Daughter of a beekeeper

 Guess what I brought home today? Yay Yay Yay!  My Dad had bees for years in San Diego while I was growing up.  While we didn't eat any processed sugar, we went through a LOT of honey with six kids all with sweet teeth (do you say sweet teeth or sweet tooths?).  I never remember being nervous around them, and feeling instead kind of special that we had them.  There was one time a bee got caught in my 80's hair....

 

and there was also the time my cousin threw rocks at the hive, and my little brother was in the wrong place at the wrong time...

 

Poor little guy.  

 

But other than than that, with years of keeping bees we didn't have any problems.  I hope my neighbors don't freak out. Consider this fair warning if you're a neighbor :)  Anyway, my friend Sharlynn, who's kept up to 40 hives at a time, gave me my two starter boxes, and the use of her equipment, and most importantly, free consulting!  My boxes lost their residents from what she thinks was Varroa, so I've got some cleaning up to do.  That's OK because I can't order the bees until next spring.  It was so mysterious at the time she said. She went outside to check on them and they'd just disappeared.  No holocaust of bee bodies around, nothing.  From what I've read that's typical of Varroa --they fly away and then die.  She's got a supplier she uses in Salt Lake, but I've been looking around and found this Beeweaver company that claims high mite resistence, and high genetic diversity in their bees.  I may try them.

On the lifting front, I finally felt recovered enough to do a good workout today, and got within 5 pounds of my PR for back squat.  What a relief.  I didn't know if I'd ever get back my strength.  I've been so broken down lately with running, that high rep program, vacation (missed workouts), and a hamstring injury. My friend/inspiration April also posted her bench press weight giving me permission to not beat myself up over mine.  I find it's easy to let ego get in the way deny where I'm really at.

When I certified as a personal trainer, my instructor told us to tell people to bench press only from where their elbows are even with their shoulders --does that make sense?  So if you were lying on the floor, you come down to your elbows touching the floor and no further.  Behind that place is the "danger zone" for shoulders.  The shoulder could get injured there because the rear deltoid muscles are so much weaker than the big pectorals, and theses deltoids take all of the weight when you go behind parallel.  That's what I was doing after he told me that, until I found out that in powerlifting you DO go down until the bar touches the chest.  Sigh.  My pecs had gotten much stronger, but my rear delts had atrophied quite a bit. Bummer.  From 150 to 75? waa.  I still have to watch out because even when I go all of the way down, I lift my hips from the bench, effectively doing a decline press instead of flat press.  Today I kept it clean, and got a few reps out at 85 --like 3 :)  but got 5 reps at 80.  That's OK I decided.  My squat got a lot weaker when I started going all of the way down, and came back up after a while.  So it'll come back, it'll come back...

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