BEES AND POLLINATIONS

The CEO of the London Stock Exchange, one Xavier Rolet, keeps bees.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/stripesuited-workers-create-a-new-buzz-at–stock-exchange-2345866.html

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When my kids were little, they’d complain because when I’d cook, there was very little left in the mixing bowl for „licking the bowl.” I feel that way when I harvest honey. I’m so aware that in a bee’s life she only collects enough nectar for 1/4 tsp of honey. So I feel dedicated to the concept of not leaving a drop in the bucket, so to speak.

This is the messy part of harvesting honey. I can keep the drips to a minimum by using cardboard under everything and by having these lovely crush and strain buckets with honey gates. But at the end of the process, there comes a point where the honey gate is useless. Then you have to use the rubber spatula to scrape every possible drop of honey and somehow get it into the tiny jar that is what is needed to hold the remnants of a harvest bucket.

It’s a Gulliver and Lilliputian situation. The jar is so tiny and the bucket is so large. So this is when drips go everywhere. There’s many a slip between the bucket and the lip of that jar despite my gripping it all tightly.

Below the gathered honey slides into the tiny jar.

I have been putting wax out in the solar wax melters, but this is the wax I have yet to melt. I washed it all today and set it up to dry tonight. Tomorrow or the next day I’ll put it out to melt in the SWM.

Some of my wax is really light. Wonder if I can make a good wax block this year for the honey contest? It’s late to do 18 pours, but I’ve sworn never to do that again. We’ll see.

Here’s the wax from this year that I have already melted. It will need to be filtered through silk before becoming a wax block or a candle.

I love all the various products of the hive, though, and will always melt my wax.

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On August 20, I gave a talk for the Rabun county people on how to start beekeeping the natural way. I did an hour and a half PowerPoint on Becoming a Beekeeper and then we went into the hives at the community garden.

I was so scared to go into those hives. After all the positive things I had said, I hadn’t been to check on the hives in a month and was quite sure I’d find disaster in the hives.

The talk went well. There were about a dozen people there. They asked good questions. About three of them were already beekeepers but said they came because of the old saying, „Ask ten beekeepers a question and you’ll get 12 different answers.” They figured I might have something new for them to learn. I don’t know if they did, but nobody fell asleep and I think it was a good talk.

Going to the hives felt tentative to me. I could see bees flying in and out of the first hive – so I knew there were bees inside, but wasn’t sure how we’d find them. I had seen NO larvae the last time I was there. We opened it up and there were bees, honey, larvae and we even saw the queen. She was gorgeous and sort stood there for all to observe her!

The second hive looked neglected and abandoned. I ended the talk before exploring it. One of the experienced beekeepers remained with me to check it out, though and I greatly appreciated his help.

In the month since I was there, the hive was completely covered in kudzu. I was nervous about all of this and didn’t have the forethought to ask anyone to use my camera, so I didn’t get any pictures. I wish I had – seeing kudzu dripping grape colored blooms and covering this hive was quite interesting.

The other beekeeper and I cut back the kudzu with some garden clippers I carry in my bee bag. The hive looked forlorn. He smoked the front door and lo and behold, some bees appeared. I opened the hive and at first it looked pitiful. There was no honey, no brood in the top box.

But in the second box there was honey, brood, and eggs. I was relieved. The hive isn’t doing great – smothered in kudzu, it’s rather amazing it was functioning.

Neither of these hives had extra honey and both had a box on the top that was relatively unused. I removed the top box from both hives. There was some honey in the top box on hive one, so I put those frames into the second box in spaces where there were some empty frames.

I’ll go back up and check it again really soon and see if they need feeding going into winter.

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Best of all, I am joined on this episode of Skeptically Speaking by anthropologist Greg Laden, who talks about entomophagy (bug eating).

My part of the interview starts with a discussion of using a pseudonym online, and why I think scientists need them. Then we have a fun chat about treehoppers, bees, and fake mosquito repellent devices.  Bonus moment of embarrassment:  I try to be relevant to a Canadian audience by comparing native pollinators to Wayne Gretzky.

Enjoy!

Direct link to the show

Here are links to my posts about some of the topics from this episode:

Filed under: Ask an Entomologist, Bees, Entomology, Food, Insects, mosquitoes, Science, Skepticism
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And he’s got a bone to pick!

I can’t believe I am just now finding out about this.

Today’s topic: “_____gate”.  You can’t just go around making prefixes and suffixes out of any syllables you like. There have to be rules for this sort of thing!

Surf around some of Ben’s some other videos–your productivity is at an end.

Filed under: Entomology, Insects, Ranting (general) Tagged: beetles, LOL
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–Richard

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