Jim is a business partner of mine and one of the most committed individuals I’ve ever met. Anyway, several years ago Jim agreed to be the defensive coach for his son’s pee-wee football team, the Panthers.

On a sunny Saturday afternoon in August, the Panthers played the defending pee-wee champs. From the first possession on, the Panthers trailed a bigger, faster opponent. Then late in the forth quarter, the Panthers’ scored to take the lead. With only minutes left, the Panthers were poised to beat the defending champs.

Jim huddled his defense together and began the “coach speech.” They had practiced hard all week. They knew their assignments. All they needed to do was get out there and play hard for one more series — just two more minutes.

But in the heat of a Georgia August, the last two minutes are about neither skill nor training. They are drive and passion. In the words of my daughter’s soccer coach, “You’ve got to want it.” And that’s when Jim noticed that one of his players, Carson, was still sitting quietly on the bench.

OK, time out here for just a second, lest you think I’ve lost all perspective. Yes, it is just pee-wee football. Yes, the players are only twelve year olds. No, in the grand scheme of things, even in the small scheme of the day, the outcome of the game is not important. The score should not weigh on anyone: loser, winner, parent, player or coach. In fact, I won’t relay any details about the rest of the game — not even the final score because as I said, the outcome of the game is not important. OK, so back to my story.

Jim calls to Carson to huddle up. Carson doesn’t move, he just looks at his feet.

Jim trots over and says, “let’s go son, your team needs you.”

Carson just shakes his head.

“What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” Jim queries with some concern.

“No coach. I’m OK,” Carson finally answers.

“OK then. Let’s go.”

But Carson doesn’t move. Instead he says softly, “it’s hot coach. I’m tired and I don’t want to play anymore.”

“You don’t want to play? Why not? We really need you,” says Jim.

But Carson replies, “Coach, the team doesn’t need me to play.”

“Sure we do,” Jim replies. “You play a key position in our defense. Without you, I’m not sure we can stop them from scoring. See, we really do need you.”

Carson, looks up from the imaginary spot between his feet and answers with a question of his own. “What happens at the end of the game if we win?”

“You know what happens, Carson,” answers Jim. “The same as we’ve done all season. We’ll shake hands with the other team. Afterwards, the boosters (moms) will have a snack and a drink for you. And everyone on the team gets a sticker for their helmet.”

“OK,” says Carson. “But what happens if we loose?”

“We’ll shake hands with the other team. Afterwards, the boosters (moms) will have a snack and a drink. And everyone on the team will get a sticker for their helmet” answers Jim.

“So either way we all get a sticker for our helmet and a juice box, right coach?”

“Yes,” Jim answers.

“See coach,” says Carson. “It’ll be OK. The team doesn’t need me to play because the score doesn’t matter. We get the same either way.”

And that’s what terrifies me. We have de-emphasized the results so much that our children cannot even comprehend winning and loosing? Everyone wins. Every time. The reward is no longer connected to the result.

We live in a competitive world. I can assure you that the workforce of other nations plays to win — and for keeps. When contracts go overseas, jobs go overseas. When the factory closes, the jobs are gone and they do not come back. At the end day, we can (and should) congratulate our competitors for their successes. But I’ve got some really, really bad news. There’s no sticker for your hard hat. No juice box will be brought to your cube. And in the global economy, there’s no consolation prize for being second best.

This is geared towards a windows shop not a linux shop although the basic tool needs still apply. If you’re a linux

Here’s my list.

• Subversion (or Git) for source code management
• Winmerge for comparing files and merging changes. Winmerge is open source but only available on windows.
• A full IDE: Eclipse (Java & Perl) or VisualStudio (.Net) – depending on the programming language.
• Notepad++ – you don’t always need and IDE sometimes you just need a great editor
• Agent Ransack for searching for and through files
• A debugger for your programming language
• A profiler for your programming language

It seemed to me like a good time for family discussion about economics or for that matter anything that wasn’t about web site updates. I answered with a question. “What do you mean by ‘sell’?”

“You know. To give someone something and get money,” they answered.

I thought it was a good start so I asked, “Does what you sell have to be a thing like a glass of lemonade or could you sell something that you do like wash the car?”

