A Beekeeper's Diary
        Continuous Printable Version
September 1, 2000 to Present 

This is a diary of a year's activities
in our 3,000 hive honey and pollination operation.

Allen Dick
Rural Route One
Swalwell, Alberta
CANADA T0M 1Y0
1-403-546-2588
Contact me

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©Allen Dick, 2000, 2001

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Friday September 1, 2000

Mainly cloudy with a 40 percent chance of showers. High 18.

Sunrise: 6:50 AM Sunset: 8:21 PM : The Moon is Waxing Crescent (13% of Full)

Matt is off for the day.  He worked Monday to get off today, since it is along weekend and his buddies are heading to BC.  I got to skim the tank and fill drums this morning.  We are close to 75 drums now and must call for a truck. 

We don't sell our honey, we send it to the Alberta Honey Producers Co-operative, and they pack and sell it for us, then return the proceeds over the year.  This return generally does not quite equal the market in price, but is extremely convenient and comfortable, since drums are supplied and insured, and we can always get a payment as soon as we have any honey.  This helps cash flow a lot, since we put out a lot of money over the year and are running low by August.

Normals for the period: Low 6. High 20.

Saturday September 2nd, 2000

Periods of rain with a few thunderstorms this morning. Rainfall amounts up to 20 mm. Wind northeast 20 km/h. High 12.

Ellen dropped me at YYC and I was in YVR in a bit over an hour and Ron met me there.  After picking up some garden plants, and picking up a car I was planning to drive to Alberta, we headed to his place.  On the way back, we stopped to look at some jackets and when we came out, the car I was driving would not start.  I rode with him to his place and we planned on coming back later to get the car.  It had done this before, and had previously started nicely when allowed to cool.

Ron and his wife were working on the garden as a weekend project, and Mairin was painting the trim on the house.  I found their computer and enjoyed the speed of cable internet access. 

We had a pleasant afternoon, and in the evening, Ron and Joan and I went to see the play, Speed-the-Plow at a theatre nearby.  It was excellent.  We went to get the car. It would not start at all.

Normals for the period: Low 6. High 19.

Sunday September 3rd, 2000

Mainly cloudy. 60 percent chance of showers. Wind northwesterly 20 in the afternoon. High 13.

Sunday was a similar sort of day.  Ron and family worked on the house and garden.   At one point, we made a foray to Home Depot for more plants and I went shopping for a digital camera along the way.  I'd seen some ads in the morning paper and thought I'd see what there was available I was in the big city.

Of course, I fell in love with the Nikon CoolPix 950 and CoolPix 990, but I doubt I really need all those features and I want something small.  

Monday September 4th, 2000

Mainly cloudy with 60 percent chance of showers. Low 6. High 14.

I lounged around for the morning and toyed with the idea of a trip to Victoria for the day and night, but decided instead to go to Jericho beach and look into windsurfing there.  At the beach, I discovered the Starboard GO, (another link) a large and floaty short board that is intriguing.  My short boards are sinkers under my weight (250 pounds) and a larger volume (190 l) might be nice.

I also looked at some more cameras and decided the Fuji FinePix 4700 was what I really want.  It's $1100, though.

Hmmmm.  I decided to wait to see how badly I want it and also to research it in the web.  It is also cheaper to buy in Alberta, since there is no sales tax.  Besides it is a bit more than I need for what I usually do with a camera.  My Olympia was just fine until it got squashed.  The only thing I need that it did not have is an optical zoom. 

I don't want less than a 3X zoom because unless I can frame exactly what I want in a picture, I wind up cropping off up to 3/4 of the picture and thus get a low-res picture in the end.  For this web work, I usually degrade the picture quite a lot anyways in the process of reducing its size to where most people do not find it too large to download.

Tuesday September 5th, 2000

A mix of sun and cloud. Low 5. High 17.

Today I flew home.  I had made the return reservation for late today since I had expected to be driving the car back to Alberta and had planned that I would throw away the return part of the ticket. I had made the reservation for as late in the day as I could so I could use it as a as a fallback if necessary. 

It turned out to be necessary.  Unfortunately the car again refused to start when I was to start home Monday and we decided that it needed professional care -- so I had to wait until today to fly on my reserved return flight.  I was slated to fly at 9 PM, but got out at 2PM. 

Ellen picked me up at YYC and we went shopping on the way home.  I bought an Olympia D-460, which is an improved version of the camera I had last -- and half the price of the Fuji.  I'll buy that one later when it has come down in price.  Maybe.

I took a few pictures with the new Olympia and found it a quantum leap up from the old one.  But I'm still learning how to adjust it.

