Videoed hive inspection.

I did a hive inspection on Monday the 25th which would have been...

Day 26 - I inspected one hive, the brown one (I'm really gonna need to name these hives...) and it looked really good. I had a friend hold the camcorder but she was more interested in looking at the bees than making sure they stayed in the frame. But here's the video anyway there are a couple of good shots.  I ended up putting 3 more quarts of sugar in each top feeder and I cleaned mold off of one of the inner covers.

Day 26 Hive Inspection

Day 30 (Friday the 29th) - just checked the top feeders and the brown one is empty (with lots of bees still trying to eat) and the green one looks like it has about 1/2 quart (with very few bees eating).  There is considerable mold on the inside of both covers and the inside top cover.  Tomorrow I will go out and clean the mold and see if I can get the dead bees out of the top feeders. Also I need to do an inspection of the green box so I'll set up the tripod and try to do that with a stationary camera.

I'm concerned that the green hive has hive beetles and they may be impacting the hive strength.  I did not see hive beetles in the brown hive when I checked them last Monday. Tomorrow I will go into the green hive and check how they are doing.

More syrup for the girls.

Day 23 - Friday April 22nd, I checked their syrup yesterday and they still had some. Checked today at 4pm and they were out.  I made up some and put in about 2 quarts each. so they went through about 3 quarts in 6 days. I'm thinking I should just put more in there as it looks like it would accommodate about 5 quarts altogether.

I also refilled their water dispenser.  I looks like it holds about a gallon. I'm sure they are not drinking all that. I put it on there about 20 days ago. Most of it probably evaporated.

I opened the top just to see if they were drawing out comb and a lot of moist heat came out of there. I'm sure that was not good. But it was interesting to see they had drawn out some but nowhere near the amount that they had after the first 3 days.

Lets see its day 23 and the queen already had capped brood on day 17 so there should be new bees in a few more days...  maybe Sunday or Monday...

But they wont be making wax for another 10 to 15 days and I wont see them for another 20 days...

The Honey Bee Life Cycle

View from my chair

Second Post

Day 16 - Ok so Friday the 15th, I went over to a "neighbor's" house who has bees. I got his name and number from one of the Bee club's of which I am a member. He has been keeping bees for 3 years and is a very sweet fellow. He showed me how he goes into his hives (he has 3 deeps and 3 nucs) and we saw the queens and saw the brood and he told me I was a natural. I have a very gentle way about me and the bees totally ignored me. They actually ignored us because he too has a gentle way about him.

I felt my confidence increase so I went home and opened up my hives. It was just me so no pictures. I found the queen in one of my hives but not the other. I thought I saw a supersedure cell so I was worried. I did see eggs, larva and capped brood in both hives


Day 17 - I had been worrying about the hive in which I did not see the queen but everybody I talked to said that if I saw the eggs and larva and capped brood they were sure she was in there. However the state apiarist called and offered to come over and look at my hives. So even though I had just gone in there the day before I jumped at the chance to have him look at my hives.

He opened the hive and pulled out each frame. I did spot the queen in the hive I thought was queenless (yeah). And showed him the thing that I thought was a supersedure cell, he scraped it off declaring that it was simply burr comb. Then he did this maneuver on one of the frames which was like a flick where he forced the bees to fall into the hive. One of them got mad and tried to sting him. I saw her on his glove and she was really straining to get her stinger through the rubber. It was kind of funny. I pointed her out to him and asked him if she was trying to sting him. He said yes and flicked her off of his hand and she flew away unhurt. All the while they were still ignoring me.

He moved empty frames from the outsides in a couple of spaces and turned them around so that the bees would see that they needed to draw out comb on those spots as well.  He told me my hives were 70% full and that I should put another box on top of each which I did. Then he said I should keep feeding them so that they have what they need to draw out the comb in the two new boxes. So I made more syrup and made sure there was about 3 quarts in each top feeder.

Day 18 & 19 - I have pulled up a chair and put it outside the hives about 5 feet from the entrance. The apiarist told me that the bees will use it as a landmark.  I have been watching them come and go, they are actually very enjoyable to watch.  I realize that they have no rudder and have an issue steering. When they come into land they're kind of like a bowling ball heading for pins. I can hear them in my head yelling "watch out I'm coming in!" and then they bowl into the other bees who are standing at the entrance.

Day 20 - checked the syrup they still have plenty.

I have been reading about bees being gentle in the spring and being grumpy in the fall. Some people feel like this is because there are more of them in the fall, I'm wondering if they are reacting to not having an abundance of food...  If my bees are gentle because I am feeding them maybe I should just keep feeding them? But if they need adversity to become stronger maybe I shouldn't feed them?  In any event as long as they are drawing out comb I'll feed them. That's what the apiarist said so that's what I'm gonna do.

