tIDbits

Bees Can Recognize Human Faces

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=bees-can-recognize-human-faces-10-02-01

First known color photo of the Beatles (1957!)

Found it here:

http://benfungtorrez.wordpress.com/2010/01/24/first-known-color-photo-of-the-beatles-super-cool/

Filled up at my local Shell station this morning.

Somehow I think they have the wrong person working as a copy editor for their pump displays

12 Essential Plugins that Extend WordPress as a CMS

I’m attending WordCampNYC 2009 (and am completely psyched for it)

WordCampNYC 2009

If you live in Chicago,  Minneapolis,  Seattle,   Portland,  San Francisco, Los Angeles, or San Diego you would be nuts not to go see Bob Mould while he is on tour with a band (those are the remaining dates).

He is traveling with Jason Narducy (ex Verbow) on Bass  and John Wurster (ex Superchunk) on Drums.

I experienced an excellent show last week in Boston, at the Paradise.

Tour dates here: http://granarymusic.com/tour/dates/ or here: http://bobmould.com/shows

A little video taste of the show is here:

and a photo here:

Bob Mould Band at the Paradise Boston 10-07-2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/technology/internet/28netflix.html

The biggest lesson learned, according to members of the two top teams, was the power of collaboration. It was not a single insight, algorithm or concept that allowed both teams to surpass the goal Netflix,……Instead, they say, the formula for success was to bring together people with complementary skills and combine different methods of problem-solving.

The sad thing is that somebody had to put up a million bucks to figure that out.

Sigh.

Lots of activity in the bee yard this weekend…

Found some queen cups and cells in Macintosh – here you can see a new queen is chewing her way out of the bottom of the circled cell.

A new queen is chewing her way out of the bottom of the circled cell.

The bees have started capping honey for the winter. Hope there will be enough good weather and plants for them to make some for us, too.

Capped Honey in Roger

With the new queen emerging from Mac, I split her off into her own “nuc” (nucleus hive). The newest one is the third from the left with the blue-colored center box. So we are up to 3 full size hives (for honey production) and 3 nucs (to overwinter for full hives next season).

3 full hives and 3 nuc (nucleus) hives

My friend Juli thought she might have a swarm of honey bees in a lobster buoy on her front porch (this is, after all, Maine).

So, I  went over to look at lunchtime, as the prospect of a swarm to plop in a nuc (nucleus hive) was appealing (free-bees).

lobster buoy with yellow jacket nest

Sadly, she had  nasty yellow jackets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_jacket)

For those of you who think you might have a swarm of bees, here are a few clues (in this particular instance):

• The yellow jacket nest looks a bit like like gray paper (see detail photo below)
vs. a honey bee hive, where they would build  hexagonal comb
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Honey_comb.jpg

• Yellow jackets are (mostly) shiny and the yellow is VERY yellow – their abdomens look kind of like armor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:European_wasp_white_bg.jpg

• Honey bees are fuzzy all over and more of an orange/tan color
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Drinking_Bee.jpg

• Honey bees are a lot “nicer” (yes, I am biased) in that they are not really interested in stinging you – if they sting you they will die – they will only sting if they feel you are threatening the entire hive.

detail: lobster buoy with yellow jacket nest

Damn ants took advantage of my two weak nuc (nucleus) hives and crawled up and infested the place.  They were there to steal the 1:1 sugar:water syrup that I had left to feed weak bees, as it was going to be a rainy week.  The nucs were made with bees from one of my stronger hives (James) and super-fancy queens that were bred by Michael Palmer in Vermont.  Acquired the Queens at a Nuc Workshop run by the Cumberland County Beekeepers Association’s own Erin Forbes and Larry Peiffer.  A very helpful class that I would highly recommend (I think they are going to do it again next year).

Ants in a honey bee hive (nuc)

Anyway, back to getting rid of the ants.    Ground cinnamon sprinkled around the base of the hive and inside the top of the hive are a well know way of keeping the ants at bay – but I learned a super-nifty trick from Erin –  I propped the entire nucs up on cinnamon sticks, too (see the red circles in the photo).  That way any ant that wants to steal from my bees will have to physically traverse the cinnamon (which apparently they abhor).  Take that, ants!

I propped the nucs up on cinnamon sticks to fend off the ants

This in a New York Times article today called Apple Races to Keep Ahead of Rivals:

“If they start making products people don’t want, and start losing users, then Apple’s strategy will run into problems,” said Benjamin Reitzes, an analyst at  Barclays Capital. “If they continue to have an aura where their products are seen as defining the marketplace, they are going to be fine.

Has there ever been a business whose strategy was to “start making products people don’t want, and start losing users” ?

Why in the world did they quote that clown?

We got two more hives installed over the weekend (Mac & Rodger) and it is starting to look like a proper artisanal apiary.

Finson Farm Apiary

While looking through Mac (the stronger of the two hives) we were able to spot the queen.

Seen below you can tell her by her elongated abdomen and the remnants of yellow paint on her thorax. The paint color indicates that she was born in 2007.

Queen Bee in Mac

Shown below are the stencils steps used in painting up a hive for the honeybees at The Finson Farm in Southern Maine.

