Honey Run Apiaries-A Beekeeper’s Blog

I know this is completely off topic (bee p related jokes aside) and has not been in the news as much recently despite being as much a problem as it has been since day one, but….   Is anyone else out there bothered by the fact that the best solution BP can come up with to solve the oil split is strait out of The Simpsons?   (Burns Slant Drilling Co.)  Honestly, it's the first thing that I though of when I heard it….

"All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten" – Robert Fulghum

"All I really need to be CEO of a multinational oil company I learned from The Simpsons"   – DOH!

Perhaps advice from The Simpsons works well or has for CEO's of other corporations… Circuit City comes to mind.  (To cut costs they fired experienced employees and hired Homers….)

I just received an email advertising yet another cure for the "Bee Problem".  Like the one offered by the ccdsolution.com that popped up in 2007, this one is a magic solution that is sprayed per acre.  Their theory is the problem with the bees is, in their words: bee populations are dying off, less and poorer honey is being realized, an increase of diseases and pests are killing bees, and Most bee environments are deficient in sugars and nectar, fewer blossoms lack aroma, and most crops are simply no longer able to sustain an attractive environment for healthy bees to live and thrive.

Now I would have thought that fewer blossoms lacking aroma would be a good thing, but I'm not the one with several well know (but completely unnamed) universities testing this cure according to their document.  They claim the cause (in short), are poor soils and synthetic chemical fertilizers rendering most soils incapable of growing healthy nutritious fruits and vegetables.  But they also claim organic farming often has the same problem.

Their cure… 'MicroSoil' (microsoil.com)… it's a formulation of naturally occuring soil microorganisms combined with enzymes, polysaccharide and polypeptides which is suppose to assist in the growth of nitrogen fixing microorganisms and all other beneficial and 'native soil microorganisms'.   Skipping all the big words in the document they sent which I'm sure is intended to wow most people, in short it's suppose to help nature extract the nutrients already in the soil.   How is this suppose to help bees?   More blooms, high BRIX content, high nutrient content in the blossoms, etc.   (Ignoring the fact they use term BRIX, the scale by which sugar content is measured, completely wrong).  The best part is…. their picture of a bee in their document is a FLY.  That really instills confidence if you have bought into their pitch so far.

The cost for this snake oil?    Only $295 for enough to treat 15 acres at this special beekeeper's introductory offer.  That's only  $157,000 dollars to treat the 8000 acres bees from a single apiary forages on.  Quite a steal considering the ccdsolutions solution costs half a million to treat the same area.

I hate to see old barns like this go, but there really is no salvaging it as a barn.  I was already too far gone when we purchased the property nearly 12 years ago and would cost far more to fix the foundation, siding and roof than a new building.   The foundation shift seems to have accelerated over the past couple years with the help of a groundhog.    It’s ok for storing beekeeping equipment out of the weather but I can see the day coming soon when it will need to come down.

I’ve seen others sell similar barn for the siding, shingles and heavy beams.   I certainly could use some of them in a new building and some great furnature for the house, but for the right price it would be worth parting with and just building with new material.  Any takers?  I know it won’t bring anywhere near the price of a new pole barn, but covering a down payment would be a start.

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Those who were reading my blog on a semi regular basis probably notice my absence for the past many months.  Rest assured all is well, though perhaps too much so.  My day job, programming for Data Business Systems, has kept me quite busy and my wife’s relatively new business, Busy B Realty, has been picking up steam in spite of the slow, and sometime outright stagnant housing market.  This also ment that as I became busier, I also had less help and just couldn’t keep up everything.  So the unnecessary had to be put off to the side.  Not a bad problem to have right now.

Also, some may not have been aware that I opened up a side business (The Ranco ETC Store) and it has been growing as well.  It really started as a offshoot of the temperature controllers I was oftering on this website and ties in nicely with my experience and education in electrical engineering.  It’s far from enough to quit the day job and focus more on bees, but it’s enough to make it worth while.

