I’d be remiss if I didn’t share the opposite side of the Day of the Dead piece I commissioned from Cindy Raschke. Since the medium is basically one gigantic piece of paper-mâché, she painted both sides. I’m sad this side won’t be visible once the piece is hung, but it was a bonus I wasn’t expecting, and I wanted to share it.
Filed under beekeeping, Fun
I love Day of the Dead art, so when I ran across a local Austin artist named Cindy “Crash” Raschke whose artwork also showcases this theme, I thought it would be really cool to combine beekeeping with the Day of the Dead and see what happened.
I just told Cindy I wanted some skeleton beekeepers, and she ran with it. I think the piece came out great, and I can’t wait to find the perfect place in my home to show off this sucker.
Filed under beekeeping, Fun
I’m visiting my folks in Jupiter, FL, and they have a big garden where the broccoli has flowered. Right now, it is completely covered in bees of both the native and honey bee variety. My normal perception of Florida is that it is always green and lush, but right now, there really aren’t a lot of plants in bloom so the bees are going to take what they can get.
I managed to capture two different bumble bees next to each other.
Here is a shot of a honey bee gathering nectar and pollen.
Filed under Fun
Now that we have quite a bit of honey stored up for the winter, we needed a practical dispenser for every day use. My brother gave me a really beautiful sterling silver honey jar shaped like a beehive, but it doesn’t hold a lot of honey, and it is really too nice for just everyday use in the kitchen.
My wife did some research on the interwebs, and found this article about various dispensers. She ended up getting me the WFM Satin Steel and Glass Honey Dispenser as a Christmas gift. Not only does it have a nice streamlined design, we have already put it to the test, and it passed with flying colors. It didn’t drip at all after pouring and holds about 1 cup of honey.
I’m a big fan of MythBusters, and this week they had a special dedicated to bug related myths one of which happened to be about bees. Specifically, bees lifting a laptop. Here is the video in question. For those of you viewing this at work or with small children, there are a few bad words at the very end of the video.
Now if you couldn’t tell this video was super fake by the awesome acting, the kind folks over at MythBusters tested the myth and completely busted it. However, the episode had some good information, and they even tested how much weight one bee can lift on its own (at least 81% of its body weight).
I don’t think you can watch full episodes online at Discovery.com, but you can watch part of the episode here.
Thanks to everyone who has taken time to read about my beekeeping adventure. Hopefully it has inspired some folks to take up beekeeping or been a good resource for new beeks like myself. I also have to thank Large Marge and the girls for making my first year so successful.
Last night was our 9th annual Halloween party, and Gitanjali and I decided to dress up as zom-bees.
In a fortuitous set of events, 4 other guests also dressed up as non-zombie bees which gave us a whole swarm at our party.
Then to make it even better, we had a friend show up as a bear…and we all know what happens then.
Happy Halloween!
Urban Beekeeping in Austin, Texas 