What I Learned From Bees
My husband, John, and I became beekeepers last spring.
In early June, we picked up two boxes of bees and settled them into their hives. Everything seemed fine. The bees were active, I made sure to frequently feed them sugar water, and we dutifully opened the hives monthly for a quick look.
Protective netting and fogged up glasses obstructed our view, and the loud buzzing was a bit alarming. So, after a quick look at a few frames, we reassured ourselves that everything seemed ok.
But things weren't actually going that well. We had missed the live classes due to covid, and our YouTube self-education was only nominally helpful.
We made a classic mistake: we didn't look hard enough for the vital early indicators.
Three weeks ago, we hired Molly, a bee expert, to inspect the hives. Molly is a brilliant NC State Student who has kept her own hives for years. She found a big problem: only one hive had any eggs or larva.
Hives must constantly replace bees and will not be viable if the Queen stops laying eggs.
John and I had missed a vital early indicator. We were inexperienced, uneducated--and admittedly kind of lazy and nervous around the bees. We wanted to believe that the existence of bees outside the hive meant that the Queen was laying eggs.
Businesses have vital early indicators too. Some are obvious, like egg production; others are much more difficult to track and measure. For example if a sales manager has difficulty measuring the quality of sales calls, they may rely on only measuring the number of sales calls.
What vital early indicators should you be tracking?
Are you nurturing your contacts, checking in with customers, monitoring your team's mood?
Do you need help identifying your vital early indicators? Let's Talk
I don't know what we're going to do about the bees. Molly is coming back this weekend for the third time. The hive killed off the unproductive Queen, and last time we checked, there were three potential Queens "under construction."
With Molly's help, we will look for evidence that one of these new Queens is laying eggs. If not, we have three options:
Wait and see if the hive can survive the Winter without new eggs
Buy a new Queen
Combine the hives
Because I did not seek out the right vital early indicator for my hive, the chance that it will survive the Winter is much lower. Track your vital early indicators, you have much more than honey at stake.