MR knows a thing or six about the merits of honeybees!

The Secret Life of Bees (and Me)!

Michael Ciaramella

By Michael Ciaramella

The best thing I've done all year!

It was mentioned earlier that I had picked up a secondary job but that is simply not true.

In reality I picked up a primary job, in the sense that it will be my main form of income. Turns out BeachGrit can’t compete with bees.

That’s right folks, I’ve taken up the practice of live bee rescue, or ethical excavation if you’re into illiteration. It’s a wonderful job and Derek wants me to tell you about it.

I have a friend, Jeff (who’s been mentioned here), that singlehandedly runs and operates a bee excavation service. It is called Bee Removal and functions primarily in the San Diego region. It’s one of the only services in the region that doesn’t kill the bees, which, if you haven’t heard, is a problem for the future of the world and also hungry bears.

And the bees? They’re credible creatures. Allow me to share some knowledge from my first days of work:

  • Swarms of bees are (mostly) not dangerous. If you see a mass of bees moving in a certain direction, it’s because they’re migrating to a new home. Because they have nothing to protect at this time, they have no reason to attack you. However, if you witness a swarm approach your home and focus around a roof, tree, etc., call an excavator immediately. This is the best way to avoid an infestation.
  • Bees have particular jobs. There are scout bees, whose job it is to locate potential homes. There are forager bees, whose job is to collect pollen. There are worker bees, whose job it is to build and maintain the hive. There are drones, whose job it is to impregnate the Queen. The Queen’s job, of course, is to lay the eggs (up to 1,000 per day).
  • Male bees are essentially sperm donors. The males, also known as drones, have but one job and that is to fuck. I don’t know how bees fuck, but I imagine it’s something of a gangbang with the honey-lubed Queen acting as a receptacle. Once they’ve delivered their seed, the males are kicked out of the hive and left to die.
  • Bees are mostly non-confrontational and easily manipulated. My boss often goes into hives wearing nothing more than a vail (hat with a protective face covering). No gloves, no suit, nada. This speaks both to his and the bees’ general tranquility. Further, it’s incredibly easy to transport bees to a cardboard box (for eventual drop-off to a beekeeper). All you gotta do is find the Queen (easier said than done), toss her in the box, and watch them flock to her. If you can’t find her, no worries, just toss the bees into the box with your hand, or guide them with a smoker. You are the General and they are your little soldiers!
  • Killing bees doesn’t do shit. If you’ve got a bee problem, never call an exterminator. They’ll kill the the fuckers with a lethal spray and plug the entryway, but that only works for so long. Because the exterminators fail to remove the honeycomb, another bee colony will smell the honey and find another way to reach it. In order to truly rid yourself of the infestation, someone needs to remove the the hive and clean the area thoroughly by hand.

And that’s after just two days! Imagine what I’ll learn in a week…

This job is built for me with its flexible hours, dynamic office space, and solid earning potential. That said, I haven’t been stung yet, so who knows how I’ll feel after an encounter with an aggressive hive.

I’m just happy to be learning every day and utilizing of those would-be-lounging hours.

BeachGrit is fun but can lead a man to idle. Bees give me reason to wake up at dawn and return home sweaty and exhausted.

Is this what being a man feels like?

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NY Times: Don’t Surf the Maldives!

Derek Rielly

By Derek Rielly

Little island chain ripe for terrorist atrocity says New York Times… 

If you believe the news and, frankly, why would you given it’s all in the paws of Jews and Big Pharma, religious terrorism has become quite a thing.

From New York to Kuta to Sydney, Orlando to San Bernardino to Machester, London, Paris, Nice, Berlin, Munich and so on, civilians are machine gunned, stabbed, beheaded, run over and blown apart. It’s a period, I imagine, that will pass but not before a few thousand more people die in the most dreadful manner.

Which is why it’s nice to know there are places like The Maldives where you can go and just goof off for a while.

