Catching the Queen

This is my beekeeping blog...Welcome!

[catchingthequeen]

[catchingthequeen]

"Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. His hands can't hit what his eyes can't see. Now you see me, now you don't. George thinks he will, but I know he won't."

Mohammed Ali

[catchingthequeen]

Some wisdom:

“Go to the bee, thou poet: consider her ways and be wise.” -George Bernard Shaw

[chaoticum]

I believe in free education, one that’s available to everyone; no matter their race, gender, age, wealth, etc… This masterpost was created for every knowledge hungry individual out there. I hope it will serve you well. Enjoy!

FREE ONLINE COURSES (here are listed websites that provide huge variety of courses)

Alison 

Coursera

FutureLearn

open2study

Khan Academy

edX

P2P U

Academic Earth

iversity

Stanford Online

MIT Open Courseware

Open Yale Courses

BBC Learning

OpenLearn

Carnegie Mellon University OLI

University of Reddit

Saylor

IDEAS, INSPIRATION & NEWS (websites which deliver educational content meant to entertain you and stimulate your brain)

TED

FORA

Big Think 

99u

BBC Future

Seriously Amazing

How Stuff Works

Discovery News

National Geographic

Science News

Popular Science

IFLScience

YouTube Edu

DIY & HOW-TO’S (Don’t know how to do that? Want to learn how to do it yourself? Here are some great websites.)

wikiHow

Wonder How To

instructables

eHow

Howcast

MAKE

Do it yourself

FREE TEXTBOOKS & E-BOOKS

OpenStax CNX

Open Textbooks

Bookboon

Textbook Revolution

E-books Directory

FullBooks

Books Should Be Free

Classic Reader

Read Print

Project Gutenberg

AudioBooks For Free

LibriVox

Poem Hunter

Bartleby

MIT Classics

Many Books

Open Textbooks BCcampus

Open Textbook Library

WikiBooks

SCIENTIFIC ARTICLES & JOURNALS

Directory of Open Access Journals

Scitable

PLOS

Wiley Open Access

Springer Open

Oxford Open

Elsevier Open Access

ArXiv

Open Access Library

LEARN:

1. LANGUAGES

Duolingo

BBC Languages

Learn A Language

101languages

Memrise

Livemocha

Foreign Services Institute

My Languages

Surface Languages

Lingualia

OmniGlot

OpenCulture’s Language links

2. COMPUTER SCIENCE & PROGRAMMING

Codecademy

Programmr

GA Dash

CodeHS

w3schools

Code Avengers

Codelearn

The Code Player

Code School

Code.org

Programming Motherf*?$%#

Bento

Bucky’s room

WiBit

Learn Code the Hard Way

Mozilla Developer Network

Microsoft Virtual Academy

3. YOGA & MEDITATION

Learning Yoga

Learn Meditation

Yome

Free Meditation

Online Meditation

Do Yoga With Me

Yoga Learning Center

4. PHOTOGRAPHY & FILMMAKING

Exposure Guide

The Bastards Book of Photography

Cambridge in Color

Best Photo Lessons

Photography Course

Production Now

nyvs

Learn About Film

Film School Online

5. DRAWING & PAINTING

Enliighten

Ctrl+Paint

ArtGraphica

Google Cultural Institute

Drawspace

DragoArt

WetCanvas

6. INSTRUMENTS & MUSIC THEORY

Music Theory

Teoria

Music Theory Videos

Furmanczyk Academy of Music

Dave Conservatoire

Petrucci Music Library

Justin Guitar

Guitar Lessons

Piano Lessons

Zebra Keys

Play Bass Now

7. OTHER UNCATEGORIZED SKILLS

Investopedia

The Chess Website

Chesscademy

Chess.com

Spreeder

ReadSpeeder

First Aid for Free

First Aid Web

Wolfram Demonstrations Project

Please feel free to add more learning focused websites. 

*There are a lot more learning websites out there, but I picked the ones that are, as far as I’m aware, completely free and in my opinion the best/ more useful.

