tIDbits

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

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.
The bees have started capping honey for the winter. Hope there will be enough good weather and plants for [...]

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

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 [...]

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

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 [...]

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.

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 [...]