
The key with this is persistence and working out every single day.
Special mention should be made of my bee suit. the last time I had it on, it was snug about the beam as it were. This time, it looked like I had borrowed a suit that was three sizes too big and I was completely swamped! My son says that as I shall not be wearing the suit that often, this is not a problem.

2 comments:

Caroline said...

Good news on the writer's bottom - it's hard work but worth it I'm sure! I was watching our local (Welsh) news last night and they had a feature on bee's and I thought "Michelle hasn't mentioned much about her bees recently"... and then today - viola - a post about them. Strange indeed , but intereting. I think bees are fascinating creatures but I'd be too scared to look after them I think! Caroline x

LindseyHughes said...

Sounds like you have a son to be proud of! Keep away from those bees.

If you are wondering where all the 'stuff' went so that your suit is now two big, it's attached itself to me.