Results tagged “Honey Bees” from NoMuse

After I learned that I'd lost a hive, I phoned Jones Bee and was pleased to learn that they had another shipment of Carniolan honeybees due to arrive. I placed orders for two more colonies. Pick-up day was threatening snow showers. I asked about hiving the new bees and was shown what strikes me as a superior hiving method.

Like the Italian colony, I removed the queen, replaced her cork with a mini marshmallow, and placed her between the 5th and 6th frames of the base hive body. Rather than just pouring the bees over the frames, I added a second empty hive body, inverted the shipping container onto the frames of the lower hive body, and placed the shipping feeder on the frames at the end opposite from the queen's cage. I then closed the hive with both an inner cover and a telescoping cover. After I added a jar of 1:1 sugar syrup to each of the Boardman feeders on the new hives, I was done. Easy peasy. And, significantly fewer bees outraged by my manhandling.

While I was suited up, I quickly checked the Italian hive to make certain that the bees had released the queen from her cage. I pulled the empty cage, but otherwise left the Italians alone.

Photos

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Selected References:
Sammataro, Diana and Avitabile, Alphonse. The Beekeeper's Handbook, Third Edition. Cornell: Cornell University Press, 2006.

I arrived at Jones Bee early in the morning to pick up the first of three new colonies of bees. This morning's bees are Italian Goldens. The Italians were introduced to the United States in 1853 (cite), are good producers, and are fairly docile.

Hiving the bees was straightforward. I shook the bees to the bottom of the shipping container by firmly striking the bottom of the container to the ground. I lightly sprayed down the bees with sugar water to reduce the number of bees in the air once the shipping box was opened. I removed the #6 can that provides food to the bees during transit. I removed the queen cage, then replaced the feed can.

After brushing the attendant bees from the queen cage, I exchanged the cork stopper for a mini-marshmallow. The marshmallow will delay the queen's release into the hive by several days and increases the probability of the hive accepting her. I placed the queen cage between the fifth and sixth frames of the hive body, opened the shipping container again, and dumped the bees over the tops of the frames in the hive body.

I provided the new colony a boardman style feeder. I filled the quart mason jar with 1:1 sugar syrup. The bees have some comb and some honey from last year's colony, but they'll have to pull comb on all of the new frames in the hive. The exchange rate between wax and honey is 10:1. For every 10 units of honey the bees can produce from a food source, they can only produce 1 unit of wax (cite). The sugar syrup will help the girls to get the hive into full production.

After the bees have worked their way into the frames, I set the inner cover and the telescoping covers in place. I try to be very careful when I'm working with a hive. Though I'm aware that the colony in full production may have 40 thousand bees, I feel bad when I inadvertently kill the inevitable handful of bees while inspecting frames or closing up the hive. At the entrance to the hive, bees have taken up position to notify the stragglers in the air and clinging to the shipping container that home has been established. The bees at the entrance will fan and produce a hormone to call everyone in home (cite).

Photos

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Selected References:
Sammataro, Diana and Avitabile, Alphonse. The Beekeeper's Handbook, Third Edition. Cornell: Cornell University Press, 2006.

As I don't know what I'm doing yet, I feel compelled to observe the advice I've been given fairly strictly. The folks at Jones Bee told me to never open a hive unless the outside temperature was above 50F. Cool weekends and my bicycle commute to work have kept me from checking on my hive.

I've been concerned about the bees most of the winter. This first winter with the bees was a bit like those first weeks with Cole, when, as a new parent, I wasn't ever certain if the house had gone too quiet, if he'd stopped breathing.

I picked up an inexpensive stethoscope from the medical school bookstore and headed out to check on my girls. When I applied the stethoscope to the hive body, I didn't hear so much as a buzz. I cracked open the hive and found thousands of dead bees.

I dropped an email to my state Department of Agriculture bee inspector and I chatted with other bee keepers. Everyone's best guess was that during one of the particularly cold spells, the bees could not move horizontally in the hive and starved. I'd felt horrible when I saw the carnage. I felt even worse when I considered the bees starving to death, surrounded by food.

As I don't know what I'm doing yet, I feel compelled to observe the advice I've been given fairly strictly. The folks at Jones Bee told me to never open a hive unless the outside temperature was above 50F. Cool weekends and my bicycle commute to work have kept me from checking on my hive.