Not only is the vacationer spared the terrorist threats that make big cities shake, but the waves rarely threaten. It ain’t the North Shore. The benign peel angle of the waves make it the ideal destination for the beginner all the way to the competent amateur. 

Howevs, even The Maldives is losing its appeal. As headlined in the New York Times a few days ago, Islamic extremism might suddenly flip the switch in that country from happy little democracy to festering pit of Western resentment.

And you know what happens next.  

Fat on a sun-bed reading the cocktail menu to bleeding out on the sand.

Let’s read.

This island paradise made news recently for a reason other than its pristine beaches and high-end resorts: the gruesome killing of a liberal blogger, stabbed to death by multiple assailants.

The killing in April of Yameen Rasheed, 29, a strong voice against growing Islamic radicalization, has amplified safety concerns — particularly for foreign tourists, a highly vulnerable group and one that the islands’ economy depends on. It is no idle threat, in a country that by some accounts supplies the world’s highest per-capita number of foreign fighters to extremist outfits in Syria and Iraq.

Here’s how the terrorist might approach an attack.

The Maldives’ unusual approach to tourism, in which a single island houses a single resort, has also meant that entire islands without robust security teams are vulnerable to being seized.

A collection of about 1,200 islands in the Indian Ocean, the Maldives hosted 1.2 million visitors last year, including over 30,000 Americans.

It was governed as a moderate Islamic nation for three decades under the autocratic rule of the former president, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. But after the country made a transition to democracy in 2008, space opened up for greater religious expression, and conservative ideologies like Salafism cropped up.

Don’t forget Bali or Tunisia, says the NYT.

The tourism industry has mostly remained off limits as a target for terrorism, but security experts say many resorts are ill equipped to fend off an attack on par with those that have occurred in places like Tunisiaand Bali, Indonesia.

A security chief from a resort in a northern atoll of Maldives said the country’s resorts are not prepared, adding that regulations and policies from the government were needed to address the issue. The security chief spoke on the condition of anonymity because of a fear of being targeted by the government, which has a history of jailing individuals who discuss sensitive issues.

Read the rest of the story here. 

Oh! And the Four Seasons’ Surfing Champions Trophy kicks off August 7 to 13, at Sultans in the Maldives. The contest stars last year’s winner Taj Burrow, CJ Hobgood, Maya Gabeira and the winner is decided after heats on singles, twins and thrusters.

One scenario: a terrorist attack forces cancellation of the event after one round with CJ leading, who is subsequently announced the winner of the shortened contest.

It’ll be 2001 all over again! 

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jetski collision
"These two fuckwits almost killed about five people today with their jetski out the alley," writes Brett Levingston. | Photo: @photos_13

Brace: You won’t believe what happens next etc.

Derek Rielly

By Derek Rielly

Ah, maybe you will… 

Jetskis in the surf. Oh they’re incomparable, even when the surf is four foot and below. No paddling. No dealing with messy takeoffs. No wave too steep. No crowd too thick to penetrate. In and Out. A happy cocoon where reality rarely penetrates.

Sometimes it does go awry. But what are you going to do? Once that little jet slips out of the water your machine is at the mercy of hydrodynamics.

Two days ago, the photographer Luke Workman, who is only sixteen, snatched this sequence of a jetski team pushing the limits (and commented upon by local shredder Brett Levingston on Instagram below).

https://www.instagram.com/p/BVjelaEjPMc/?taken-by=waterbubbla&hl=en

It’s a fine sequence. A flourish. A treasure.

As the photographer Luke Workman told the Gold Coast Bulletin this morning,

Everyone was just amazed and in shock after they fell, he got sucked backwards into the wave while his mate was in the barrel,” the Currumbin local said.

“They were on one of the smaller waves that came through as well.”

He said the pair managed to get back to their ski and continued surfing among boardriders using paddle power to battle the relentless northerly current, which speeds up in big swell on the Gold Coast.

