Beaucaillou and Cacklewack are Famous! Fedora Loungers Make Good!

[scotrace]

Beaucaillou and Cacklewack, longtime members who met right here at the Fedora Lounge, fell for each other and got hitched, are the subject of a post at the Williams-Sonoma blog The Blender. Their lives have taken other turns, and they aren't here so much anymore. They have a bee hive for hobbyists business in Oregon now and are busy as, well.... Bees!

Here's the blog post:

http://blog.williams-sonoma.com/meet-the-maker-bee-thinking/

And they're a gorgeous couple!

 

[Dr Doran]

Wow. First Fedora Lounge event I EVER went to, in 2007 I think, my wife and I met Cacklewack/Matt along with MK, Brooksie, and one other person at the McMenamin's St. John in Portland! Cacklewack was a really nice person.

 

[beaucaillou]

Aww, thanks!! We actually met in the FL in 2007, and met in person later that year at a Portland event that was organized on the Lounge. I know we were not the first Loungers to get married, but now I am forgetting which couple it was? Our bees and business keep us buzzing (!) but we still skulk around this joint now and again... we owe so much to it!

 

[RBH]

So cool!
Thanks for posting this Scott.

 

[Olde English]

A fascinating piece - it's heartening to know that bee-keeping is on the rise in spite of everything. And yes, they certainly make a cute couple!

 

[J.B.]

Fantastic!

 

[Tomasso]

An interesting story about a nice couple who have a few million bees and two beautiful doggies.

 

[Tango Yankee]

Well, this is interesting (and perhaps timely!) I have mulled over the idea of setting up a bee hive on our property (10 acres in southern Ohio) due to, as the article notes, reading about the Colony Collapse Disorder. Hadn't thought of it in a while, until the weekend before last. It got pretty warm. I looked out the kitchen window to the bird feeders and saw honeybees all around them. Did a Google search and found that this isn't unusual for bees that come out of hibernation while their usual source of food is unavailable. To my surprise they managed to empty one of the feeders over the weekend! I know it wasn't birds because they wouldn't come near the feeders with the bees around them. Anyway, that had me once again thinking of getting a hive and setting it up.

I may soon be a customer of Bee-Thinking!

Cheers,
Tom

 

[beaucaillou]

Hi Tango Yankee! Wherever those bees are living, they are out of food and in danger of starving this winter. Natural selection at its finest. Had they been a stronger colony to begin with, they would have enough honey stores to make it through and wouldn't be stealing your simple syrup! If you have questions or want to pick our brains, please give us a call! There is nothing we love more than chatting bees. =)

 

[Tango Yankee]

Thanks, Beaucaillou!

I was afraid of that. After seeing the bees out there in the feeders we did put out a hummingbird solution for them and saw a few check it out, but after that they ignored it. What they were going for was the bird seed itself. From what I read online they can extract sugars and protiens from corn kernals and sunflower seeds and perhaps some pollen left on the seeds, but they emptied the entire feeder of birdseed!

I brought up the subject of a hive with my wife again last night. She thinks a beehive would be a lot of work. I've looked around online and found a couple of beginning beekeeping classes put on by the Ohio State Beekeepers Association and may try to get to one (and possibly bring her along), as well as doing more research. I don't think it would be as much work as she thinks it would be.

She once said that she wished there was a source of local honey as she'd read that eating local honey helped with allergy issues caused by local plants. For fun I brought home a jar of honey with the label "Local Honey" on it, but it was from about 80 miles from home. She got a laugh out of it.

Cheers,
Tom

 

[beaucaillou]

Here is a link to 1-hour class Cacklewack gave last night in our town. Maybe it will answer some of her questions? It goes over foundationless hives, which are great for backyard and hobby beekeepers because they are cheaper than commercial hives, let the bees control their own environment, and are lighter to lift and manage when full of honey. Bees are way less work than any other critter. Far less than dogs, cats, or chickens. Part of the reason why is because you are never dealing with them during the winter at all. During summer, now that our hives are established, we only deal with then about once every 3 weeks and all we are doing is making sure they have more room to build comb and honey stores. Some great books to look at would be The Idiot's Guide to Beekeeping, and Top-Bar Beekeeping, by Les Crowder. Let me know if I can help further and good luck with the wife. If it helps, I was a skeptical wife once.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/28735136

 

[Cacklewack]

Thanks for the post, Scotrace! Just think...if it wasn't for the Lounge, beaucaillou and I wouldn't have met, and Bee Thinking wouldn't exist!