The good news is that while I’m busier than ever, the success of the Ranco store has allowed me to help out a couple out of work beekeepers who are virtually out of a job due to the current economy.  It should also help me focus more on growing the business, the bees, and of course post once in awhile to this blog.

I’m sure most people receiving email from companies, sooner or later receive one with a legal disclaimer or warning on the end of dire legal consequences if you use or even look at the email in the wrong way.  They go something like the following (names have been changed):

Attention: This e-mail message, including any attachment(s) (collectively the "e-mail"), has been sent by ACME Drinking Water and Porta-John Recycling Co. and may contain PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION.  If you are not the intended recipient, then please (i) do not read this e-mail, (ii) do not forward, print, copy or otherwise disseminate this e-mail, (iii) notify us of the error by a reply to this e-mail and (iv) delete this e-mail from your computer.  Thank you.

This has to be one of the most worthless legal statements ever written.  The first problem is that this statement  is almost always found at the end of the email, and is sure to be read only after reading the contents of the email (i).  Nearly anything I do to the email will break (ii), deleting it will copy it to the deleted folder (iv), replying (iii) will copy it to the sent folder, not to mention the multiple copies made since I check email from multiple computers and the copy that remains on the server and in the ISP’s backups.  And let us not forget the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, it requires that email be backed up in public companies.  I’m also not sure if one could legally be bound to such a statement without agreeing to it first or a method of opting out before breaching the statement is available (as is often done with software licenses).

Of course, none of the statement is valid unless ‘you are not the intended recipient’.  Of course, since the email came to my inbox, and is stamped at the top with my email address, the only logical conclusion is that it was intended for me.  Other than the address, I can’t possibly guess what the actual intent of the sender was.  Even if the email says ‘Dear Anne’ at the top (obviously not me), the sender may be forwarding a message they thought I may be interested in.  How could I guess the ‘intent’ was anything other than for me to receive the email?

Personally I find every email I receive with such a statement rather humorous and I’m really tempted to forward every one I receive to the media (after all, as the intended recipient I can use it as I see fit).  But if you do business with any company that uses such a statement thinking it gives them any security or expectation of privacy, I would be worried.

I thought it was time to update the look of this blog from the plain default theme that comes with WordPress.  Hope you like it.  I really can’t take much credit for it though, it was one of those free ones you can download from www.wpthemespot.com.  I did update the picture at the top to something a bit more appropriate.  It’s a photo of one of this year’s instrumentally inseminated queens.  If she does well until next year, she may be a breeder I use for next year.

I quit my job.  I never really thought that after 12 years at Kohli & Kaliher Associates I’d be doing anything else unless I could afford to do beekeeping full time.  But I had a good offer from a company I did some freelance programming work for over the past several years and could refuse.  It can be a little big unnerving to leave a good stable job and take a chance in a different line of work.  But the money is there and it lets me work from home and have a bit more flexibility with my schedule.  Will take a while to really get into the groove of things at Data Business Systems, but I’m sure in a few weeks I’ll be in the swing of things.   So it’s not beekeeping full time, and it is a full time job, but I think I’ll like it and it will give me more flexibility to answer phones, and beat the 4:00pm storm front to keep the grafting schedule.  It also got me one thing I’ve wanted for some time, an office where I can keep my records, do shipping, insemination, etc.

I recently purchased a pack of 15 DVD for use at work. They were Philips 4x DVD+R (I no longer have the model number as the package’s sleeve went strait in the trash). It contained 15 ordinary looking DVDs and one ordinary looking cardboard disk (pictured to the right). However on closer inspection the cardboard disk is the most extrodinary thing I’ve seen in quite some time in the removable media market.