I've been concerned about the bees most of the winter. This first winter with the bees was a bit like those first weeks with Cole, when, as a new parent, I wasn't ever certain if the house had gone too quiet, if he'd stopped breathing.

I picked up an inexpensive stethoscope from the medical school bookstore and headed out to check on my girls. When I applied the stethoscope to the hive body, I didn't hear so much as a buzz. I cracked open the hive and found thousands of dead bees.

I dropped an email to my state Department of Agriculture bee inspector and I chatted with other bee keepers. Everyone's best guess was that during one of the particularly cold spells, the bees could not move horizontally in the hive and starved. I'd felt horrible when I saw the carnage. I felt even worse when I considered the bees starving to death, surrounded by food.

Every time I try to write about myself, I wind up rolling my eyes at what I've written. A recent Facebook meme reminded me that Jodi handled her about page in way that I might ape. Here are 101ish factoids you probably didn't know about me:

1. My computer is named apophenia.
2. When I was young, I had to learn to cook something. My mother assigned me bread in the form of a family recipe for dinner rolls. I enjoy making bread. At this writing, I'm playing with a variety of flatbreads. And the best pastry ever devised, Kouign Amann.
3. I've run a personal web server connected to the internet for over a decade.
4. Haruki Murakami is one of my very favorite authors. I love the recurring theme of spaghetti in his stories and novels.
5. Stitch count matters.
6. When the Apple II was hot poo, I had my only formal programming class. The language was BASIC. I wrote a dungeon crawl game. It worked, but "game" might be a generous use of the word.
7. I studied film fairly seriously early in my university career. I wanted to be a filmmaker. Then I got a "real" job and being young, married, and poor became much less attractive.
8. I dabbled in critical theory and art history after I finished my bachelors degree. I was a much better student when I dabbled than when I was actually going to school.
9. I really like American Abstract Expressionism; although, I don't know that I would like Newman, Rothko, Motherwell, and Still without historical context.
10. These factoids are, at best, pseudo-random.
11. I love Ray Caesar's work. I bought the first bound retrospective of his work for Nat to give me as a gift. His print "Blessed" sold me on his work and remains my favorite.
12. I first used Photoshop version 2 on an Irix box.
13. Grep cured me of an early Microsoft bias and revealed to me the truth and beauty of Unix.
14. I worked for a commercial Linux company once. Before it became rabidly evil.
15. When I was in high school, I wanted to be James Bond. Near graduation, I phoned the CIA recruiter in Dallas, Texas and said, "I want to be a clandestine operative." The person fielding my call asked if I spoke Russian or Arabic. I spoke neither. He said that clandestine operatives were selected based on their psychological profiles, but that one language or the other would be useful. I learned some Russian.
16. I love porcelain.
17. I have enjoyed making teapots in the past. I think the idea of tea is fantastic. I cannot, however, catch the habit. My inability to regularly consume tea may be related to the general "boiled water" flavor.
18. I commute just less than 15 miles each way to work by bicycle several times a week. Year round.
19. I have a semi-charmed life.
20. I'm learning to play classical guitar. Again. I've just started a new twenty-year plan for learning the instrument. Or 10,000 hours, whichever comes first.
21. Orwell's "1984" is one of my favorite books. While I considered grad school, I wrote my application essay around the torture scenes in the second half of the book. The paper is titled "The Priests of Power."
22. You can catch me on Twitter as "jackskitchen." Intermittently. I tend to post when I've done or thought something that I find interesting. There is an overabundance of folk on Twitter, who tweet the minutia of life. You really don't need to know when I'm out to lunch. I mean, that's pretty much all the time.
23. You are in a maze of twisting passages, all a like.
24. In the when that was (circa 1987), I submitted 500 hand addressed postcard entries to a contest supporting the release of Pink Floyd's "A Momentary Lapse of Reason." The prize was an airplane and flight lessons. Someone within a couple hours of my home won the plane. He or she likely submitted one entry. I still love Pink Floyd's song "Learning to Fly."
25. If I had to pick one favorite restaurant right now, I would most likely pick the local micro-chain Mazza.