What do you think? :)

Normals for the period: Low 5. High 19.

Wednesday September 6th, 2000

Becoming sunny. Wind northwest 20 km/h. High 17. 
Normals for the period Low 5. High 19.

It's 6:22 AM, and the sky is bright in the NE.  It is light outside, but the mornings are now about two hours shorter than in the middle of summer.

Gareth phoned as we returned from the city last night and reported that he would not be in today.  He had agreed to work three 10-hour days a week minimum but is now welshing on that.  His wife has a business and he has been helping out with that when she has a volume of work.  I'm afraid of the effect of his unreliability on the rest of the staff and am thinking we will have to replace him soon.  Too bad, since he showed a lot of promise and has lately started to understand the job here very well and was in line for considerable advancement.

We started a new hire yesterday, but will need another person ASAP if Gareth is not going to be available.  We have 3,900 hives to reduce to doubles, feed and wrap.  There are also maintenance and tidying jobs and extracting.  The work is pretty routine and at this point does not require help with a lot of experience, although we do count on those who know the job to train and lead others. 

We are now working against time to get ready for winter.  When it will arrive we never know.  Usually, we can count on good feeding weather well into October, but there have been wet, rainy autumns, and this is looking like one so far.  Sometimes we can get into our yards without problems until January, sometimes we have enough snow to make things difficult in November.

People have asked for pictures of our Cowan extracting line.  Here is what it looks like.

This is the deboxer end of the line.  The operator lifts each super onto the table.  The table can be fed from either side and has rollers. He then centres the super over the ram. 

The air-powered ram comes up out of the table and lifts the frames out of the box and through two flappers on the the uncapper arm extensions.  When the ram retracts, the combs remain on the extensions and are in line with the infeed chains.  After examining each comb and pulling out empty or distorted frames and removing any cross comb, the operator pushes them onto the uncapper chains. (Click to enlarge).

After going through the uncapper, which uses chain flails  -- an adaptation from the original knife design -- the combs proceed up the loading conveyor and accumulate near the extractor. 

When the entire conveyor is loaded, there are sufficient combs to run one extractor load.  One operator runs the uncapper and another runs the extractor and the outfeed. A third person is helpful to move things around and to scratch any combs that were too shallow to get uncapped. This happens in ten frame boxes and with new combs. 

While the extractor is being loaded, the uncapper can begin to run again.  Thus the loading conveyor can always have combs waiting to load. 

The extractor is loaded by the conveyor chain and an air ram.  As the full combs are pushed into the extractor, the dry combs are pushed out the other side onto the outfeed table. 

The outfeed table has two conveyors side-by-side to save space and shifts over when half the combs are unloaded. The outfeed operator scoops the empty boxes into boxes from the end of the table and the conveyor automatically advances more combs for the next box.

So far, the best we manage is two loads per hour.  This is just a bit less than what three guys can do hand scratching into standard 72-frame Kelleys.

Tonight: Clear. Low 5.

Thursday September 7th, 2000

Mainly sunny. Wind increasing to southwest 30 gusting to 50 km/h. High 21.

Gareth is here today, so we have two teams of two each out picking up honey, dropping off syrup and making doubles out of the singles.

I had to take a trip to Calgary to get some supplies.  We were short of bricks for lid weights.  If lids blow off, we lose hives, so we need to be sure to weight them down.  I also have a contractor here doing some siding and he needs supplies, so I headed off to Home Depot. 

On the way, I stopped in to look at a swarm I had heard about earlier and had not had time to get.  They were along the route, so this was a good opportunity.  By now they are well established, as you can see. I might mention that this window has a south exposure and must have gotten fairly warm during August days.  It is shown just as I found it when I walked up to it.  There was never anything covering it.  As you can see, the glass is intact except for the one pane where they have access. If anyone wants the original large image that prints nicely at 8-1/2 x 11", just Write mewith 'Send Picture' in the subject line.

These bees have volunteered to live in an observation hive.  I have been contemplating how to extract them and think I will just take the Sawzall and cut the whole window out of the wall -- frame and all -- and leave them intact, if the farmer agrees.

His wife said they don't care because they intend to put in a new window.   We'll see.  They are quite fond of the bees and want to see them thrive, even though she says she is allergic to bees. 

I'm not quite sure how I will winter them.  They look as if they need feed soon, since all the visible comb is empty.   I think they are also smaller in number than they must have been at one time, judging by the amount of comb built vs. the current size of the cluster.

In the blow-up (invoked by clicking the above thumbnail)  you can see they are still gathering yellow pollen very nicely.  At the sides of the road, I noticed lots of clover still blooming in the ditches.