The small print on the cardboard disk reads “Before using this disk in a 2.4x DVD+R data drive, you need to check how to get the required firmware upgrade. Full details can be found on the banderole”

Unfortunately I have already disposed of the sleeve (banderole) so I have no instructions where to get drivers so I can use this cardboard disk in my DVD drive. I can only speculate at this time how fast or how much data this cardboard DVD may hold. The language on the disk is a bit confusing. Does it hold 15 DVD’s worth of information at 4.7 GB each, or just a total of 4.7 GB?

Trying the cardboard DVD in my DVD writer at work didn’t work and I’ve been unable to locate any newer drivers that the ones I currently have. Perhaps Philips is keeping this new driver under wraps while they seek a patent on this new (and probably very cheap) DVD.

It has been a quite some time since I was directly affected by minimum wage. The last time I had a minimum wage job, or one based on minimum wage, was when I worked in the computer labs of the University of Toledo. It helped pay the room, board and tuition, but was far from enough to pay all of it. If I hadn’t saved nearly every penny from jobs I held since I was 14 years old mowing lawn and eventually working at a garden center, McDonalds then a local grocery store, I wouldn’t have been able to afford even the relatively cheap tuition at a state university. I don’t know how anyone could afford to pay even half what I did now that most things are more expensive and minimum wage isn’t much more than was in the early 90′s.

So there is no question that minimum wage is too little to make a living from in most areas of the country. And in some areas you would have a hard time finding a cardboard box to live in a minimum wages. And while everyone seems to aggree that it needs to be raised, no one can agree how, and business argue that they need employees at substandard wages (ensuring a high turnover rate and guarenteeing continuous training expenses and poor customer service). I can understand some worry about large jumps affecting their bottom line (increasing $5 to $7, a 40% increase), but does it really need to be so complex as a congressional action and large increases every 9 to 10 years. Don’t most non-minimum wage jobs get a raise every year, even if it’s only a cost of living increase?

Many contractors that work with the covernment (with the Ohio Department of Transportation for example) must pay prevaling rates. These prevailing rates are maintained by the state for dozens of different jobs, with varying rates by county that are updated frequently (montly I think). So why can’t minimum wage be maintained similarly? The mechanism is already in place. Just correct the minimum wage, adjust it regionally by state and county, then update it for the rate of inflation yearly thereafter (also kept the the US government montly) And the yearly increase may also need to reflect the cost of living in each county to keep pace with local development or deflation.

But that would be entirely too simple, and would probably be a permanent fix (something congress really hates). It would mean people would get a wage they could survive on where they lived, and possibly even live in the community they work in (impossible in many areas of the country). It doesn’t mean anyone is going to get rich (except perhaps the minimum wage poster venders who would now have an entire poster for minimum wages to cover all 88 counties of ohio), but it means people would earn enough to get by. It wouldn’t be enough to prosper, but just enough to put a roof over their head, put food on the table, clean clothes to wear and bus fare to get to work, just the bare minimum. Enough to make it worthwile getting up in the morning to go to work, the bare minimum. Isn’t that what minimum wage should be?

The TV add for the movie really didn’t interest me at all. But I must say I was pretty much lost after hearing the title of the movie. I suppose some would find even the metion of a snake scary, but it really doesn’t intrigue me at all. Plus the title doesn’t seem to leave anything to the imagination. Anaconda was one of those one word titles that made you want to know more. You knew it was a snake, a big snake, but it could be in your house or eating your dog rather than in some plane you aren’t in.

However, it did give me a great idea for a series of kids books. Here are some of the titles in the series:

• 
• Snakes on a Plane
• Pigs on a Bus
• Cows in a Truck
• Bees on a Bike
• Birds on a Boat
• Cats in a Car

You are more than welcome to use them as it’s not really something I’m good at (writing kids books and drawing). I’d love to hear from anyone who gets it published though.

(Note: I suppose this isn’t entirely off topic, I did find an article about a swarm of bees on a bike. Nothing a beekeeper would get excited about though, it looks to be barely enough bees to populate a small nuc.)