I used spray interior/exterior Rustoleum Ultra Color gloss spraypaint.  I’ll let you know how it hold up to the elements next year…

“inside out there” >> 05.04.09 >>  May 21st from 5 to 8 for Salt’s Spring 2009 Graduate Exhibit, inside out there.

Maine stories in radio, writing, and photography…

The show features images of my beekeeping friend Erin.    The have a Facebook page for the show…

Last weekend, I had my second “Bee School” class with Rick Cooper up at BEES-N-ME in Bowdoinham, Maine. Afterward, realizing all the stuff that I will need to put together for my first season with bees, I was feeling pressed for time and anxious to get to work.  Fortunately, he had all the parts I needed to start building my supers and I filled up the back of the car with fresh-smelling pine boards.

hive wood at bees-n-me

I made the decision that I will go with all “mediums” to start out. This will mean that instead of two “deeps” (9-1/8″ tall) for brood chambers I will use three “mediums” (6-1/4″ tall). Rick explained that it was the amount of space the bees needed (about 20″) and not the specific configuration. On top of that, I reasoned that bees had been doing their thing for about 27 million years now and they probably didn’t care what we had arranged them (since around the 1860’s) traditionally in boxes. It also makes a whole lot of sense in terms of only having one size of equipment to deal with.  The heft of the “Deeps” can also be an issue – as when they are full they can weigh close to 100 lbs.  Not a fun size to lift repeatedly.

wood ready to build into a hive

So I got my materials all laid out to build and started to bang away. The hive bodies (woodenware in beekeeper parlance) that I put together come from a local producer called Humble Abodes in Windsor, ME.  Viola, a beehive super put together!

completed medium super box

After that, I put together a couple more and stacked it up with the other stuff I had purchased from Rick. The bottom boards is a Brushy Mountain 10-Frame IPM Bottom Board (that means it has a screen for the bottom so the mites will fall off the bees and not be able to climb back up). The top is a bit of an extravagance – an “English Copper Top“- that is just a wonderful design.  I could not resist.  I am looking forward to watching the material develop a nice patina over time.

First hive completed: 3 medium supers and an English Copper Top

Next thing to start building will be the frames for the interior of the hive….

Sausalito Team Wins Häagen-Dazs-UC Davis Honey Bee Haven Design Competition

http://entomology.ucdavis.edu/news/honeybeehavenwinner.html

The Sausalito-based Sibbett Group created a series of interconnected gardens with such names as “Honeycomb Hideout,” “Nectar Nook” and “Pollinator Patch” to win the international bee-friendly garden design competition, a gift to the University of California, Davis, from Häagen-Dazs.

sibbett group plan

In October I went to an interesting talk at the Cumberland County Beekeepers Association.  It featured a a retired Biologist (and beekeeper named Matt Scott) who spoke about “Bee Pasturage” and had a slide show that showed a number of the different examples.

He also shared a number of publications that he thought would be helpful to beekeepers in identifying local flowers, etc..

What I found most helpful was this chart (below) that he passed out (and said was fine to use as long as he was attributed) called “Range of Maine Honey Plant Blooms” – basically, it  is what honeybees want to “eat” and when they want to eat it, in Maine.  I hope to be able to get some of this stuff planted for my first hives,  this Spring.

What honeybees want to "eat" and when they want to eat it, in Maine.

On Sunday, Feb. 8 (Tu Bishvat) the Little Lad’s Restaurant on 489  Congress St. Portland, ME is offering a free waffle breakfast to the entire Jewish community in honor of their becoming a kosher restaurant.

little lad portland maine's only kosher restaurant (so far)

The New York Times: The Diluted Mystery of Absinthe starts out with a headline of “Care for an Absinthe? Ptooey!” which made me giggle.  But the best stuff I must quote:

If absinthe were a band, it would be Interpol, third-hand piffle masquerading as transgressive pop culture. If absinthe were sneakers, it would be a pair of laceless Chuck Taylors designed by John Varvatos for Converse. If it were facial hair, it would be the soul patch. If absinthe were a finish on kitchen and bath fixtures, it would be brushed nickel.

and then later on:

You could say that absinthe is a kindred spirit of so many falsely subversive things: ear piercing for men, tattoos on women, those cigar bars, pole-dancing-aerobics classes, mind erasers, blogging about one’s bikini grooming, naming one’s bong after a cartoon character.

and tops it off with:

“It was lots of people who knew each other through the online absinthe community,” he added. (Like Chuck Norris ephemera and role-play games, absinthe has a big Internet presence.)…”

I hope it wasn’t just me who was ROTFL

Naughty words in Google Maps here.

Which is funny, especially since is is my understanding that the satellite images are 6+ years old…

Naughty Words in Google Maps, Brunswick, Maine

…so I did  a little more digging, and it turns out that the Google Maps are indeed old.

The Town of Brunswick has a GIS site (for tax maps, I believe).

It shows the property (23 Hillside Rd.) to have the graffiti on the roof in their Aerial Photo from April 2001.

Graffiti on the roof - April 2001

The graffiti on the roof is gone in the Aerial Photo of April 21, 2006 (or has been digitally removed).

Graffiti removed - April 21, 2006