The IRS
By: Ed Colby
At 6 o’clock this morning on our way fishing, Paul was all lit up. When he tried to pick up a 28-hive bee yard bound for the California almonds, at a location where he’s kept bees for 40 years, the new landowner told him the bees belonged to her. She said they were included in her land purchase. Then she told him to clear out, or she’d have him arrested. Now, with the sheriff and the brand inspector involved, a key party remains to be found – the previous owner – before this mess can get resolved and the little darlings returned to their rightful owner.
Here in western Colorado it’s customary to give the landowner honey in exchange for an apiary location. This agreement is sealed with the sacred bond of a handshake. That’s the way we do it. When one of my landowners suggested that her attorney draw up an agreement, I demurred, insisting that her word and mine ought to suffice. After hearing Paul’s story, maybe I should have taken her up on her offer!
Beekeeping is all about timing. Wait until October to treat for Varroa mites, and you’ll likely lose some colonies. This season, I spent a lot of time and effort persuading bees to make lovely cut-comb honey. They plugged a bunch of supers. But I left that honey on the hives too long, and when I harvested it in October, half of it was gone. The bees had dragged it down into the brood chamber, or eaten it.
I knew better. What was I thinking? But this was a lesson I won’t soon forget. Failure is the greatest teacher.
Taxes are all about timing, too, and I know better. I got a little behind. You can be up to three years late filing, and if the IRS owes you money, they’ll pay it with no penalties and even pay you interest. But if you slip even one day beyond three years in arrears, they keep your refund. I learned this the hard way.
Last week, I spent the better part of three days preparing my 2019 return. I’d misplaced some important documents, like my Social Security income statement and my earnings statement from Bee Culture. Then I pulled an all-nighter, in order to meet a deadline. It was like being back in college, with a term paper due the next day.
I did learn some interesting things in the wee hours, like the per diem rate for meals at the Apimondia bee conference in Montreal. I got to calculate my qualified business income deduction. It’s actually pretty simple, even though the government does its best to make it complicated. An unanticipated shocker came when I ran across a receipt for 30 bee hives I sold to Paul in 2019. I owed him some money. He deducted it from his payment but misplaced a decimal point, so that he deducted only 10 percent of what I owed. Three years later I caught the error, and now I get to make it right.
By now you’re probably wondering why I don’t hire an accountant, and sleep easy. In the middle of the night I was thinking the same thing. I finished at 3:30 a.m., satisfied to learn that I was entitled to a nice refund.
I have no idea how my brain works. I awakened with a start at 6:30 with the realization that I’d omitted some bee earnings from my return. Why would that pop into my head now, with my taxes just completed? So on very short sleep, I re-worked all my numbers, including that convoluted formula for determining the taxable portion of my Social Security income.
I probably made some calculation mistakes, which the IRS will surely point out to me. But hey, got ‘er done!
Five weeks ago I discovered a colony with a 100-mite count in a 300-bee sugar shake sample. There was no brood. I assumed the queen had shut down for the Winter. Other than having way too many mites, it appeared to be a thriving colony. Because two thirds of the mites in a colony with brood are hidden inside the capped brood and don’t get counted, a 33-mite count in a colony with brood is about the same infestation level as a 100-mite count in a broodless hive, where the mites have no place to hide.
The experts will tell you that my colony was doomed, from mite-vectored viruses. I take that with a grain of salt. I’ve saved many a colony with brood and a 30-mite count. You treat, you cross your fingers, you say a little prayer. I gave this one four Apivar amitraz strips.
Today, five weeks after I put in those Apivar strips, I opened this hive and did a follow-up mite test. The count was six. Not bad! Only problem was that 90 percent of the bees were gone, and the survivors had curly-wing virus. This time the experts were right.
I mailed my 2019 taxes on deadline day, just before the post office closed at noon. Praise all the saints! It was only later that it hit me: 2019 taxes are due in 2020, so my three-years-late doomsday date for forfeiting my refund was October 15, 2023, not October 15, 2022. I didn’t have to stay up all night after all. This was a miscalculation on my part but also great news! It means I’m closing the gap. Knock out 2020 and 2021, and I’m all caught up.
Not sure what to get that hard-to-please favorite beekeeper on your Christmas list? A Beekeeper’s Life – Tales from the Bottom Board, is an attractive paperback collection of the best of Ed Colby’s Bee Culture columns, with photos. Signed copies are available from the author at Coloradobees1@gmail.com.
