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/

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

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

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.

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

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

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