The Bees have landed!

I'm am starting beekeeping and I've been told that I need to keep a journal so here it is.

Day 1 - Thursday, March 31st 2016 - with the assistance of a mentor who is a 50 year veteran to beekeeping, misted the wax foundation with syrup, installed two packages (by shaking them out onto queen cage) into 8 frame mediums. Put 2 quarts of syrup in top feeders.

Day 3 - Saturday, April 2nd - Got a chicken water feeder and put pebbles in the trough area so the bees would have something to stand on.  They really don't seem to be using it but it's there if they want it.

Day 4 - Sunday, April 3rd - checked to see that queens were out of their queen cage.

Also noticed that some of them had shoved themselves into a little gap that was between the feeder and the hive body.

Day 5 - Monday, April 4th - put 2 more quarts of syrup in the top feeders, it seemed low to me.

The weather has been unpredictable both cool and windy and warm and sunny.

I'm noticing that the Green hive seems much more active that the Brown hive.  I did have an awning up over them for the first couple of days but it seemed to be keeping them in the shade too much so I took it down. My thought was to keep the worst of any down pours off of them mostly because the hives have tin roofs and I know that vibrations bother them. I thought the awning would help mitigate that. So I have put thin plywood on them now to help with the rain vibrations. I hope they like it...

Day 12 - Monday, April 11th - and I'm wanting to check for eggs but my mentor has encouraged me to wait. He says the queen is not 'ready' (whatever that means) yeah he's not what I would call a communicator.

Day 14 - Wednesday, April 13th - 10:39am about 50 degrees in the sun (feels colder) I'm feeling like I need to check the syrup and maybe add to it if it's low. They have been fairly active, again the Green one is more active than the Brown one.

Ok that's about all I can remember from the last two weeks. I'll do a new post for the next entry.

Wish me luck !

Addendum:   5pm - ok, so I did go out at around 3:30 and checked the top feeders which were bone dry. I made up some syrup and put in about 2 quarts in each hive. They seemed to take advantage of the food so I guess it made them 'happy'.

Aspartame. Really? Still?

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/11/06/aspartame-most-dangerous-substance-added-to-food.aspx

Carrageenan.

http://raypeat.com/articles/nutrition/carrageenan.shtml

monosodium glutamate (MSG)

http://www.truthinlabeling.org/index.html

Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)

http://www.labelgmos.org/ http://www.truthinlabeling.org/GMO_IndexPage.html

Is Eating Meat Ethical?

I found out from Mark's Daily Apple that the NY Times was requesting essay submissions responding to the question: Is Eating Meat Ethical?

Below are the basic rules:

This is a very specific contest. Don’t tell us why you like meat, why organic trumps local or why your food is yours to choose. Just tell us why it’s ethical to eat meat.

Because of some encouragement on FB I decided to write and essay to submit.

Below is what I plan to submit:

If anybody sees any glaring errors before April 7th, (tomorrow I know not much time - I'm planning on submitting this April 8th - the last day for submissions) please let me know.

The Omnivore's Banquet

Only in a country that is dominated by the food industry, would this question be asked. This would never have been an issue in my grandmother’s day. Our current culture has created a moral climate in which killing animals for food can be considered intrinsically unethical. There are many other cultures who do not hold this to be true. A recent story on NPR about a man in China who, starting as a young child, has killed dogs his whole life for food. He sees nothing wrong with this practice. My logical mind understands this; my emotional mind feels that this is completely unethical. I mean, just look at their sweet little doggy faces how could anybody eat them? The story was prompted because other Chinese people are trying to rescue these dogs. We can see that this culture is in the process of shifting its ethical beliefs toward using dogs for food.

Applying ethics to a source of food which was selected by the evolutionary process causes a moral dilemma that is dichotomous to known facts about what nutrients our bodies require for optimum health. Nature is supremely unconcerned with ethics and morals. Studies are currently emerging which show conclusively our bodies require certain nutrients that can only be obtained naturally and easily from animal sources. The science of metabolism shows there are many essential amino & fatty acids which our bodies require for health that just cannot be consumed through plant matter alone. Given the amount and types of these amino acids which are found at "super food" levels in fish, animal meat and offal, it stands to reason that trying to obtain these same nutrients through vegetation combining and dietary supplements is, for most, an effort in futility.


“Our Paleolithic ancestors consumed more meat and fat than modern people. They also ate a much wider range of food” (The Protein Power Lifeplan page 133). For our first 2 - 3 million years of evolution the primary food our bodies utilized were from animal sources. Coupled with what we have found through archeology, it can be reasonably ascertained that our bodies require fat and proteins from animal sources for optimal health. We can show that, not only did the advent of agriculture enable the human race to over populate this planet, our overall health and skeletal structure has been declining. Before agriculture our numbers were kept in check by the availability natural food sources and our health was not compromised by foods our species were never designed to eat.


