I have had bee hives since 2000- it’s a fun albeit work intensive hobby. They are fun to just sit and watch- as long as you don’t bother them you can sit right next to them to watch. My current hive is going like gangbusters coming out of the winter! Very exciting !
I found that out AFTER I threw my 5 year old honey out - "this stuff looks good, but it can't possibly still be good after all of this time!" Thanks a lot, internet.
A friend of mine is an amateur beekeper. I got to suit up with him when he and his beekeeping partner went to replenish a dead hive. It was kind of a amazing.
They'd received a shipment of live bees from Florida, in a wooden box maybe two feet long by 8 inches square, with a wire mesh on one side to let in air; the box was packed solid with bees, largely somewhat dormant. They scraped off the dead combs in the old hive, and then opened the box and literally *poured* the new bees into it, as if they were water. The bees woke up pretty good and were buzzing all around us -- good thing we had suits!
Finally, they took out a little matchbox-size box containing the queen, peeled back a seal, and put it in the hive. Her little box was still closed -- the seal had shielded a wax plug -- but the bees sense the presence of the queen and chomp away at the plug until she is free. Once she's ensconced, the hive is open for business, and the honey-makin' and reproducin' gets underway in earnest.
paul's oldest brother has been very successful with his hives, but I've observed that it's an ongoing learning process. I hope you also experience that same sweet success with your hives.
Very destructive and can wipe out the whole hive in days. And it's extremely nasty to clean. Plus, after I got the frames cleaned, I had to put them in the deep freeze for a year.
It sounds really difficult to me (and slightly scary), but I'd still love to try to do it. You should be really proud of yourself! Hope you have a great harvest.
My folks replaced what had been the "lawn" portion of our land when I was little with clover--it was indeed lovely and in about 10 years of having it I did encounter a LOT of the lovely bees, but only got stung once.
What parallel is it, the one that goes through Texas, where the rainfall suddenly is half as plentiful as on the east side of the line? Whatever it’s number is, there should be like zero lawns on the other side of it. But golfers gotta golf, I suppose
Planting a cover crop can be expensive, and out here where I live you'd have to water it (we only get about 15 inches of rain a year on average), which makes it even more expensive.
No till is cheaper, but you don't get the benefit of a nitrogen fixer.
Back east, when I used to work cattle, we planted rye for a cover crop.
I trust a "think of the chemical producers" comment is unserious anyway, but I'll take the opportunity to point out that anhydrous ammonia fertilizer is not only not free, but inherently unsustainable, as the standard production method depends on hydrogen from natural gas. Unlike, say, running a tractor, this application of fossil fuels to food production will not be easy to transition away from. Along with water issues, this will be a factor in food prices for a long time to come. The other "green hydrogen" methods for making ammonia fertilizer only become price-competitive when the NG feedstock gets high enough. The long-term price of fertilizer is going to be higher than what we got used to in the century since Fritz Haber.
We have something similar for ground cover, some kind of sensitive plant that's soft and pretty and blooms. We also have so! many! native. plants, many of which flower. The beach isn't a great environment for honey bees but we have plenty of other species buzzing around pollinating our tomatoes :)
"Is Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer paying Michiganders and Michigeese to take in illegal aliens? I wish! " I wish, too. There are so many empty or boarded up houses just on our street we could take in a dozen families and be the better off for it. These are nice, sturdy brick houses on good streets, just going to waste.
"Now I am going to start using a bain marie, possibly named after a Jewish Egyptian alchemist maybe Moses’s sister"
Yes, but Moses's sister used a bain marie made of papyrus reeds she found down among the bullrushers, and while it was good for floating babies, it really didn't hold up at all in boiling water.
I remember going with a friend to buy his first second-hand car from some guy at a house near Century City. It was a Ford Pinto. I asked friend if he knew that before he made this rendezvous, and he replied, "Yes, why?" And I was all like, "Do you really not know about Ford Pintos? I mean, there's a fucking punk band called The Exploding Pintos!" And he was like, "Oh that. But this is the only thing I can afford." He only drove it (without incident) for a few months before getting something else.
Musk says he's gonna fire 14,000 people at Tesla to make the company "hungry." Hungry people make mistakes, so it looks like that death count's gonna go up.
Kristi Noem is gonna be here in The Villages on May 13, by invitation of the extremist "Villagers for Trump 27" club, as part of her "book tour". Tickets will be $50 ( including a copy of her book-like object )
Their last "event" was to be Randy Quaid, for which tickets were $150 to $1000 to attend ( some 70 people attended ), but Randy had to appear by Zoom, since he didn't have proper id at the airport ( I think he was coming from Canada ). The fools who paid got to listen Laura Loomer instead...
