Tag Archives: bees

Austin 4th Annual Beekeeping Seminar

I can’t believe it has been so long since my last post. One of the things taking up my time (other than a small baby) is helping plan our annual beekeeping class. We’ve greatly expanded the number of classes beyond our traditional Beekeeping 101 course, and I hope that it will continue to grow and become a great annual event for Central Texas Beekeepers. Here’s the scoop:

Date: Jan. 17th 2015
What: Austin 4th Annual Beekeeping Seminar
Who: Sponsored by The Austin Area Beekeepers Association
Where: Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center
4801 La Crosse Ave, Austin, TX 78739
Cost: $40 Pre-registration (https://aabaseminar.eventbrite.com)

Why: The mission of this daylong seminar is to educate people of all experience levels in sustainable bee husbandry and to provide funding for The Texas A&M Honey Bee Lab.

Description:
This is a daylong seminar offering 3 different educational presentations running concurrently in each time slot throughout the day. This will provide many beginning or advanced subjects to choose from. Morning sessions will include two separate and thorough presentations on Beginning Beekeep-ing and Advanced Beekeeping Management.
Afternoon sessions will include many different presentations including:

  • Honey Bee Foraging
  • Varroa Management
  • Brood Disease Control
  • Swarm Capture Techniques
  • Taking Advantage of the Texas Beekeeping Tax Exemption
  • Colony Examination and Frame Reading for Beginners
  • Learn Honey Extraction Techniques and Alternative Hive Products
  • Beneficial Bee Flowers
  • Queen Finding and Requeening Techniques
  • The Latest in the Texas Bee Lab Research
  • Colony Supersedure and Management
  • Keeping Bees in an Africanized Zone
  • Nutrition Management
  • Spring Management

Presenters: 

  • Professor Juliana Rangel- Posada Entomology Texas A&M
  • Mark Dykes- Chief Texas Apiary Inspector
  • Karl Acuri- Austin Area Beekeepers Assoc. (Co-organizer) and natural beekeeper.
  • Dennis Herbert- Author of original bee tax exemption bill.
  • Fred Hall- Williamson Co. Extension Specialist and 2nd generation beekeeper
  • Lily Rosenman- Austin Area Beekeepers Assoc. (Co-organizer) and natural beekeeper
  • Becky Bender-TX Master Naturalist
  • Brandon Fehrenkamp- Natural Beekeeper Activist and owner of Austin Bees (formerly Eastside Honey Co.)
  • Lance Wilson- Certified Master Beekeeper GMBP

This organization is non-profit and all proceeds of this event will be used to promote sustainable beekeeping practices and provide support to our much appreciated Texas A&M Honey Bee Lab. This should be a lot of fun, everyone please come out and see us.

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You get a bee! You get a bee!

I don’t know how I missed this.

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The Most Adorable Bee Ever!

This little bee spent over ten minutes trying to work her way into this antique rose to get to the delicious center.

Adorable Bee on Rose

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Seriously covered in bees!

This contest pitted two Chinese beekeepers against each other to see who could attract the most bees.

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They should have just asked a beekeeper…

Honeybees have become the first invertebrates to exhibit pessimism, a benchmark cognitive trait supposedly limited to “higher” animals.

If these honeybee blues are interpreted as they would be in dogs or horses or humans, then insects might have feelings.

Honeybee response “has more in common with that of vertebrates than previously thought,” wrote Newcastle University researchers Melissa Bateson and Jeri Wright in their bee study, published June 2 in Current Biology. The findings “suggest that honeybees could be regarded as exhibiting emotions.”

Read the entire article over at Wired.

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MythBusters Bug Special

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.

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Chocolate Bees!

We just returned from a two week vacation to India and France. Our last 5 days were spent in Paris. Since Paris has a huge beekeeper population, I was hoping to find some evidence of hives while we explored the city, but I did not have any luck.

However, I did not leave empty handed because of a trip to Patrick Roger Chocolatier. He is known for having amazing window displays made entirely of chocolate, and it was almost like he knew I was coming because his current display is all about the bees.

Patrick Roger Chocolatier

Giant Chocolate Hive

Chocolate Bees

Chocolate Bees on Comb

Chocolate Bees

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This wasn’t on the lease…

Here is a link to a news story yesterday about an apartment complex in East Travis County having a bee infestation. If this has been a problem since last year, as some residents are complaining, the hive must be pretty big by now in the walls. I really hope the apartment management hires a beekeeper to come remove the bees instead of bringing out a pest control company to kill them all.

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17 million very angry bees…

There was a horrible accident in Minnesota involving a tractor trailer hauling 700+ hives of bees. It was all over the news, but this link seemed to have the most information, the best video, and lack of annoying pop-up ads.

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Bees..is there anything they can’t do?

I came across this story recently about using a bee’s highly developed sense of smell to sniff out bombs and drugs. Now if they can only use bees in some form so I don’t have to take off my shoes to get through airport security….

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