Fresh Squeezed, the new Juice Verrone novel that Bonnie Biafore and I wrote, is now officially published. And, we can sell you an eBook – either Kindle or ePub – now. As in right now. Today. Plus, because the major retailers haven’t gotten their hands on it yet, we are offering a 20% discount for our current readers. Just four bucks gets you an eBook. Or, if you – like me – still prefer their books to be actual paper, we are also pre-selling the print book (or real book, if you’d rather) for $14.00 including free shipping. Just visit www.bonnie-james.com. All the choices are right there. (Oops – outdated link. Just hit that “Contact” choice up there or down there and we can do the deal.)
One important note: because of some contractual obligations the ePUB version of the book will be temporarily removed from sale on July 29, 2012. It will be back, but if you want one, now’s the time to get it.
The whole publishing part of the book’s creation has been a real eye-opener. The amount of detail: nit-picky, WTF-do-they-need-this-for, fill-in-the-box-because-we-told-you-to detail, is unbelievable. And it is a one way street. We have exacting specs to follow, everybody else; not so much. You’ve probably all seen the cover. It was developed based on a template size, specified by our printer, of 15”x12”. The book is going to be 5.5”x8.5”, which the keener observers among you will see is not a multiple, factor, or real number ratio that would convert to 15”x12”. Okay, the width of the full cover is really 11”, plus a bit for the spine, but that doesn’t work either. It boils down to having to build the cover art not knowing the final required size, then completely finish the book, calculate the spine thickness, and receive the template. It was only at that point that we learned that the cover is not supposed to fill up the entire space on the template, just the bit that the cover needs. Which in our case was 11.79”x8.5”. But did they tell us that? Nope. We had to go back, revisit the cover layout and squash it all down to fit in the space provided and send it off with the exact, down to the gnat’s eye-winker, measurements that a 5.5”x8.5” book requires. That measurement specification is one one-hundredth of an inch.
Except.
They don’t hold themselves to the same level of performance that they demand from us. They have a slop factor some twenty-five times greater than that allowed us. But, and this is the fun part, we have to plan for their slovenly setup in our cover layout. Despite creating artwork with engineering precision they could be off by up to an eighth of an inch in any direction – or within the cover itself – and we have to plan for it. Jeez.
It was back to the artwork, tweak the cover some more and eventually produce a cover that was bigger than the size of the book.
But we were still not done. The overall cover size got bigger, but the important parts in the middle which we didn’t want spilling off the page got smaller. All to make sure that their screw-ups wouldn’t affect our book. It was definitely a learning experience. It makes me almost wish there were somebody in charge to set the standards and hold everyone to the same level of exactitude.
Someone like a king, or a queen.
But maybe not.
As you remember, a few weeks ago I reported on the tragic and unexpected demise of the queen bee in one of our two hives. The one containing the Italian bees to be precise. As I went through that hive I found frame after empty frame filled with nothing but air. Normally this lower part of the hive – called the brood boxes – would, coincidentally enough, be packed with developing brood: AKA baby bees. In our hive, nothing. No baby bees and, more importantly, no recently laid eggs. In nature when a queen bee meets an untimely end, the rest of the hive is able to make a new queen. They do this by spoiling a newly hatched larva with a diet packed with what is called royal jelly. All bees get this high-test food for the first few days and then their diet is switched over to a mixture of honey and pollen called bee-bread. To build a queen the nurse bees keep feeding it royal jelly and – presto – a queen is born.
This sequence of events presumes that there is an appropriate age larva – less than four days old – available to fatten up. In our case there apparently was none. The hive was doomed.
Enter the beekeeper. Uh-oh! Exactly.
We did have an ace up our sleeve in the form of the other hive. New beekeepers are advised to start with two hives so that there is something to gauge each against. If there is widely different behavior or conditions in one hive compared to the other, then an investigation should be pursued. A second hive also provides a pool of resources to draw on, namely wax comb, honey, and, most importantly, bees. In this case I needed very young baby bees and newly laid eggs. If I took a frame of resources from my strong hive then, from these new bees, my troubled hive could raise a new ruler. I snatched out a frame on which I could see eggs and larvae and stuck it in the queenless hive. Now they had the resources they needed to make a new queen.
In manner of confirmation, one of the symptoms of a queenless hive is an abrupt drop in the friendliness of its bees. Typically I can go into either hive without wearing a veil or gloves. As I was working on our troubled hive I was first chased away by a guard bee who was getting tired of me mucking around inside the box. Bees have this very distinctive sound when they’re angry. It sounds not unlike the noise of a kamikaze fighter as it dives through the sky in a WWII movie. I was hearing that noise so I moved quickly away from the hive. It wasn’t exactly a panicked rush. But it was close. I put on the funny hat with the veil and resumed work on the hive. I had just about gotten it sealed up when I heard the noise again. Bam! The bee attacked from inches away and stung me right on the knuckle. I sealed up the hive and, with my hand now swollen to the size and color of a pomegranate, I let them rest.
A week later I went back into the hive, this time wearing the full pussy-suit. I extracted the frame I had stolen from the strong hive and, right where it should have been, was a fully built queen cell. Because queen bees are so much larger than worker bees, they get an oversized cell that looks very much like a peanut. There was even a nurse bee head-down in the cell feeding the presumptive larval-monarch in preparation for her coronation. Another day or so and the cell would be capped. Eight days after that the new queen would emerge.
I didn’t want to disturb the hive at that critical time, but I was concerned with a possible population drop in the hive due to the fact that there had been no new bees hatched over the past few weeks. This time of year a worker bee only lives about six weeks so a precipitous decline in the population could threaten the hive’s survival as much as remaining queenless. Once again I drew upon our stronger hive and took another frame with capped brood, nurse bees, and a little honey, and gave the whole thing to the weak hive.
It surprised me how quickly the foreign bees were welcomed into the hive. There was a little buzzing around initially, but a few minutes later everything was peaceful again. I guess that as long as you’ve got something to offer, you’re welcome in the hive. I began putting the hive back together again so that all would be calm once the new queen emerged from her cell. I was checking frames in the top box and something caught my eye – a larva. Then another, and another, and another. I flipped the frame over and was greeted by a field of capped brood. Oh shit.
And this is one of the Mysteries of Nature. The hive had a queen and she was laying eggs. But two weeks ago, she was not. Somehow, for some unknown reason, she decided to take a break and then start back up. Her little vacation did put a crimp in the honey gathering ability of the hive, so I’m glad that I reinforced the hive with some new members. But I haven’t a clue what will happen when the new queen emerges. The old queen could kill the new queen before she exits the cell. They could battle it out with the victor taking over. They could even call a draw with both queens in one hive; a condition that’s pretty rare but well documented.
At this point it’s anybody’s guess. So much for the benefit of having someone in charge.
For me, I think that might be the ultimate appeal of any activity. Whether it’s micro-farming with chickens and bees, or slogging through the details to get a well put-together book on the shelves; it’s what I don’t know that keeps it interesting.