Friday, May 11, 2012

# 011 : Free Beekeeping Book of the Month - or - Beekeeping Books For Cheapies!

What's the best kind of book? (dramatic pause) A free book!!!


I've been letting my bees settle in. I am not disturbing them. Aside from adding a couple pollen patties and some sugar syrup I haven't opened the lid of the hive. I'm doing this in the hopes that it will have them believe that only good things happen when the hive is opened. That said it's been very slow and peaceful on bee hive front.

This week I'm adding a weekly section called "A Beekeeping Book For Cheep Skates!" I'm aware that I misspelled 'cheap' but the letter 'e' was on sale this week so I picked up a bunch for a fraction of the price of an 'a'.

Here is the first of many free beekeeping books I hope to share thanks to Google Books and expired copyrights : I'm starting with one of the best free books you will find on the internets! ENJOY!!!

 

Bees & Honey or First Lessons in Bee-Keeping
by : Thomas G. Newman
Revised by : C.P. Dadant

Click the book or the above link to download the book in PDF format.

Have a great weekend everyone and hug (or think about hugging) your mom on Mothers Day!!!!!!

Remember Momas are the rays of sun that guide us out of ruts to happy times!

Saturday, May 5, 2012

#010 : Thunder, Light'nin ... Not So, not so Fright'nin

Well we recently had some severe weather in Chicago. Just another feather in the cap for the bees. This has been an eventful month for the bees! As you might have read in my last post there were all kinds of weather related set backs. On Thursday night we had 'HAIL'!!! Not the prayerful kind. Nope. We had the kind that falls from the sky and it was pretty big On Chicago standards. Some hail was the size of grapes! The bees did not like it one bit! But I have to admit - that very night was one of the most beautiful nights of the year and I took some photos to share that beauty. I won't writ much about it. It was comfortably warm and the sun was near setting around 7pm when I took the following photos.

Some days it's a unique experience to just be standing on the roof. I have a short video of all the cloud movement unfolding that I will try to post some time soon.

Enjoy your bees!!! 
Enjoy your weather!!! 
It's oh so nice when you can enjoy them together!!!

Peace,

G

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

#009 : My ladies like the hive top feeder of course!

So here it is. There has been some horrible bee weather goin on in my sweet home of Chicago. Add to that the building where I have my hive is being worked on. There are a couple of guys grinding the mortar joints sending clouds of dust billowing towards my nectar suckers. It's been coooold! It's been winnnnnddyyy!! It's been raininnnnngggg!!! It's been dusssssssty!!!! It's been noooooisy!!!!! Everything bees hate. Chi-Town has been rough on these bees for a three weeks.
So why am I so happy??? Because my bees 'bee' lovin it biotches!!! Today the Windy City laid aside the huffin and puffin - she took a deep breath and gave the rain and cold weather a rest. The result was the first warm and pleasant day since I first installed the bees.
I witnessed something really cool today - what was it you might ask??? Something really coool! No, not Ronald getting stung by a bee. That would be SUPER COOL. Instead today I witnessed the bees doing some spring cleaning. Ronald, you can learn from these bees! And by that I mean to clean up so you don't smell soooo bad!!! Just joking!
The bees were cleaning out all the dead bees and miscellaneous garbage in the hive. If you were in the hive Ronald they would have kicked you out!!! I also had a chance to open up the hive top feeder to see if the bees were using it. I was pleasantly surprised to see they were lovin that too!
So I took a close up shot with Betty and Barb lookin at me like they were saying : "Hey who the heck just opened the hive!!! Let's sting that sucka!!! Oh, wait it is Gregory ...  hey Greg, what's up? This weather is great. Thanks for the sugar syrup - it's really good! ... Now close that lid before we sting you!!! Just kidding!"
 My bees have a great sense of humor. :) They must take after me! Ha! Just kidding!

So on that note I will end this blog entry. I will get more interesting stuff up on this blog space thing when I have someone will to get close enough to the hive to take pictures while I'm inspecting or something.

Here are some great links I recently found that will really help with your beekeeping :

Bad Beekeeper : This is a site that is as interesting as it's author.
It might not see like there is much info on this site but if you look and dig around you will pleasantly surprised. Just so you don't have to dig too much here is the link to his link page.

http://www.badbeekeeping.com/weblinks.htm

Bee Master's International Beekeeping Forum : Just a great source of information and wonderful people.

http://forum.beemaster.com/


Here is apple pie a la mode

I think pie is nice, Apple pie is sweet as can bee.
Ice cream on top makes a la mode you see.

Take care of those bees everyone and enjoy them this time of the year when they are too busy building and eating syrup to be angry and sting you!