“Rep. Clay Higgins would like to put the EPA administrator in Angola Prison.” -Silly EPA, clean air is for Commies. 🙄 Every last thing that offends these right wing, Christo-fascist loons is nonsensical. It all boils down to, “if I want to poison my children with lead paint and gas stove fumes while letting them bounce around seat-belt less in my pick-up truck with my AR-15 unsecured on the floor while on my way to threaten drag queen story hour in a school district I don’t live in going 115 in a 65 and smoking unfiltered cigarettes it is my God-given right as an American goddamit!”
Tesla AP does not equal FSD. AP is auto pilot, an umbrella term for Traffic Aware Cruise Control and Lane Keeping. Full Self Driving is different, an expensive upgrade.
Tesla is very opaque about what they mean when they say "AP" in their safety data reporting.
Drivers learn when to use "AP" because it's very bad at driving in all but the most basic, low traffic open road situations. Tesla does not release any data about what type of roads AP is actually used on.
So any claim that AP is safe could be and likely is 100% down to selection bias, where drivers only use it in very safe conditions, skewing the data.
I've used AP and FSD just to see how it works, on and off for 2.5 years in our Model Y. AP is not safe, full stop. It makes inconsistent mistakes all the time, requiring more attention to monitor it than just driving the car.
Worse, it gives the illusion of competence much of the time, leading to complacency. Humans don't comprehend statistical safety rates. In general, we crash once every 200k miles. Good drivers crash once every million miles, or never.
For AP to be safe, we need to know it can go some order of magnitude farther than 200k miles between crashes. No individual experience over even a few years can really know for themselves how safe it is, in isolation.
Unless we are honest with ourselves, and understand that that one time we took over when AP drifted over the centerline was a disqualifying event. Happens pretty frequently.
We've stopped using AP entirely. It should be disabled by recall.
Oh, crap. Accidentally left the door open and the roombas dragged the bar cart out the door and it tumbled down the stairs, pulling the roombas with it. Nature abhors vacuums.
Bee kind! Some ways to care for your bee friends this spring in the hed gif info tab: https://open.substack.com/pub/martiniambassador/p/best-nectar-in-town-the-bees-knees
I have had bee hives since 2000- it’s a fun albeit work intensive hobby. They are fun to just sit and watch- as long as you don’t bother them you can sit right next to them to watch. My current hive is going like gangbusters coming out of the winter! Very exciting !
Bee best!
fun food fact!
honey is the one food which never, ever, ever goes bad - e.g., the stuff found in Egyptian tombs was still edible
I found that out AFTER I threw my 5 year old honey out - "this stuff looks good, but it can't possibly still be good after all of this time!" Thanks a lot, internet.
A friend of mine is an amateur beekeper. I got to suit up with him when he and his beekeeping partner went to replenish a dead hive. It was kind of a amazing.
They'd received a shipment of live bees from Florida, in a wooden box maybe two feet long by 8 inches square, with a wire mesh on one side to let in air; the box was packed solid with bees, largely somewhat dormant. They scraped off the dead combs in the old hive, and then opened the box and literally *poured* the new bees into it, as if they were water. The bees woke up pretty good and were buzzing all around us -- good thing we had suits!
Finally, they took out a little matchbox-size box containing the queen, peeled back a seal, and put it in the hive. Her little box was still closed -- the seal had shielded a wax plug -- but the bees sense the presence of the queen and chomp away at the plug until she is free. Once she's ensconced, the hive is open for business, and the honey-makin' and reproducin' gets underway in earnest.
This is a science fact movie I would watch.
CDB. DB S A BZ B.
I loved that book.
It's adorbs.
Bless you
Can I unleash the hounds, or the bees, or the hounds with bees in their mouths and when they open their mouths, they shoot bees at you?
old southern saying: grinnin' like a mule with a mouthful o' bees
Bees aren't primates
That's a fact
It's so elementary
Apes are apey in the trees
Bees are apiary.
Perfect! I love bees. My favorite kind are thebirdsandthe.
Bear <3 those Flowersandthe trees also too as well!
ariwhere they go...
LOL!
MWID'H
Speaking of bees:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qVPNONdF58
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APUWOoUqQho
I haven't heard that one in a bit!
Love it, but...it just makes me sad.
Also...just realized that I'm only a year and half older than Shannon (would have been)...seemed like more of a difference.
Bee healthy! Eat your honey!
It's almost time to harvest honey, here at the Do Something house.
Just bee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYuvLSFFalo
Eddie Izzard - covered in bees. This will never not be funny.
Oooh, how nice! I would love to try that sometime.
Last year, we had notes of peach, so they must have found a good stand of peach trees.
My grandfather’s hives were near beech trees and the honey was always flavored of beech. Delicious.