If one accepts that the "perfect human diet", for optimum health, is one which closely resembles the diet on which we evolved, the ethical question then becomes: Is it "ethical" to lead people to believe that eating food made from vegetable matter alone is a “healthy diet”? While, in fact, it is quite common for a person who has decided to stop eating meat to suffer from deficiencies in zinc, calcium, Vitamin D, Iron, Vitamin B-12, and protein. 


Eating animals is part of our genetic history such that we need to maintain this practice for good health. The true ethical problem is the practice of convincing people that by not eating meat they can be just as healthy or even better nourished. Generally, I'm not willing to engage in a conversation which is driven by subjective ideology rather than scientific inquiry; with regard to human health, it is clear the “right conduct” is to consume the types of foods that are dictated by nature; foods our bodies require to preserve and maintain optimal health.

Fat - what else can we call it?

Apparently this issue cannot be dumbed down enough for the average American to understand.
The People’s Pharmacy did a program on “Why we get Fat”.

My
It is exhausting trying to explain to people that fat does not make you FAT. Telling them that not only is “fat” an essential macro molecule that our body requires to sustain itself in a healthy way; it is used in making cells, which then can be stuffed with “sugar” which actually makes us FAT. The only reason a low fat diet might seem like its working at first is because restricting fat will cause the body to shift gears in how it stores the sugar, because it is running out of building blocks to make cells. Now we have tons of sugar running around in our blood and the pancreas is going nuts with the insulin and the cells receptors are like: oh no you’re not shoving more “energy” in us, we’ll just shut down these receptors (so you feel tired after a meal because the cell is not letting the energy in) and now the body is like, well what am I supposed to do with all this sugar? I guess I’ll just store it in the fat-cells that I already have made, because I’m not letting it go, we may not have anything to eat for another month (because that’s how the body thinks). So yeah, it’s complicated and the average American person doesn’t seem to be able to handle complicated. They want something easy, like: oh, Fat = fat, well sorry, it’s just not that simple. Buy the way, once a fat-cell is made, it’s yours for life. Losing weight does not = loosing fat cells. They will always be there ready to be stuffed full of sugar the next time you have a surplus. That’s why you gain it back that much quicker the next time around.
So people get hung up on the word “FAT”. I think in order for people to “get it” we need to change the words to something else. What those words would be… I have no idea; I’m not a word smith. But I can see that the confusion for the average American comes because the two words Fat and Fat are the same but they are not REALLY referring to the same thing. And no I don’t have any degrees in this stuff, I just listen and learn and comprehend what is actually going on, I don’t take things on blind faith and if something doesn’t work the way Dr. or the Preacher says it’s supposed to work I don’t accept it anyway, because they’re human just like me and we’re all capable of making mistakes. What makes us smart is how we deal with those mistakes; by going out and making more observations, drawing new conclusions, and testing them. It is an ongoing process.
So when I read a response like “Er, no it isn't.” or “This guest made me ill.” or “Question: How does a vegetarian adapt to the Atkins diet?”. I know that I’m still seeing the average American who doesn’t want to think for themselves and I feel exhausted. BTW, a vegetarian doesn’t adapt to the Adkins dies. If you’re a vegetarian just stop eating SUGAR, and yes, I'm talking about twinkies. (There’s another word that needs to change, but that one I know, we should call it poison.)

Designing Security for Fabrikam, Inc - case study

This was our final project in the Information Systems Technology Associates curriculum at the our community college. It was challenging, more so because, I felt, we had so little direction; then because, not all of the needed information was actually covered in the curriculum classes. (To be clear, my instructor had little direction to give us, I don't blame him). These days, It’s easy enough to go out on the internet, and find anything you need, provided you know what you’re looking for.  But my instructor intimated that this “Proposal Response” really shouldn’t be any more than 3 or 4 pages.  Well, to my mind, didn't seem feasible.  I felt if one were to truly answer all of the questions that were “asked” in this case study, they’d be writing a book.  As it was the paper I turned in was 22 pages.    Please feel free to visit my public Google Bookmark page which I created out of all the places I visited on the net for my information.  And if you have any constructive criticism I'd appreciate a comment left here.  Thanks!

These are links from the paper that might not work in the PDF file:
• Guide to General Server Security
• collection of technical papers
• Windows Server 2008 Server Administrator Training
• Exchange Server 2010 Training
• Video Training For IT Professionals

If I was a student of Sociology…

this semester would be perfect for a case study on how, given similar situations, women are treated differently at different ages.

