The wack-a-doo golden sisters in the top bar are back  in business. After all the swarming this spring, they were briefly queen-less. I installed a queen, but she didn't do much the first couple weeks.  I was so discouraged that I'd just about given up that hive as a lost cause. I opened the hive this weekend and there were two combs of pretty solid brood but they were in the wrong spot in the hive for going into late summer. When I started rearranging combs to put the brood at the end as it should be in a top bar, a couple of the honeycombs were attached not only  to each other, but also to the sides of the hive body. It was a mess, those bees are wack-a-doo. I broke two of the combs, tried to tie them back onto the bars with yarn (sticky mess with bees climbing up my pants legs) I finally gave up and just decided to harvest it . I'm hoping there's enough time for them to replenish their stores. I'll feed some of their honey back to them this fall. They got their licks in, I came away with three stings on my hand and one on my arm which brings me up to a total of 12 for my beekeeping career.

I met the new neighbors who moved into the long term vacant house beside me and they seem to be quiet decent people.

Then I took a basket of goodies from the garden and a jar of honey to Jay. I miss our Sundays at the bookstore, miss Hyde Brothers, miss so many things. I wasn't really expecting much of a response from him, but  surprisingly he agreed to meet and have that long delayed conversation about what went wrong between us. We actually sat across a table and ate food together and then I invited him back to the house to check out the bees.  He talked about anger, which I still don't understand and won't respond to. He apologized, but an apology can't erase the emotional pain his abrupt exodus caused. We talked of other things, news of our families and our homes. I had a lot of problems with pronouns, kept using the words our and we which don't really fit the  situation anymore. He left much too soon, and for about 5 min. I was in a state of elation and then I just broke down sobbing. It was so good to see him, but nothing is fixed, nothing is solved, his situation hasn't improved and neither has mine. All I know is that I've never stopped loving him and I don't know where it goes from here.

Now, I'll always associate this book with this time we spent together.