Bees and chickens! I'd be in hog heaven, if only.
We need to split a hive and I'm a little apprehensive about it. We only have the one hive. I started off with two and hive moths got one of them.
It's the hobby that will make you feel completely stupid.
paul's oldest brother has been very successful with his hives, but I've observed that it's an ongoing learning process. I hope you also experience that same sweet success with your hives.
You’re doing something I have wanted to try. I would love to be able to make mead with “my own” honey.
I never heard of hive moths, so I Googled it. I learned something. Thanks for educating me.
Very destructive and can wipe out the whole hive in days. And it's extremely nasty to clean. Plus, after I got the frames cleaned, I had to put them in the deep freeze for a year.
It sounds really difficult to me (and slightly scary), but I'd still love to try to do it. You should be really proud of yourself! Hope you have a great harvest.
Most of the time, I just let them do their thing.
clover!
Clover is better than grass in many ways. I shall list some
a: bees love it so very much
b: it is prettier than grass
c: it fucks the soil less than grass
4: it needs less mowing
e: did I mention the bees cause ain't kidding on that one
f 1/3: it smells better than grass, and this is from someone who really appreciates the smell of fresh mowed grass
42: it pwns grass like an edge lord. Plant clover
As this is our first year in our new house, we're thinking of what fun things to do with the yard... and now I'm adding CLOVER to the list!
My lawn is full of it. My neighbor kills everything that isn't fit for a golf course. He hates my dandelions the most.
Rarely is a four leaf clover found on plants that make a "good" lawn.
I'm all for abandoning lawns in favor of clover and wild flowers.
My kid can find a four leaf clover in seconds. She called it 'my one talent' which is funny because she kicks ass in all areas of life.
It also draws nitrogen from the atmosphere and feeds the soil because legumes.
If only there were plants that draw CO2 from the atmosphere. What? ALL of them?!?!
Feels good on my bare feet!
I love when it flowers too ^.^ That is usually when hubs starts looking at the mower, but until he chops their heads off there is soooo much purple
My folks replaced what had been the "lawn" portion of our land when I was little with clover--it was indeed lovely and in about 10 years of having it I did encounter a LOT of the lovely bees, but only got stung once.
What parallel is it, the one that goes through Texas, where the rainfall suddenly is half as plentiful as on the east side of the line? Whatever it’s number is, there should be like zero lawns on the other side of it. But golfers gotta golf, I suppose
I stepped on two in a park full of clover. Still worth it!
I should look this up before posting but is it not also a nitrogen fixer? Red clover also has medicinal properties.
Guess I should read the comments before I run my mouth!
It is!
Farmers used to sow it just for that reason
Why would any farmer do that when there are perfectly good chemicals that can do the same thing? Won’t anyone think of the chemical producers?
Planting a cover crop can be expensive, and out here where I live you'd have to water it (we only get about 15 inches of rain a year on average), which makes it even more expensive.
No till is cheaper, but you don't get the benefit of a nitrogen fixer.
Back east, when I used to work cattle, we planted rye for a cover crop.
Id like to chat about having cattle in the east if you have experience.
Because anhydrous ammonia (the usual nitrogen fertilizer) isn’t free. And the clover can be used as animal fodder/green manure.
I trust a "think of the chemical producers" comment is unserious anyway, but I'll take the opportunity to point out that anhydrous ammonia fertilizer is not only not free, but inherently unsustainable, as the standard production method depends on hydrogen from natural gas. Unlike, say, running a tractor, this application of fossil fuels to food production will not be easy to transition away from. Along with water issues, this will be a factor in food prices for a long time to come. The other "green hydrogen" methods for making ammonia fertilizer only become price-competitive when the NG feedstock gets high enough. The long-term price of fertilizer is going to be higher than what we got used to in the century since Fritz Haber.
We have something similar for ground cover, some kind of sensitive plant that's soft and pretty and blooms. We also have so! many! native. plants, many of which flower. The beach isn't a great environment for honey bees but we have plenty of other species buzzing around pollinating our tomatoes :)
Other pollinators are also important!
So many butterflies, too! :)
Keep going, South Dakota, you can do it! Just 90% to go!
Also I would be remiss if I didn’t say Mount Rushmore is deliberately racist and should be given back AS PER THE ACTUAL TREATIES!
"Is Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer paying Michiganders and Michigeese to take in illegal aliens? I wish! " I wish, too. There are so many empty or boarded up houses just on our street we could take in a dozen families and be the better off for it. These are nice, sturdy brick houses on good streets, just going to waste.
I'm holding my breath waiting for Ken Paxton to open a similar investigation of the Media Research Center.
