(Non-Bee) The Case Against Crocs

Came upon this Newsweek article about those dumb-looking Crocs shoes. I've mostly been ambivalent about them, but would also never be caught dead wearing them because they look horrible and stupid - not that I don't occasionally wear things that look horrible and stupid, but the difference here is, the things I wear don't look horrible and stupid to me!

Kitty pick-up and bee-check

Jen and I went up today to pick up our two new cats (since named Willow and Pippi after will-o'-the-wisp and Pippi Longstocking). Willow is the mother and Pippi is her 3-month-old daughter. Their very-short biography is that last fall, somebody abandoned Willow, an indoor car, on my parents' farm and she wintered outside in the extreme cold. There is already a growing family of quasi-feral red cats who weren't that friendly to Willow, but the old Tom was friendly enough with her that she had a litter of 6 kittens in March (see picture). Willow is the big white one with the frost-bitten ears (poor thing) and Pippi is the kitten looking up at the camera.

Five of them went to the kitty-adoption at the vet and we took on Willow (since we worried nobody would take her) and to help her adapt to being here and to getting along with Biggio and Gracie, our current cats, we also took Pippi, and I'm pretty sure we won't regret it ... at least in the long run! :)

As for the bees, they were bustling! I didn't take any pictures, but it was a beautiful sunny day and they were taking advantage of it. I brought up the new telescoping lids and inner covers and a can of paint. Dad will paint the trim of exposed wood (they've aluminum tops and wood sides) and place them later next week. I also brought the other items, the frame holders and hive tool, although Dad did in fact find the old (formerly-missing) hive tool. Well, we'll need it sometime, I'm sure.

As you recall, we removed the queen excluder from the east hive. While there are definitely more bees in the east hive's super than in the west, they don't APPEAR to be doing very much. We only glanced in the top, without veils or smoke so we didn't look too close. They're definitely not in danger of needing a second super.

We were also hoping to pick a lot of black raspberries, but alas, I think we were a week too late.

Northey names Joseph as new state apiarist

From the March 30, 2008 Des Moines Register:

Andrew Joseph has been named state apiarist for the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, said Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey.

Joseph will oversee apiary registration and inspection, conduct beekeeper education courses and conduct public outreach on bees and beekeeping, Northey said.

Funding for the state apiarist job was provided by the Iowa Legislature during the 2007 session.

The position was suspended in 2001 because of budget constraints.

Joseph will be based at the department's laboratory facility in Ankeny.

He can be contacted by phone at (515) 725-1481 or by e-mail at Andrew.Joseph@IowaAgriculture.gov.

The Iowa agriculture department has three part-time apiary inspectors that examine hives across the state.

First Post

Obviously, this is my first post to this blog (or to any 'blog' for that matter). So the question is, how much do I really want to put into this first post? Do I go into a lot of introductory detail about the beekeeping efforts of my dad, myself, and our support cast, which would be a lot of thought and effort? Or do I just start right now, posting about what's going on right now and provide that kind of detail as I proceed?

As I've proven to myself that if I try to get everyone caught up chronologically, I'll never get to the current time, I think I'll go with the latter, although maybe with at least a brief introduction.

Several years ago, my dad and I, with support from Jen and my mom, got into beekeeping. We got two hives, installed them at my parents' acreage in northeast Iowa, between Dike and Parkersburg, and set about trying to coax them into living, thriving, and producing.

We've had two summers of bees, overwintering (somewhat) successfully last year and not so successfully this year. We lost one hive ('Wilma', our "strong" hive) late in the fall - it appears it went queenless, population diminished, wax moths moved in, and we had to cut our losses for that hive. The other hive, 'Betty', looked quite strong; we stacked one deep from Wilma, strong with honey, on top, wrapped it for winter, and thought we'd get through the winter with one good hive. Unfortunately, winter was a tad extreme. Dad knows they were alive in early February, but then we had two final weeks of single-digit and subzero temperatures, which didn't allow them to break cluster and move around in the hive and they didn't make it - starved within inches of more food.

We'll be getting set up again here in a couple of months. This allows us the opportunity to move our hives to a different location if we wish, to start fresh, but with a lot of good foundation, to continue to learn and try to get better at cohabitating with our little bee-buddies.

Hopefully, I'll post our progress and some pictures and quite possibly, somebody some day might even read this!!