They agreed that if you washed someone’s car and got money in return, then you did sell something but they weren’t quite sure what. I explained that things like cars and lemonade are considered goods and acts like washing the car or mowing the lawn are called services. And we all agreed that the only things that can be sold are in fact goods & services. [Ok, so there are things like wheat futures and options but ...]

Next question. “Do you have to get money for the goods & services in order for it to be considered selling?”

“Yes,” she answered, “If you give away the goods and services, then that’s giving not selling.”

“Great point,” I replied. “Giving things away free doesn’t count as selling. But what if you received something other than money? If you got free ice cream for a week, then would that count as selling?”

They looked suspicious at first but ultimately agreed that it would still count as selling. I then continued by saying that selling is only half the picture. In order to actually sell, someone has to buy. But we already agreed the seller doesn’t have to get money for it to be a sale. Then I hit them with all the economic theory I acquired with one macro economics class. “So selling (and buying) are really just an exchange of value.”

“And yes,” I continued quickly before I bored them to sleep. “You have sold things before. Remember last fall when you collected the apples and sold them?”

“That’s right”, said my six year old. The idea of providing someone an apple for ten cents fits her idea of selling far better than my statements about exchanging value.

“OK. But what was the value that you provided?”

“The apples!” they exclaimed.

“Well, not exactly,” I replied. “Who did you sell them to?”

“Uncle Jerry.”

Uncle Jerry is our next door neighbor, but everyone calls him Uncle Jerry.

“Where did you get the apples?”

“From the back yard.”

“Whose back yard?”

“Uncle Jerry’s, I guess,” offers my nine year old.

“So you just took Uncle Jerry’s apples?” I ask incredulously, although I knew this not to be the case.

“No Dad. Uncle Jerry said it was OK for us to take the apples.”

“Did you gather up all the apples?”

“No. There were lots more on the ground. We only gathered a few of them.”

“Ok. So, with Uncle Jerry’s permission, you gathered a few apples from his back yard and put them in a wagon. Next you wheeled the apples around to Uncle Jerry’s front yard and asked him if he wanted to buy any apples for ten cents each. They were Uncle Jerry’s apples from the tree in his back yard. He knew where you got the apples and he knew that there were lots more apples under the tree. With all of that information what did Uncle Jerry do?”

“He bought the apples.”

“Not really,” I said. “The apples were already his. So what did he buy?”

“He wanted to make you guys happy,” my spouse chimes.

“Oh. I get it,” she said.

But to be sure, I posed the following. “Each year I buy life insurance but the insurance company only has to pay if I die. What’s the value? It’s not the insurance payment since I have to be dead for the insurance company to pay.”

My older child’s brow knits momentarily and then she says, “I know. You want to take care of us if you die!”

My younger one thinks for a moment and confidently gives her own answer, “Life!”

And there you have it. Next year, I’m doubling my policy. You can’t have too much life!

Note to self: Although, I found it nasty, white faced hornets disagreed. For two days, they crawled around my lawn by the hundreds. Next time, I’ll dump it down the drain.

Anyway, since that didn’t work, I went to McConnell’s farm and bought five gallons of cider. I added brewers yeast, and started primary fermentation in a 5 gallon pail. Fermentation had slowed, so today I racked (transferred) the fermenting cider to a 5 gallon glass carboy. This leaves much of the dead yeast behind so that the cider will tasted better. The carboy (think water cooler jug), has a narrow neck which can be closed with a stopper and an airlock. This way the carbon dioxide produced by the yeast will fill the space above the liquid. This keeps out oxygen and therefore the bacteria that turns hard cider into vinegar.

The bottom board

During the summer, the hive gets very warm and humid. Bees turn nectar into honey by evaporating the water, until it’s, well, thick as honey. All that water vapor has to be vented from the hive. Bees do this by fanning their wings to circulate air. To make their job easier, the bottom of the hive (called the bottom board) is screen. This lets air in, but keeps bugs out. The weather is cooling but the queen will continue to lay eggs through most of the fall. This means that the internal hive temperature has to remain between 90 and 93 degrees at all times. Last night the temperature was 44 degrees outside. To make it easier for the bees to keep warm, the cool weather bottom board is solid. While it help the hive keep warm, it does reduce ventilation so it will be harder for the colony to cure additional honey. For this reason, you want to keep the screen bottom board in place as long as you can.