26. In 2004 I went a little barmy. I bought four '70s vintage Volkswagen buses. One ran. Sort of. After much dilly-dallying, I got rid of three. I made the remaining bus run. The engine started clanking less than two blocks from my house on the maiden voyage. That bus has been darkening our drive in an auto cocoon for the last four years. Two days ago I was struck by the thought that the clatter was more likely an hydraulic lifter than rod slap. I will seriously LOL and ROFL if its been sitting all this time without a real problem. I may even LMFAO. (Editor's note: It wasn't lifter clatter. I did not get to LOL.)
27. A few years ago, my brother gave me bamboo flooring as a gift. I took off a few days from work to redo the kitchen floor. With one thing and another, six months later, I had a fully remodeled kitchen.
28. A hasty departure from an undesirable location.
29. At this writing, I own 116 cookbooks or books related to food and cooking.
30. When our first son Cole was born, I stayed home with him half days until he was six months old. He and I watched and re-watched Akira Kurasawa's films. And napped. I miss naps.
31. I love romantic comedies. "The Lady Eve" sets the bar for what constitutes a good "chick flick." Not many romantic comedies even reach the acceptable level.
32. I keep bees. I keep what used to be a Yugoslavian variety, the Carniolan (apis mellifera carnica). I don't know if the bees are of Slovenian or Montenegrin origin. Knowing was easier just a few years ago.
33. I became so worried about my bees the first winter that I bought a stethoscope.
34. I started a vegetable garden two years ago as a way to reduce the amount of grass I have to mow. I look forward to the quiet of weeding the garden on Sunday mornings.
35. In 2008, I rode Lotoja, a 206 mile bicycle road race from Logan, Utah to Jackson, Wyoming, for the first time. I had a fantastic time and look forward to improving my course time this year.
36. I finished a studio art bachelors degree in 2004. I haven't made any art since the first year of my art program.
37. Is my favorite number.
38. I play a Cervantes classical guitar. I demoed a half dozen guitars in my price range at Acoustic Music, including a vintage Japanese model, the idea of which intrigued me. None came close to the tone and sound quality of the guitar I bought.
39. I have a mostly healthy obsession for merino wool clothing.
40. When I was in my teens, I took voice lessons once. My money was refunded. In elementary school, I was assigned to run the lights for a school choir concert. I should have accepted that I'd never be a singer in a rock and roll band at that point. At least I got my money back.
41. When the TI-99/4a was hot poo, I started teaching myself to program. The storage mechanism was an audio cable interface to a cassette recorder. I couldn't ever understand why I wasn't able to restore my programs to the 99/4a's memory. Much later at university, I took a class on the physics of high fidelity audio. One of the class's labs involved the variance in recorded audio quality between Type I, Type II, and 10-for-$1 audio cassettes. I'll leave the guessing as to which type of cassette my parents bought me for my programs to your imagination.
42. Is the answer. To that one question.
43. I received my first moving violation a couple of weeks before my sixteenth birthday. My law enforcement employed father was not amused.
44. My friend Chris gave me my first classical guitar, a Yamaha G-65, twenty-some years ago. I still have the guitar, which is younger than I am, but older than Nat is. It lives at my office and twangs a bit during lunch breaks. Behind my closed and locked door.
45. I am mostly happy with how my life is turning out.
46. Though I own a full set of the Sandman graphic novels, I've never read volume 10. I haven't wanted the story to end.
47. Whiskey tango foxtrot.
48. I have entirely too many audio CDs. And my taste in music is highly suspect.
49. I really like modern, european board games. I am only occasionally frustrated when the packaged instructions are only in French. Or Sumerian.
50. Though I love my children, I don't love having children.
51. Suboptimal.
52. I suspect that David Addison's and Madelyn Hayes's relationship had a significant formative effect on me. Boink.
53. I have a definitely unhealthy obsession with jackets. And bags.
54. The reverse vampires in conjunction with the Rand Corporation...
55. I met my wife because my best friend was in smit with her best friend. Nat had a boyfriend and eventually told me to never speak to her again. We've been married for over 12 years, and, as far as I know, we're still not speaking.
56. In 1996, I applied for an internship with a local bank rewriting web content. Along the way, I wound up writing a web-based loan application that interfaced with the banking application. I was hired as a regular employee and one thing lead to another.
57. I enjoy knitting, but I don't make any time for it.