Normals for the period: Low 5. High 18.

Friday September 8th, 2000

A mix of sun and cloud. Wind increasing to west 30 gusting 50 km/h this morning. High 18.

I got home at  1:30 AM with all the supplies -- and a new printer. 

Our old HP 600C has been giving me minor problems, and I am finding it too slow when I need coloured 8-1/2 X 14 reports for each crew in the mornings.  The HP 600C came out about the time Windoze 95 came out and the drivers have never been quite 100%.  I get crashes and hangs from time to time due to their imperfection.  This usually happens when I have guys waiting for their assignment and the time is costing me up to $1 (CAD) a minute while they wait.

I bought an Epson 860 and so far, I am thrilled. There are some drawbacks to everything and this is no exception, but it is big step up.  Cost per page printed may be a bit higher than I am accustomed to, but speed and quality should be worth the price. Here's another review, too.

I have taken lately to consulting Deja before or right after I buy things.  I always buy where I can return things and if I think I have really goofed, I can recover my funds and try again.

We are out again today pulling off the last honey, distributing syrup, and converting the singles to doubles for the winter and things are going well.  Nonetheless, we are only bringing in about 250 full supers of honey a day and there is a long way to go.  we have to extract soon, too.  There were 480 supers in the warehouse this morning.

The guys worked until 8 tonight, returning just before a thunderstorm hit. We're off until Tuesday again.  El & I had plans top see Jean & Chris Saturday, but some old friends showed up there and they are busy.  I think we'll just do some housework and alterations and catch up on things.

Normals for the period: Low 5. High 18.

Saturday September 9th, 2000

A mix of sun and cloud. Wind increasing to westerly 30 gusting to 50 this morning. High 16

Looking into the warehouse, I see 28-1/2 pallets of 30 supers awaiting extraction. That is 855 supers or about 40 drums of honey, I'd wager.  We have 73 full drums in the basement and another 14 or so in tanks.  We have a truck coming Tuesday for the drums in the shop downstairs.

We have 74 active yards right now and we have done a final round or a semi-final round on 22 of them.  We are doing four a day.  With fifty-two to go, that means 13 more days at this rate and that projects out to our finishing pulling on October 3rd. That cuts things close, since the production bonus is calculated on the honey extracted and shipped before October 10th.  If we have any hold-ups we may not make that deadline.  We can either pull honey or extract it, but not both at the same time unless we get more help or unless we speed up.

Sam came by this afternoon to discuss mead making.  We had a pretty good visit (we had to compare several meads) and I printed some pictures from the spring using the new printer. Meijers came by a while later for supper. 

After supper I ran a load through the extracting line just for fun.  Joe joined in and scratched any that came along the loading conveyor that had been missed in spots (We leave our combs fairly thick, and thus the flails cannot get into the lowest spots or uncap very thin combs very well), and in a matter of fifteen minutes or so, we had a load running with only one frame broken on the way through the uncapper.  When this thing works, it works well.

I noticed the extractor was rocking quite a bit once it got going.  I guess we let some granulation though.  Normally we catch it in the conveyor and save it for a special load.  We have not seen much hard honey yet, but at about this time of year we start to see more as the weather gets cooler.

BTW, if anyone is wondering who does the conversions to flails (chains) on Cowan uncappers, it is our neighbour, Ralph Belt at 1-403-443-5176.  I've heard people have a hard time locating him, since he does not advertise.

Tonight: Partly cloudy. Wind diminishing to westerly 20 overnight. Low 6.

Sunday September 10th, 2000

A mix of sun and cloud. 40 percent chance of showers. Wind north 30 km/h. High 15.

Tonight: Mainly clear. Wind diminishing to light northwest. Low 3. Risk of frost.

Monday September 11th, 2000

Sunny. Wind west 20 km/h. High 19.

It's a day off for the crew, but a day of work for me.  Ellen worked in her flower garden for the better part of the day.  I did some desk work and started getting the load of honey ready to go out tomorrow.

We have close to 1,000 boxes in the warehouse and I notice the bees are building up again.

