One lading line to each lid. The certificate is a statement about the woodenware as much as the bees in it; a colony whose brand does not read is an unidentified colony and does not go on a certificate out of this district.
What's on that lid, Pargiter. Say what you can actually see, not what you think it says.
No. You're reading it straight on. Straight on gets you the deep burn and nothing under it. Put the lamp down flat. Now say it again.
Nine off the pallet. Eight of them reconcile. No — seven. I counted the fourth lid off the shallow mark and wrote it on the board and the deep one under it says something else entirely. Seven.
What angle is that hinge at right now. Say the number.
Then bring it down. Fifteen and under or you're wasting the walk. The shadow has to fall into the char depression or there's no shadow. That's the whole reason the lamp has a hinge on it and not a clamp.
Sixth lid. — —. Reading it again: — —. That's a three-character prefix out of the old Board of Apiary Examiners, which stopped existing in nineteen seventy-one when they folded it into the agriculture department, and the registry that would tell you whose it was went in a basement that flooded. It's not on the lading. It isn't going to be. I have three of them in my district.
Seven. No — eight. I took that queen colour off the cage label instead of off the queen. The label is what somebody meant to do. The queen is what happened. Eight.
Read me the third line on that board. Now read me the brand on the second lid. Do those look like the same scheme to you.
They aren't. Their office issues lading numbers in a format their own state dropped four years ago. I wrote them on the twelfth of February, two thousand twenty-two. I wrote them again in the fall. Both letters went to the same shipping office and both of them got a form acknowledgement.
Eight. I had it at eight and then I had the lading in our prefix format, which it is not and never has been, which is the third time I've said that today. Eight.
That mark on the fifth lid — is it gone or is it planed. Which one. Put water on it and say it again.
Planing takes the char. It does not take the crush. The wood under a burn is compressed and it stays compressed, and it takes water differently than the wood beside it, which is why a planed brand comes back up under a wet rag and a lamp laid over. That's not a trick. That's just what compressed pine does.
Blue is a year ending nought or five. White, yellow, red, green, blue, and around again on the last digit. That's not decoration and it's not ours, it's the same five colours in the same order everywhere. A colour is a date you can read from six feet off.
If the paint disagrees with the pencil inside the lid, the pencil is right. Paint gets redone by whoever had the hive last. Pencil doesn't get redone.
Nine of them are still screened shut. What time did they come off the truck.
Then that's the clock, and it is not the clock I would like to be working against. A screened box in sun cannot dump its own heat. Say the cluster number out loud every ten minutes and don't editorialise it.
Matchstick in a sunk cell, pull it out, if it ropes an inch you're done and so is the box. Mites are three hundred bees in alcohol and a count against that number. A hive doesn't "look bad." A hive has a count.
Nothing out of my district has been pulled back since September of two thousand nineteen. Not one certificate. I would like that to continue past two o'clock this afternoon.
Eight, Pargiter. Say which eight. Don't say it to me, write it on the certificate.
And the lading is still in the wrong prefix format, which makes three. Not one certificate pulled back since September two thousand nineteen. Put the lamp down flat.