58. Every time you go away, you take a piece of meat with you.
59. William Gibson is another favorite author. His 2000 novel, "Pattern Recognition" included a character who wore a Buzz Rickson reproduction MA-1 flight jacket in black. The jacket was almost elevated to a character in the narrative. I wanted one. Really badly. Right up to the moment that I learned that Buzz Rickson didn't make a black MA-1 before the demand from Gibson's fans added it to their catalog. I don't cope well with simulacra in my life, though I find the concept a fascinating idea/subject.
60. I don't watch much broadcast television. I do watch TV series once they go to DVD. I'd much rather wait for the DVD than put up with commercials. And waiting week-to-week. However, "Dollhouse" and "Castle" may break me. As long as I can continue to watch them at my convenience online.
61. Welcome to late capitalism.
62. I'm a bit envious of folk who have always known what they wanted to be when they grew up or who have found a vocation at some point in their lives.
63. The majority of my wardrobe is black or charcoal grey, though some blue grey finds its way in. I had to learn to wear black. I suspect that I needed my art degree to provide myself permission to wear black. I still tend toward pre-shrunk 501s in the slightly faded blue flavor.
64. I have the best mother-in-law ever. She's one of my favorite people.
65. Terry Pratchett is definitely one of my top 5 authors. His novel "Night Watch" is my favorite. The story centers on a time paradox for one of my favorite characters that Pratchett sets up in the previous book and executes beautifully with nary a retcon to be found.
66. Where's my cow? I used Pratchett's story book in story book in novel to teach the children many of their animal sounds. I am very pleased when the children recognize that the storybook being pulled off the bookshelf in the story is the storybook that we are reading.
67. A few years ago, I took 24 hours to play in New York City. I searched for a turtle. I saw the Rauschenberg retrospective at the Met. I encountered my first Still, Rothko, and Pollock paintings in person. I had lunch with a friend. And I saw Ray Caesar's "Sweet Victory" show at Jonathon Levine Gallery.
68. I recently started a project to finish all my unfinished projects. As I result, I found a pair of cherry tool boxes that I started a few years ago. One just needs hardware installed before it is useful. The other requires tools to dado, rabbit, surface, and size a variety of panels. Though I'm a little giddy to have the boxes finished, -- they are, after all, hard-sided bags -- I am a bit whelmed by yet another project that has a long and ordered list of operations. And, I wonder if I haven't started another project that I won't get finished.
69. This line was left intentionally blank.
70. I really like the movie "Cashback," though the scene where the protagonist undresses the women frozen in time in the market makes me uncomfortable. I like naked women, particularly naked pretty women. This particular scene reads as overt and stereotypical objectification of women folk. Yes, I realize that the protagonist is imagining the scene. And I realize that all representational art is an objectification of that which is represented. I'm still discomforted by it.
71. No comment.
72. I really, really, really like Cold Stone Creamery's Peanut Butter Perfection. A whole bunch.
73. I have three bicycles and three classical guitars, though I might argue that the third guitar makes a better canoe paddle.
74. I like the idea of Dungeons and Dragons, but the implementation leaves me cold.
75. Roll the dice to see if I'm getting drunk!
76. In 1986, I bought Stephen King's "The Gunslinger." I loved the book and the world it created. However, I required a period of many years and many readings of the first movement of "The Drawing of the Three" before I could read the second movement. King is one of my top five authors.
77. I was obese for a while, though I didn't realize it at the time. I corrected my lifestyle, but I still don't have an accurate body image.
78. I develop recipes to bring the food we eat closer to the idea in my head of what the food should be.
79. We've participated in a community supported agriculture subscription the last few years. We tend to finally wipe out the previous year's potatoes about the time the next year's distributions start.
80. I went hunting once, when I was 17 or 18 years old. I went with a group of guys and few adults to hunt racoons. We were all armed with .22 caliber rifles. I killed and cleaned the raccoon for its hide. I regret killing the raccoon and never wanted to repeat the experience. The hide remained in an ever growing ball of ice in my parents' freezer until they moved from Texas. I had wanted to cure the hide, but in the pre-internet days of my youth, the books on tanning were always out at my local library and placing a request always seemed like too much effort.
