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animals in your life

Started by billy rubin, April 23, 2020, 01:04:42 AM

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Anne D.

It's both cute and crazy alien looking. Has your daughter said anything about its temperament?

billy rubin

ah no

sadly it died friday. i called to ask how it was doing and she told me that it had given up an hour or two before. but it was very, very young, too young, really. it ws mostly a last ditch effort from the start.

so that is sad, but she tried pretty hard to give it a good chance


"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."

billy rubin

but on th eother hand the bees are good. i looked in them just now, the first good afternoon that i have been free.

one hive, overwintered in four boxes. they had brood in all the booxes, but still space.

and drones.

thats a good sign, because drones make the hive happy. if something goes wrong with the food, they kill the drones off right away.

i have five queens coming from california the third week in april, which normally is swarm season here. but things are way early, so i may have to do some creative persuasion to keep this hive from getting too big. the fruit trees bloomed yesterday--cots and prunes and something that looks like a cherry-- so theyll begina serious buildup within th eweek.

ideally you want to catch the hive and either shake bees out of it or divide it the week before they build swarm cells, so as to take advantage of all the optimism, but i may have to go in and make queenless divides if they get stubborn too soon. then ill need to introduce the queens in a more difficult scenario.

so i got two empty boxes of mostly drawn conb and stuck them in the middle so they would havesomething new to work on and maybe that will both distract them and give me some extra brood to use when the queens show up.

i have to remember to tell the post office that theyre coming


"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."

Tank

If religions were TV channels atheism is turning the TV off.
"Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt." ― Richard P. Feynman
'It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life.' - Terry Pratchett
Remember, your inability to grasp science is not a valid argument against it.

Anne D.

Oh no, that's too bad about the baby armadillo. I did not realize you could send bees through the post.

billy rubin

yes. too bad anout the dasypus. you cant save them all, but you can try.

bees are shipped in cages. a few queens go in an envelope, more in battery boxes


"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."

Dark Lightning

Must be one hell of an envelope, given how the USPS handles packages.

billy rubin

no, just a minila envelope wiith holes.

ive seen mouse mailers too


"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."

billy rubin

these are two pound packages. two pounds of worker bees, one caged queen, and a syrup bottle for feed.

https://imgur.com/a/PNLEZq4

they can live in these several days and get shipped all over the country this way


"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."

billy rubin



"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."

Tank

If religions were TV channels atheism is turning the TV off.
"Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt." ― Richard P. Feynman
'It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life.' - Terry Pratchett
Remember, your inability to grasp science is not a valid argument against it.

billy rubin

i dpnt even know where these are. in one of my kids laundry baskets

when i find out ill also know whos been stealing my socks


"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."

billy rubin

i have just purchased thrre 1 x 12 x 10 boards to make tops and bottoms for five beehives.

for you metric people, thats a board like 1.8cm x 25 cm x 250 cm.

standard american dimensional lumber. v expensive . US $32 per board. dunno where from. looked liked american white pine. in the west its all ponderosa pine or douglas fir. here in the east theres no telling. just labelled "whitewood."

beehives have very complex dimensions and construction for hobbyist people who do only a few hives. there are dimensional boxes, carefully fussed over tops and bottoms, inner covers, spacers, stands, dividing boards, lots of bs.

lots of people do bees because theyre carpenters and like to do wood.

tbe bees dont care.

all tbey want is 5/16-inch between everything in tbe hive: the bee space. its the width necessary for two bees to get past each other when walking in different directions, and its all they care about.

put two pieces of wood closer together than 5/16-inches, and the bees will seal them together with wax or propolis. put them farther apart than 5/16-inches, and the bees will build burr or bridge comb in the space.

give them what they want and the parts stay free and moveable.

anyway, i dont use complicated tops, inner covers, and bottom boards. i use plain jane straightforward migratory construction, the kind that lets you knock out several hundred in a good day. i can do 90 frames in a hour if im set up carefully.

but im only doing five hives for divides for now


"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."

billy rubin

well, three ten-foot boards make four complete pairs of tops and bottoms, complete with cleats and beeways. not a lot of waste. bottom board



14 inches by 21.5 inches, with a 5/16-inch U-shaped set of beeways to make an entrance on one side.

top is identical t the bottom, just no beeways.



hobby hives have all sorts of fussy inner covers, telescoping lids, special gimmicks and so on. the bees dont care. if there's a hole, thy either use it to fly through or plug it up.

if i was doing a lot of these id have a decent set up, but for just five i pulled the saw out of hibernation and just cut pieces as i needed them.



buyng ten foot boards and cutting them all to 21.5 inches gave me all the pieces i needed without a lot of waste.



but i was hoping for five sets. ill have to buy another boad.

turns out the wood shortage in america has made dimensional lumber weird. i cut some 12-inch boards to 21.5 long, then ripped a two-inch piece  to add to make a 14-inch wide bottom, and foubnd i was an inch to narrow, at 13 inches

turns out that a 12-inch board is now only 11 inches wide. bastards.

i looked and looked, but i didnt have any 1.5-inch staples for the senco gun that i normally use for tops and bottoms. had to use the two-inch staples from the paslode, which i normally only use for assembling hive bodies. so i had to tap the ends over. not to worry, the bees dont care.

ive been gone from keeping bees a long time. this is the first time ive beuilt tops and bottoms in twenty years. ive got hundreds of frames to assemble in one of the apple bins stacked up in the back, but i have to get the hydraulics fixed on the forklift before i can unstack the bins.

not a problem for today.


"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."

billy rubin

ive got hundreds of hive bodies and supers stacked up, even after burning hundreds from the great bee catastrphe a few years back



so theres no shortage of boxes. just tops and bottoms. ive still got all my queen rearing equipment in there too. lost about 35 pollen traps, though. may have to make some more of those. be pollen is a high profit enterprise

anyway, i have to go open up my one beehive now. ive had the queen confined to the bottom box for a week, and i need to raise the excluder and let her fill up some more comb so i have something to divide with when the queens show up.

ive contacted the posyt office and told them to hold the box for pick up rather than than putting it in my mailbox. my town is small enough-- 300 people in the village limits and surrounding countryside--that everybody is pretty laid back. so theyre accomdating.

i have no intention of harvesting anything from these for several years. the product is simply 100 percent more hives, so all the honey stays on the bees for feed. honey is a pain in the ass anyway, compared to commercial pollination, buit im in ohio where there isnt a lot of that. so we'll be doing honey eventualy. probably just comb honey. my extractor is huge and i dont really need a set up that large. i could do nine 55-gallon drums a day by myself when it was set up, and with three people you can do 25 drums a day. but i dont want that many bees.


"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."