[catchingthequeen]

June Butterflies in La Plaine, Haiti, West Indies

[mucholderthen]

Honey Bee (Apis mellifera) by ~Noel Badges Pugh  Traditional Art / Paintings / Animals   |   2012

Watercolor with labels added in Adobe Illustrator Commission for the Urban Bee Gardens 

[catchingthequeen]

Bee

[catchingthequeen]

This is a really nice video.

[catchingthequeen]

Both colonies lived through the winter!

Last weekend my husband and I reversed the bee boxes on both hives.The bottom boxes were empty and the screened bottom boards were covered with the winter's collection of dead bees and left over suger crumbs. We took apart the hives but didn't open and remove frames yet. It was a little to cold to risk chilling the brood. But both bee colonies were large and thriving. The hives we combined last fall are 4 boxes tall but the colony is so big we kept all four, only moving the empty bottom box to the top. We also cleaned both screened bottom boards. And removed one medium box from the smaller hive, so it's shorter now but still has plenty of room to expand. We noticed the bees have started bringing in nectar and pollen. Now the question is do we re-queen again or wait until the fall, like last year? We'll ponder that for a week. I'm so happy both colonies lived through the winter. :D

[catchingthequeen]

"Spring is here! The grass is ris. I wonder where the birdies is?"

(They are catching my bees and eating them!!)

[catchingthequeen]

Spring is coming, the bees are happy

I know I skipped many months on this blog but after we treated the two hives for Varroa mites and re-queened in Sept/Oct we didn't open them up again. After a month or so we lifted the covers and noticed that both clusters were right at the top of the hives. I knew there had been a lot of honey in those boxes but the clusters never moved down, which is weird since we left so much honey in the boxes and so many boxes as well. We started to feel worried that they wouldn't reach the honey if it was below them. So in December we made a batch of sugar patties, added an eke to each hive and put a patty right on the top bars above the clusters. Both hives finished the patties in one week so we fed them once a week for half of December, January and half of February. In the middle of February we ran out of patties so we made more but mixed it with Brood Builder pollen substitute powder as well. We've continued feeding them one patty a week since then and they continue to consume them at that rate. From the photos below it looks like they've built up some brood. They looked like they were having some orientation flights with a lot of bees outside in the 50 degree sun. Both hives look quite lively and large. I hope they stay that way. This past Fall/Winter they have survived hurricane Sandy, endured 11 degree weather in January, one or two snow storms and warm/cold-warm/cold weather as well. The crocus and snow bells have been up for two weeks and some trees are flowering. Can't wait for April to open the hives and see what is going on in the lower two boxes of those hives!! :D

[catchingthequeen]

and this is today!!! It's getting to be Spring and both our hives are big and healthy and booming. Whew! (knock on wood)

[catchingthequeen]

This was yesterday...

[wallacegardens]

Book cover renderings of Medieval bee keepers. 

[stevenrosas]

Two things define you. Your patience when you have nothing, and your attitude when you have everything.

(via natashakills)

[fdelacruz]

Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.

Albert Einstein (via fdelacruz)

[catchingthequeen]

Remember that queen?

We gave the hives another treatment of thymol on Sunday, third and last for the first two hives and second for hive #3. Hive #3 was the one with the queen we didn't see when we re-queened. We saw her again on Sunday. So...that means she probably killed the queen we placed in there 2 weeks ago. Fine. Maybe she will take the hive through the winter.  Our original hive that we grew all summer from a nuke is BOOMING with a huge population and extra mediums as brood and food boxes. Hives #1 and #3 that we got from the NYPD are not as strong now as they were when we got them but they have full deeps of honey above their brood boxes. Perhaps we'll marry them in a few weeks if they don't do better. Rather have one large population hive going into winter than two weak ones. It's been in the 70's during the day so the weather seems like late summer rather than fall. We even saw a fair number of drones still hanging around.

[catchingthequeen]

The yard smells like thymol

Last Sunday we gave the second treatment of thymol to our hives. After we finished the yard smelled like thymol for a few days. We'll check them again tomorrow and, if all is well, give them the third and last treatment.