81. I came across a good-sized rattlesnake that had been badly damaged by boys with rocks while I was on an organized camping trip. I killed, cleaned, and ate the snake. I harbor no regrets over the snake. I was hungry and it became food from which I had no separation.
82. The building where I work is located on the edge of the foothills. Last summer, a baby rattlesnake found its way to the immediate area of the entrances to my building. I phoned the campus police to have it relocated. The officer who responded ineptly bludgeoned the snake to death with an eight pound sledge hammer from the trunk of his patrol car. He later revealed a police vendetta against all rattlesnakes since one of his co-workers had been bitten and hospitalized. I'm still not sure whether I was more shocked by his matter-of-fact death-to-snakes attitude, his inability to quickly put the snake down, or that I completely forgot that I was holding, but not using, my camera during the assassination.
83. I think that I would like to hunt feral hog or javelina. What little meat I do eat tends to be pork. And, I'm curious whether or not I'd regret killing for food.
84. I have what my doctor calls an aversion to poultry. Though I love to eat chicken and turkey, my body rejects it violently.
85. When I find an piece of clothing that works for me on some level, I tend to buy several copies of the same item. This leads to questions from my wife when she packs for trips like, "How many uniforms do you want?"
86. I have a complete set of the AD&D campaign Planescape, but I've never played it.
87. I really enjoyed my limited intersection with the original Traveller RPG. I don't recall playing per se; but, I spent many happy hours designing characters and ships for the game.
88. After viewing the disaster that was "The Phantom Menace," I swore to not give George Lucas any more money on the Star Wars franchise. "Star Wars" was one of very few movies I saw in the theater as a child. Yes, I'm aware that the Star Wars universe is George's to screw up any way he sees fit. I see no need either to finance the rape and pillage of my childhood memories or to reward George's inability to leave things alone.
89. If a garment's care label reads "Dry Clean Only," it doesn't belong in my wardrobe. The same standard may apply to clothing that requires ironing.
90. The world has moved on.
91. I love Robert Munsch's "The Paperbag Princess." It is an important book. I try to give a copy of it to all the small girls that I know. Sometimes I forget that I've already given a young lady a copy, and she gets a second. The book is that important.
92. My copy of Jeff Moss's "Bob and Jack: A Boy and His Yak" still makes me cry. In several places.
93. I'm a fan of bookmooch.com. I've enjoyed shipping books for which I have no use off to new owners and homes where they'll be loved.
94. I collected comic books for a time back in the mid '80s. I preferred the X-Men and the various related titles of the era. Number Three spent an inordinately large sum of cash on a collectible Transformers comic, then proceeded to trash said collectible item. The paternal unit lost it and decreed a ban on comics. I had to sell my collection for a pittance. Somehow, I managed to hide away my favorite limited series -- "Longshot." For a bit, I thought that the mullet was a cool hair style.
95. I dabbled in comics again in the early '90s. I got hooked on "Sandman," "The Mythology of an Abandoned City," and "The Maxx."
96. I had my last, brief flirtation with printed comics in 1999. I really enjoyed J. Scott Campbell's "Danger Girl." It had spies, hot women who were spies, danger, cliffhangers -- what was not to love? I have a set of some of the toys that were marketed with the series. Still in their unviolated packaging. Cole often asks when I will get them out to play with them.
97. When Neil Gaiman came to Salt Lake City as part of one of his book tours a few years ago, I paid one of my younger brothers to stand in line and get Gaiman's back catalog signed. Whatever I paid him to do it for me was likely insufficient.
98. Last year, my buddy Jason invited us to catch a Rick Springfield concert at a small venue nearby. I'd never been a serious fan of Springfield's music, but his show was sufficiently amazing that I've become a fan. I'm looking forward to the next opportunity to see him in concert.
99. The number of concerts to which I've been can still be counted on both hands: Huey Lewis and the News, the Beach Boys, the Moody Blues, Bon Jovi, Sarah McLachlan, Wynona, and Rick Springfield.
100. I really enjoy working with plaster. I like making molds for both cast and pressed ceramics. I like the smell of plaster and the exothermic reaction when the plaster sets.
101. What I say three times is true.