Entrance reducer

During the summer, the entrance runs the entire width of the front of the hive box. The entrance reducer is a cleat that can be turned to reduce the entrance by either 75% or 95%. The smaller entrance is easier to guard as the colony population starts to drop. It also helps keep heat in. It does however, make for quite the bee traffic jam. One warm sunny days, hundreds of bees hover feet from the hive, waiting their turn to land.

Stop feeding

As I mentioned, I have fed the bees since early August. There’s now 70-80# of honey in the hive. Since, it’s now harder to fan the hive, and there are sufficient winter stores, I removed the top feeder. If spring is slow arriving next year, I will start feeding again in March.

Next steps

When it gets really cold, I will turn the reducer so the entrance is 95% reduced, cover the outside with tar paper to reduce drafts and to absorb sunlight. I will also drill a second entrance hole in the top of the hive box. This serves as a second floor entrance/exit. During winter snow can block the main entrance from the outside, or a layer of dead bees can block the entrance from the inside. The axillary entrance will let the bees get out on warm (above 54F ) winter days. Bees don’t eliminate waste inside the hive. They hold it!

We picked about 3 1/2 bushels total but ended up grinding only half. My wife, my parents, both daughters, the neighbor's child, and even my niece helped. My homemade apple grinder isn't finished and even with lots of help, using a food processor to grind apples is slow.

We pressed 5 gallons of cider. It seemed sweet so I am fermenting it without adding sugar. I also turned two quarts into spiced cider that we drank warm that night. It was very good.

For no particular reason, I decided to try it out today. I collected about 15# of apples from the neighbor's tree and ground them in a food processor. I then ran the ground up apples through the cider press and got 1 1/2 gallons (plus 1 pint) of cider. The press worked well but grinding apples in a food processor won't scale.

I added 9 cups of sugar to the cider and stored it in a 1 gallon jug, a half gallon jug, and put the remaining pint into a 1 quart mason jar. To the cider in the mason jar I added about 1/4 of a package of baker's yeast. My plan is to use the cider in the mason jar as starter if the natural yeast doesn't take in the jugs.

That afternoon, I checked again. It was amazing to see all the commotion. Man do those bees work hard. Now I know where the expressions "busy as a bee," and "hive of activity" come from. They have even removed all the dead bees from the ground in front of the hive.

Other than a quick check to make sure the queen is released, you leave the hive undisturbed for 15 days so that they get established. Otherwise, they might abandon the hive box and go live somewhere else.

There are basically three ways to hive a package of bees:

• Dump the bees out in front of the hive and let them crawl in,
• Set the open package box inside the hive and leave it, or
• Dump the bees out of the package onto the top of the open hive.

It was 54 degrees and nearly dark, so dumping the bees out in front of the hive was out. Placing the package box inside the hive seemed really easy but it would need retrieved later and the bees might start making comb inside the package box. It seemed that shaking the bees out onto the hive box was the way to go.

These bees were packaged in Georgia less than 24 hours earlier. They were in great shape. I don't think that there were 10 dead bees in the whole package. I sprayed the bees with sugar water several times before I opened the top to get the queen. The queen lives in a little cage inside the package box. The queen cage has a cork that covers a candy plug on on the bottom. You remove the cork, then place the queen cage between the two center frames of the hive. Next you shake all the bees out on top of the frames, covering the queen.

It went smoothly — no stings. Since it was cold, I didn't bother with the veil. One bee did get her stinger stuck in my shirt while I was trying to shake her off.

Ironically, 30 minutes later and too dark to see well, I go back to the hive to show my brother-in-law. I picked up the empty package box to show him but it wasn't exactly empty. I pinched a pair of bees when I grabbed the package box and got stung twice. If you plan to keep bees, then it’s not a question of if you get stung — just a question of when. At least I didn't have to wonder about “when” for very long.

Sue and I took Alex out of school for the day and the three of drove to Forrest, OH to pick them up. We left the house at 9:30. It was cold. It was rainy. It was four hours each way without getting lost. I got lost both ways. (Aside: Sue bought a new gps today)

The husband and wife team at Parsons' Gold Apiaries were great. They had an empty package box and hive set up so that they could walk me through hiving the bees.

It was 7:30 when we got home. I needed to hurry to get the bees hived before dark.