The Buzz Newsletter

January 2009

 

 

Page 6

Bob Cox

I was talking to Bob Cox today and found out he has undergone surgery to remove a large tumor in his brain.  He is still going to have more surgery to remove some more of the tumor.  He will then have radiation treatment and probably chemo.  I don't know how long he has been off work due to the surgery, but it sounds like he will still be off for a month or longer to get all of the treatments done.  If anyone would like to send Bob a get well card his address is:

 

Robert Cox

914 Kerria St

Weslaco, TX 78596-7222

 

Submitted by Gordon Powell 

 

 

 

THE BEEYARD REPORT

The days will be getting longer by the time you read this. Spring will be just around the corner. If the bees are healthy, there will begin to be a little brood after the first of the year. I always reflect on the past season as we move into winter. It wasn't a crop disaster but it sure wasn't very good. It was the poorest crop we have had in 10 or 12 years. It was also a horrible year for rearing queens. We started out behind and never caught up. The good weather in late Sept and early October kept brood rearing going until November. There should be a lot of young bees for winter.

 

It was 50 degrees and sunny on Nov 28. That's a big change from last year when it was cold and snowy. Good weather lets the bees finish their syrup. I hate it when the feeders are still half full in the spring. I look at the feeders and think, "There's syrup in there". Then I lift the box and dump syrup down my leg. The colonies we made up from the queen yard had dropped low enough that they weren't visible from the top but I could smell them. A few were still on top and hanging into the division board feeder. I gave those another shot of syrup. We have everything in doubles this year. We tried 50 or so in singles last year and had a 98% death loss. The colonies look the way I want them to look. We'll have to see how many are alive in the spring.

 

The weather transitioned to snow on the 29th. I was in a rush to get the shelter finished for the horses before it got too nasty.  I salvaged enough leftover steel from the honey house addition to cover the back and one side. I have three pieces of rake and corner left to install and it will be complete.

 

The extracting line is cleaned up. I'm in the process of moving it over into the new part of our building. I haven't completely decided how I want to arrange it.

 

 

Adam is in the U.K. finishing the research for his Phd paper. By the way, his topic is 19th century English beekeeping. He is due to complete his work in April.

 

I had a call from one of the tree services. They said they had a log crammed with bees that they had cut out of a tree. They wanted to save the bees. I didn't want it but I told them to bring it over since they had made an effort. There proved to be only a handful of bees left. I did appreciate that they wanted to save them.

I'm beginning to feel rested. I like to take a hot shower before I go to bed. If the furnace is running when I get out, I stand over the register for a while. There isn't much heat in the upstairs of my old farmhouse.

When I go upstairs to bed, it's a bit like coming out of the sauna and jumping into a cold lake. I read somewhere they do things like that in some of the Nordic countries. It works, though. I go to sleep right away. I'm sure you have figured out by now that I don't have a lot to write about in December.

 

I'm learning more about exporting than I ever wanted to know. I found out the hard way that you cannot ship soft wood pallets into Japan. Then my customer got taxed 45% on the shipment because I didn't send a purity certificate with the honey. This was something new. I have sent other shipments to Japan with no problem. The normal import tax is 20%. We have our old friends the Chinese to thank for the need for a purity certificate. They have been sending a lot of junk into Japan. The authorities are getting tired of it. The tax was on both the value of the product and the cost of shipping---a double zinger.

 

I used some newspaper for packing in the boxes that went to Japan. My customer enjoyed reading them. He found out that a vacuum that sells for $800 in Japan only costs $400 in the US. I'm a bit of a newspaper junky myself.  When I get packages from other parts of the country, I always go through the newspaper if they used it for packing.

 

Stay warm everybody.

 

Submitted by Phil Ebert