Is there a happy ending?

Of course!

After a legion of comments on Brett Levingston’s IG saying things like “fucking kooks” and “what a fucking hazard” and “lucky no one died” and so forth, a man purporting to be the ski rider writes,

Hey mate I actually was going to find you and apologise for get angry at you. Was no need for this but. You don’t know me. Bit harsh in your comments but that’s your opinion.

To which, Levingston replies,

hey mate appreciate the apology , you were doing the wrong thing multiple times and had close calls with more than a few of my friends. I was only concerned for everyone’s safety and the potential for the fun to be ruined for everyone. Hope you get some waves, stay safe

Isn’t surfing one long happy journey!

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Mitch Parko makes the case for manpower | Photo: @dpasqualephoto

Watch: “As good as Burleigh gets!”

Michael Ciaramella

By Michael Ciaramella

Be honest, could you make one of these tubes?

And goddamnit, the whole world is in flames!

Not in the North Korea is nuking everyone kind of way (yet), but in the oceans are firing across the globe kind of way.

Just this week you could have surfed pumping waves in Indo, Fiji, Tahiti, all of South and Central America, J-Bay, Namibia, and even Australia’s east coast. The Southern Ocean is mostly to thank but also maybe climate change.

Now, before I get roasted by Longtom (again), the reason I wasn’t willing or able to chase any of these swells is because 1. I’m headed to Costa Rica in a week, 2. I’m in the process of moving and 3. I’ve picked up a secondary job (more on that later).

But back to Australia’s east coast.

If you haven’t seen it on Instagram or Surfline or mysurf.tv, you can see it now! Burleigh Heads, a famous pointbreak twenty minutes north of slightly more famous pointbreaks, went XXM the other day.

What Burleigh lacks in vertical height it makes up for with the length and girth of its member. The tube is brown and thick and everything a girl (or boy) could want. Watch and be amazed!

A mesmerizing display of tube riding, don’t you think?

I was most impressed by Mitch Parkinson, who not only took the initiative to paddle through an ungodly current and stiff offshores, but also managed to raid deeper and darker tombs than the lot of PWCunts. **Edit: Except for Bede!

That said, stepping-off into those freight trains must have been euphoric. Bede, Hippo, Bottle, and all the rest scored the tubes of our lives while we watched colored blobs move across a monitor. C’est la vie.

One last thing — Goldcoast locals, is this really “as good as Burleigh gets”? I tend to think that it was maybe 3x better in 2005, but maybe I’m just nostalgic.

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That doesn't look like a Volcom t-shirt. Do you think Georgia May is going to get fined?
That doesn't look like a Volcom t-shirt. Do you think Georgia May is going to get fined? | Photo: @georgiamayjagger instagram

Volcom: “True to this since forever!”

Chas Smith

By Chas Smith

Mick Jagger's daughter admits, "I knew about Volcom when I was younger!"

Volcom is a surf brand that was formed in Newport Beach/Costa Mesa in 1991. It was once very core and cool and its tagline used to be Youth Against Establishment. Bruce Irons used to surf with Volcom’s Stone logo on the nose of his board. So did… Ozzie Wright.

Now, I think, its tagline is True to This though the This is unspecified. Maybe the This refers to Georgia May Jagger.

Mick Jagger’s daughter is now the face the once very core and cool Volcom. She says:

I knew about Volcom when I was younger… My life has always been naturally surrounded by skateboarding and music. Even without thinking about it, I just always find myself attracted to the city, street culture and musicians.

-Georgia May Jagger

 

Let’s make this into a poem!

I knew about Volcom when I was younger

My life has always been

naturally surrounded

by skateboarding

and music even without thinking about it

I just always

find

myself attracted to the city

street culture

and musicians

If that don’t get you surf stoked I don’t know what will!

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Jon Pyzel and Matt Biolos by @theneedforshutterspeed/Step Bros
EAT BEACHGRIT SPAM!
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