This is my last semester at a Community Collage that I actually attended 20 years ago. I came back to finish my degree. When I was in my late 20s I attended this CC and never had more than a passing tense moment with any of my instructors or classmates. Now I am in my late 40s and have had two instructors who have been speciously rude and harsh toward me, and in many instances their behavior has incited the class to collectively ridicule me, any time I would question, challenge, or ask for more clarity.

Now I’ve never been one for the “soft” sciences, because of their subjectivity, but I can see their merits. In my case, my age is just one factor. There are many other factors that could be taken into account. But the bottom line is, the rudeness I am encountering is unacceptable by any measure.

... or Don't

I still can't see the "Old Man"

When referring to a sitting President...

Shouldn't our current president, Barack Obama, be refered to as "President" Obama, and not "Mr." Obama? 

I have been listening to NPR for over 25 years and I have never, until now, heard them refer to a sitting president as anything but "President" so-and-so. 

Why, now, am I hearing President Obama being called "Mister"?

Seriously, I want to know.

Step-Husband?

Ex-Husband, Roommate, Best Friend...

There does not seem to be a word (in american) that describes the type of relationship I have with Randy.

Any suggestions?  How 'bout: mishpokhe

Having a Human Experience...

She took the words right out of my head!

"Thinking that we are human beings having spiritual visions only traps us in temporariness, in suffering and ultimately death. It cannot be overstated, therefore, how important it is to transcend this by maintaining a clear vision that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. Exploring the implications and consequences of this vision becomes our life work." - iguana

Why is it... (or where's my OS CD?)

Recently I purchaced this lenovo, I just have one question...

Where the hell is my OS CD?

IBM Lenovo ThinkPad Z61t Laptop PC (Off-Lease)

Why is it that ‘they’ think it’s ok to sell us a computer with an OS that requires a license (that we buy with the computer), and they don't give us the fricken OS disk?  I don't want a ‘restore partition’ (that's taking up GBs of space). I want to be able to reinstall the operating system from the disk WITH the key that is rightfully now mine.

I don't watch GLEE - but...

I have found some of their stuff on you tube. 

This was just beautiful:

They really "got it".

God spoke to me through my hair dresser today

at first I didn’t realize that was what was happening, you know (not believing in god and all) but I figured it out after a few minutes, because she said that my mom was a “Godly Woman” for taking care of my sister after her stroke.  I thought that was interesting, I mean most people would hold that view, but there was just something about today’s conversation that felt more authentic than the myriad of conversations I’ve had on this subject in the past.  I’m just say’n, it’s nice when I can figure out that the message I’m getting is coming from the universe and not just some random stranger.  Its times like these when it’s hard to stay a 100% existentialist.  But as you can read from this post, it's still all about me. :-)

Sick to Death of "Love Songs"

My list of sones for everybody else who is sick of (carnal) love songs:

Desiderata (Les Crane)

Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)
Times They Are Changin
My Way (take your pick)

You Raise Me Up

Heal the world (Micheal Jackson)
When The President talks to God
Big Rock Candy Mountain (Burl Ives)
Go Down Moses
What A Wonderful World
Mad World
Smile (by Charlie Chaplin)
Spirit in the Sky (Norman Greenbaum)
When I'm Gone (Phil Ochs)
Dear God (XTC version)
Life Is Wonderful (Jason Mraz)

Imagine

Three Little Birds

Old Man (N'dea Davenport)

Let the Sun Shine In (The Fifth Dimension)

Time of the Season (The Zombies)

Jumper (Third Eye Blind)

Pain (Three Days Grace)
Many Rivers to Cross (UB40)

Apeman (The Kinks)

Its A Long Way to Amphioxus (Sam Hinton)
Dear Penis (Rodney Carrington)
Take the Long Way Home (Bloodhound Gang)
Dig (Incubus)
In Dead Earnest (Pete Seeger)
You'll Have Time (William Shatner)


You might notice that I like "covers" - that's so I don't have to listen to the version I heard on the radio a million times!

Please, feel free to add to the list (the older the song, the better). The only thing not allowed are any kind of "romance" love song (carnal).

Other kinds of  "love" songs are ok, as long as they're not about two people who are: moping, mooning, longing, or anything else, for each other.

My roommate read this post and made the (very astute) comment that “cynicism is setting in”.

My Roomates' contribution:
Comfortably Numb (Pink Floyd)
Money (Pink Floyd)
How Much is the Doggy in the Window?

2011-03-31
After much internal debate and a conversation with Randy (roommate) I've decided to add:

Lola by The Kinks  -

as it's NOT really a love song, but a song about gender identity and the need for one to be aware that it is out there and you could find yourself in this situation if you're not careful, or maybe even if you are.