By the way, a couple months ago I picked up a beautiful 40s Borsalino open-road style fedora. While I'm not posting on the lounge, I'm still representing fedoras proudly!

 

[scotrace]

I watched your presentation, Matt - very well done!

 

[randooch]

Wonderful, start to finish!

Congratulations to an energetic and intelligent pair o' humans.

Thanks for posting this, Scot!

 

[PADDY]

Great to see you guys on here again. I had the pleasure of meeting you over in Portland a few years ago. Bee Keeping is something I've been 'humming' over too and there's a local Association a few villages away from me who I think I'll contact in the spring.

 

[Tango Yankee]

Thanks for the link to Matt's presentation, Jill! I showed it to Rhonda this evening and she is intrigued. She likes the top-bar hive, and feels we should start with two hives. We used your online store to determine what it might cost us to get started and during that, after I went through the starter kit, she said we'd need to get a smaller pair of gloves for her as she'd be able to wear the other gear but she wouldn't be able to work in my gloves. That surprised me, as I was hoping to get buy-in for me and apparently got it, plus her active participation as well. Our next large purchase will need to be a new fridge, though, so we'll need to wait a little while. But I did order the books you recommended. (In my wife's family it's become a running joke that as soon as I get interested in something I immediately go out and buy books on the subject!)

We've also been researching online and she is interested in going to an Ohio State Beekeepers Association meeting or two (there are a couple of chapters a couple of counties away in a couple of directions) and perhaps a beginning beekeeping course. Coincidentally we noticed some Langstroth hives behind a house we passed coming home from her sister's house today.

I did want to mention that I love the way life goes sometimes and how it tends to lead us to completely unexpected places, such as happened with you and Matt when Matt decided to try to save a lone honeybee!

 

[beaucaillou]

Fantastic stuff, Tango Yankee!! Let us know if we can help in any way. It is amazing that we met here, saved a bee, and now have Bee Thinking and our soon to be second business (yes we are crazy) Mead Market (online and retail destination for all things mead wine and all things mead-wine related). We are so blessed and so grateful for so much.

 

[LoveMyHats2]

This is wonderful, two people having a nice future with each other, and the bee business.

 

[Tango Yankee]

Well, we've decided to dive right in!

Rhonda and I have joined the Ohio State Beekeepers Association as well as the Scioto Valley Beekeepers Association. The SVB has a class starting in April that we'll attend. We've already been to one monthly meeting and last night we went to their annual Post-Valentine's Day party and had a good time. Since Rhonda doesn't like parties or being in such social situations it was a big step for her to go.

When we've mentioned we're going to do top-bar beekeeping the response is mostly about a couple of guys in the club that had a couple of top bar hives but one says this is his last year for them and the other says he's quit on them. The other argument against them that we get is that you don't get as much honey from them, but that's a feature I was already aware of.

I just finished placing our order for two hives from Bee Thinking, plus the equipment we'll need to get started. We are going to obtain a package of bees from a member of the "local" club (we have to drive an hour to get to where they meet) for one hive and thought we'd try attracting a feral swarm to the other. We'll see how it goes!

I'm excited about it, and what's more, so is my wife! That's a bit of a surprise to me, really--I hadn't expected it. She has been trying to tamp down any ideas about going beyone two hives by telling everyone that we're just hobbiests, will just have a couple of hives, that sort of thing, and they all look at her knowingly and tell her this is just the beginning.

Scot, thanks for your initial post! It was very timely for us and helped get me rolling on something I'd been mulling over.

Matt and Jill, I'm looking forward to getting the hives from you and will be in touch to discuss where might be the best place for them on our property. I think I have a good place in mind, though it will require setting up wind breaks for the winter months but that's true for almost anywhere on our property.

Cheers,
Tom

 

[Son_of_Atropos]

A glass of mead to both of you! Bottoms up. Great story!