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Thursday February 15th, 2001
Normals for the period: Low minus 12. High zero. Friday February 16th, 2001
Saturday February 17th, 2001 I like to get away from time-to-time, go to a city to wander around, so El & I headed to Calgary, had brunch at the Marlborough food fair and then spent some time exploring Sunnyside. We lived there years ago and so we dropped by some of our old haunts. The little house at 202 was still there, which is somewhat amazing since far more sturdy houses have been levelled and replaced by apartments. In mid-afternoon, we went to see if our sculptor friend, Peter was home and as it happened he was, so we had coffee with him before heading home.
Sunday February 18th, 2001 Ellen went to her stained glass workshop around ten and I worked hard on the sale website. At five, Bill, Fen and Lorelee came for supper and we watched a movie. It was a most pleasant evening.
Normals for the period: Low minus 12. High zero. Monday February 19th, 2001 We spent the day working on ads, lists, phone calls and paperwork in general. Matt sanded the blue C&C. Time flies.
Tuesday February 20th, 2001 We spent the morning working on ads and the website, then went to Red Deer for supper and to get a few things. I wanted to check hives along the way and see how they are doing and we stopped at Winthers' and Getz's yards. We opened 16 hives and did not see any dead. We looked into both new wraps and the normal four packs and it appears the hives are warmer in the larger packs. We saw a little ice in the corners of the individual wraps, but the bees look just fine so far. The individual wraps are noticeably cooler and the bees cluster tighter. Whether this is a good thing or not we will see later. We met Jean & Chris and went to Manzzinis for supper, then home again
Wednesday February 21st, 2001 Everything has been a bit of a blur for the past few weeks, what with the trip to Victoria, the drive back, the Aventis meeting, our decision to sell, then the trip to Saskatoon and all the work structuring the business end of things and arranging the advertising. I'm working on filling in the past few weeks and have made a good beginning this evening... This was a day of working on books and ads. El & I went to Linden for lunch to meet Flo & Johnny. Matt continued working on the cab & chassis trucks to make sure they are ship-shape. It is now daylight at suppertime (6PM) I got a load of water and groceries after supper.
Normals for the period: Low minus 11. High 1. Thursday February 22nd, 2001 It's daylight at 7 Am now. The sun isn't up, but days are getting longer quickly now. We're mostly working on office jobs these days.
Normals for the period: Low minus 11. High 1. Friday February 23rd, 2001 This past January was a warm month when compared to averages, and quite balmy at times. February has been quite the opposite, with temperatures sitting consistently well below long term averages. This is not -- theoretically at least -- the best situation for our bees, since by now, most hives will be rearing brood and the bees are getting older. The last few months of the winter determine how successful overwintering will be and I am fervently hoping for some warmer weather soon. From the look of the bees, things seem to be okay, but it is hard to tell yet if there will be a problem. So far it looks as if most of the bees are alive, but if the winter drags on and spring comes late, and spring is cooler than normal, we'll likely see colonies that would have made it drop by the wayside as the wintering bees age and fail to be replaced or clusters are unable to reach their feed now that they are at the top and sitting on brood.
Saturday February 24th, 2001 We worked on our plans today and got things ready for my trip to Edmonton tomorrow. The ABA is having a bee disease workshop Monday and Tuesday and I'm planning to head up there tomorrow to be there in lots of time Monday morning. I hate waking up to find I have a 3 hour drive and it is foggy or icy. It's much easier and more pleasant to get there night before. Besides, there are often other earlybirds and a chance to visit with friends. Since we are retiring, it might seem surprising to some that I am going to such a meeting, but we still have an awful lot of bees and I need to know what is happening. It's also a good chance to talk to my fellow commercial beekeepers and make them aware of what we have for sale. We got some snow today, but not enough to make snowmobiling look very attractive yet. The weather is still consistently cold and I am getting tired of it. The day was dull and I find that depressing after a while. Purves-Smiths and Bert came for supper and we had a good time. It is minus twenty out and they had to be careful not to let their diesel cars get too cold. They left around nine.
Sunday February 25th, 2001 I left for Edmonton around 2 PM and stopped in Red Deer along the way for some supplies. i needed some disks and paper. Then I spent an hour with Chris & Jean at their place Snowboarding on their Playstation. It was minus twenty and bone-chilling cold when got to The executive Royal Hotel around 8. I found some beekeepers already there, in the bar of course. We had a good visit. Gary Reuter and Dave Westerveld were up to speak I'd met them in San Diego.
Monday February 26th, 2001
Tuesday February 27th, 2001
Wednesday February 28th, 2001 I'm back from the meeting and back to working on advertising and selling our bees and equipment. I am feeling vindicated. Over a year ago, I wrote an article on BEE-L, warning about SAFB. At that time we weren't hearing much about it, but I guessed that it would be big news shortly. When speculating on possible causes of the outbreaks that were suddenly appearing all over North America, my guess was that there might have been only one original mutation or source of the variant strain. I predicted that all outbreaks would be proven to be closely related organisms spread by international trade -- if anyone cared or dared to question the party line. The politically correct line was, and still is, that this AFB is spontaneously arising from the familiar variety of AFB in individual beekeeper's operations at geographically separated locations due to beekeepers' methods of drug application. AFAIK, absolutely no research backs this convenient hypothesis, yet it is almost universally used to explain the phenomenon and blame the beekeepers, not regulators. For some reason the more obvious and simple explanation that SAFB either always existed in some isolated part of the world or arose in South America and has recently been spread around the world by those ubiquitous drums of Argentine honey has been ignored. FWIW and IMO, SAFB is now being spread by the honey coming out of domestic operations that have become contaminated. My comments were met with universal disbelief and by emotional, irrational arguments supporting the 'blame the beekeepers' theory. At the Alberta Beekeepers Association's disease update meeting this week, Lawrence Cutts was scheduled to speak, but, personal matters intervened and Dave Westerfeld came in his place. I'd met him the first night in San Diego and Aaron and I had a beer with him at the time. I was impressed then and am even more so now. Dave is a fascinating, enthusiastic, open (and rambling) speaker. I greatly enjoyed his straight from the shoulder style and wide range of topics. In one of Dave's talks, he mentioned discovering resistant AFB early on in Florida and, looking around, found empty Argentine honey drums stacked nearby. I gather that the 17 inspectors in Fla are pretty thorough and honey samples were taken from the residue left in the drums. It was analysed for AFB and guess what? It turned out that -- not only was there AFB in the honey in the drums -- but the AFB they found was OTC resistant! In case anyone wants to read the original discussion on BEE-L, here are the links.
Normals for the period: Low minus 10. High 1. << Previous Page Next Page >>
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