LOL! Dok trying to present facts to some lady on that twitter LNG thread. Of course she don't want no stinking facts
"Now I am going to start using a bain marie, possibly named after a Jewish Egyptian alchemist maybe Moses’s sister"
Yes, but Moses's sister used a bain marie made of papyrus reeds she found down among the bullrushers, and while it was good for floating babies, it really didn't hold up at all in boiling water.
I remember going with a friend to buy his first second-hand car from some guy at a house near Century City. It was a Ford Pinto. I asked friend if he knew that before he made this rendezvous, and he replied, "Yes, why?" And I was all like, "Do you really not know about Ford Pintos? I mean, there's a fucking punk band called The Exploding Pintos!" And he was like, "Oh that. But this is the only thing I can afford." He only drove it (without incident) for a few months before getting something else.
Musk says he's gonna fire 14,000 people at Tesla to make the company "hungry." Hungry people make mistakes, so it looks like that death count's gonna go up.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/15/tesla-cut-jobs-elon-musk-staff
I’m frightened to find out about the 5,050-year-old firefighters that attacked congress! When did PAB command a mummy army???
It's just a figure of speech, but they all have mummy issues.
Ever notice how inadequate Republicans that claw their way to the heights of power they're unqualified to wield always have Daddy issues?
I have it on good authority that Bain Marie is a vulture hedge-funder known for saying "let them eat cake."
Kristi Noem is gonna be here in The Villages on May 13, by invitation of the extremist "Villagers for Trump 27" club, as part of her "book tour". Tickets will be $50 ( including a copy of her book-like object )
Their last "event" was to be Randy Quaid, for which tickets were $150 to $1000 to attend ( some 70 people attended ), but Randy had to appear by Zoom, since he didn't have proper id at the airport ( I think he was coming from Canada ). The fools who paid got to listen Laura Loomer instead...
This place has way too many loons
Our loons used to not have money. They stood in the middle of the park or on the street corner and harangued the populace. The populace ignored them.
Now, the loons have money.
Still doesn't stop many of them complaining that it's getting too expensive to live in The Villages - and that the golf courses have gone to hell.
Ya think there might be a bit too much "privilege" going on 'round here?
“Rep. Clay Higgins would like to put the EPA administrator in Angola Prison.” -Silly EPA, clean air is for Commies. 🙄 Every last thing that offends these right wing, Christo-fascist loons is nonsensical. It all boils down to, “if I want to poison my children with lead paint and gas stove fumes while letting them bounce around seat-belt less in my pick-up truck with my AR-15 unsecured on the floor while on my way to threaten drag queen story hour in a school district I don’t live in going 115 in a 65 and smoking unfiltered cigarettes it is my God-given right as an American goddamit!”
Tesla AP does not equal FSD. AP is auto pilot, an umbrella term for Traffic Aware Cruise Control and Lane Keeping. Full Self Driving is different, an expensive upgrade.
Tesla is very opaque about what they mean when they say "AP" in their safety data reporting.
Drivers learn when to use "AP" because it's very bad at driving in all but the most basic, low traffic open road situations. Tesla does not release any data about what type of roads AP is actually used on.
So any claim that AP is safe could be and likely is 100% down to selection bias, where drivers only use it in very safe conditions, skewing the data.
I've used AP and FSD just to see how it works, on and off for 2.5 years in our Model Y. AP is not safe, full stop. It makes inconsistent mistakes all the time, requiring more attention to monitor it than just driving the car.
Worse, it gives the illusion of competence much of the time, leading to complacency. Humans don't comprehend statistical safety rates. In general, we crash once every 200k miles. Good drivers crash once every million miles, or never.
For AP to be safe, we need to know it can go some order of magnitude farther than 200k miles between crashes. No individual experience over even a few years can really know for themselves how safe it is, in isolation.
Unless we are honest with ourselves, and understand that that one time we took over when AP drifted over the centerline was a disqualifying event. Happens pretty frequently.
We've stopped using AP entirely. It should be disabled by recall.
Oh FFS . . . "Liz Truss says Donald Trump ‘has to’ win" . . . one loser to another. [https://www.politico.eu/article/liz-truss-say-donald-trump-has-to-win/]
Yeah, she is pimping her book but seriously?
Oh, honey. You didn't even last FIVE scaramuccis. Sit down and SFTU.
Head o' Lettuce says, "What?"
Oh, crap. Accidentally left the door open and the roombas dragged the bar cart out the door and it tumbled down the stairs, pulling the roombas with it. Nature abhors vacuums.
There you go! Your roomba is right on trend.
So do dogs.
That's one helluva way to mix Long Island Iced Tea.
That sucks.
https://x.com/Brewjew308/status/1779879420888502319
Trump no sleep last night
Ha ha . . . the scumbag can't even get his glower up!
Needz moar adderall.
LOLawLOL