Saturday, June 27, 2009

Trying beneficial Nematodes on my bee hives to combat the Small Hive Beetle

I've read about the small hive beetle and their devastating effects on honey bee hives, but always assumed they were limited to the south. A few weeks ago I spotted a few in one of my new hives. I didn't see any of the larva, but the beetles scurried around until I smashed them with my hive tool. After researching my options, some of which included vegetable oil filled trays to trap them I found out that there are specific nematodes that attack the SHB.

This morning I applied Heterorhabditis indica nematodes purchased from Southeastern Insectaries in a watering can around my hives. It'll be interesting to see if they combat the SHB life cycle.

FYI -

The actual nematodes come shipped in a Styrofoam cooler and they are suspended with that gel you put in flower pots to provide moisture storage. In the bag below there are about 5 million of the nematodes that specifically attack the SHB. I had some difficulty in actually counting them to make sure I wasn't ripped off.
Heterorhabditis indica nematodes for small hive beetle

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Taking my old email Yahoo email address out back

You might have an email address from college that isn't the most professional.

Maybe you couldn't get the address you wanted?

Maybe you just want to have your vanity address on all the email services?

You wouldn't want someone to impersonate your Yahoo address on AOL?

My old Yahoo account (10+ years old) is plagued with spam, lots of spam. The filter doesn't seem to work nearly as well as my Gmail or AOL account. Over the past few years I've been moving most of my friends and company registered email addresses off my Yahoo account simply for the reason I get between 4 and 10 SPAM emails a day. It's a waste of my time to clean out these unwanted emails. My iPhone is constantly dinging as get this SPAM. The other day I tried registering my normal email address on Yahoo and it was available, it was time to retire my old account.

Today I took my account out back and erased it.

Sure there is still some concern that I'll miss an email from someone, but with all the different social networking solutions I'm sure they'll find me again. Whether the Spammers will is a whole different story.

Friday, June 19, 2009

Trying blogging from my iPhone

Just downloaded blogwriter lite from the app store.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Steve Balmer on his management style from WSJ.com

Steve Ballmer sat down with the WSJ for some short video segments on his management style. It's worth the 10 minutes to watch them all.

How to run meetings


Micromanaging


Managing your time - I follow a similar model of planing on a weekly basis to make sure I'm focused on the right people and issues.


Making outside hires


How to make decisions


Friday, June 12, 2009

Collecting my first swarm of honey bees

I haven't seen my hives in two weeks so imagine the surprise when I checked them and on my way back to the house I see a swarm in a nearby tree! Normally you reverse your hive bodies to ensure the bees think they have plenty of space and they don't swarm. I guess I missed something.

Capturing the swarm is relatively easy, just climb a ladder and shake them into the box. Then dump the box of bees into a hive.

Photos to follow:

honey bee swarm in treehoney bee swarm in treerob deichert collecting swarm of honey beesrob deichert collecting swarm of honey bees