In any warehouse, bees accumulate on the windows.  No matter how careful we are, there are always a few in the boxes.  Over thousands of boxes, this adds up to lots of bees.  These bees are older, since they are likely foragers, but occasionally, even though we use excluders, young bees, brood and even queens come in. In the picture here, the super standing on end is set that way because it has an abnormally high number and we are tipping it to get the bees out. Sometimes we have use a leaf blower to get them all out.  Normally we do not put things on top of stacks of supers, but we are posing for a picture here.  In real life, we would set it, and the cardboard boxes, on the floor. If we discover brood and a queen (maybe once in a thousand boxes), we take them outside and set them up as a hive. The cardboard boxes (notice the way the little one is cut) are used to scoop the bees off the window and carry them out to hives.  When that is happening, bystanders beware.  Window bees are cranky. The bees we take off our warehouse windows are dumped into empty hives with queens in cages outside.  After they are settled, the queens are manually released.  We fill the hives to overflowing, since the bees are older and not expected to last long.  We don't have as good success wintering these hives if they are made up late (after mid-August), but they do fairly well. The new hire phoned to say she would not be back. We had expected as much.

Normals for the period: Low 4. High 18.

Tuesday September 12th, 2000

A mix of sun and cloud. Wind northwest 20. High 21.

Hi-Way 9 phoned at seven last night to say the truck will be late today, coming at noon instead of 8 AM.  That's okay.  I'll have time to take some of the drum outside.  I don't like to take them out too early because when I have in the past, it has invariably rained and the occasional drum can leak water under the lid.  Even with a seal -- or maybe especially with a seal -- the water can sometimes wick around by capillary action and flow into the drum.  If there is liquid honey in the drum, that can be a problem, since the top layer of honey may dilute and ferment. That is a worse problem if the drum is tipped and agitated while liquid as it is in shipping.  Usually the drums are solid by the time we take them out, but I don't like to take a chance.

The weather looks ideal for pulling honey this week. We are 20 drums into bonus now, but the time is running out.  The bonus is based on honey extracted before October tenth.  The first load of honey does not count, but the second load gives each key employee $500 and each load thereafter gives each key employee $1000 -- adjusted for the number of hives going into winter and his hours  from April 1st through August 31st.  Of course performance at this time counts too, since if honey is not pulled or extracted or hives are not cared for and prepared for winter, bonus is not earned.

We loaded the truck with 70 drums of honey (630 pounds net each) .  The job took about an hour.  Loading the truck is generally a bit festive, since it is a landmark in production.  Each load after this carries a bonus for the crew. The guys extracted in the afternoon and got the trucks ready to roll first thing tomorrow.

Wasps and hornets get a bad rap from beekeepers.  Sure, some are mean, but these ones allowed us to open our door, exposing their brood many times without any fuss.  They came out and hovered near the nest, then went back in.

Tonight: Mainly cloudy. 60 percent chance of showers. Low 5.

Normals for the period: Low 4. High 18.

Wednesday September 13th, 2000

Mainly sunny. High 20.

First thing this morning, after our daily meeting, I filled 17 drums  with the honey that had been accumulated in the tanks while we waited for the truck.  Drums had begun to choke the warehouse, so we held the honey until we had space. We had hoped for a truck sooner, but yesterday was fine.

Before we pump each morning, we skim the sump tank into the whirl dry.  Since the uncapper and extractor both empty directly into the tank, there is usually a two to four inch layer of wax on the surface.  It is easier to skim when the tank is full. We use a Jabsco pump with 2" hoses attached with aluminium camlocks.  The pail is to catch drips when we remove the suction hose to check for wire and wax or when moving the pump. A certain amount of wood and wax comes down from the extractor, and the auger sometimes grinds up a comb, yielding wire, wax and honey.  This pump moves a drum in about ten minutes, or less if the honey is at 104 degrees F

The pump is controlled by a float switch, so it is not much work to fill drums.  By the time tidying, moisture sampling, and lid fitting is accomplished, it is time to move the hose and switch to the next drum, and so on...  The switch ensures that all drums are filled evenly.  we don't weigh individual drums, since the Co-op weighs the truck in and out of their plant, and a standard weight is assumed for all drums.

I showed a picture previously of this swarm.  Today I went out and brought it home, intact in its window.  We're thinking to mount it in a wall in our home, just for the fun of it.  I don't know how it will do, since it seems to be starving from appearances (but not by weight when I lifted it).

I cut it out in mid-afternoon, using a Sawzall, then returned in the evening around nine when darkness descended and loaded it in the light of the full moon.

A sunflower volunteered in a crack in our sidewalk this spring and we wondered if it would survive.  We left it alone and so did all the comers and goers who visited during the summer. As we can see, it flourished. and flowered and often we see ten or more bees visiting it.

Tonight: Mainly clear. Low 7.

Thursday September 14th, 2000

Mainly sunny. Wind southerly 20 km/h in the afternoon. High 26.

Today has been one of those days.  We had visitors from Saskatchewan and France, then Adony came by in late afternoon to stay over and work on the experimental hives tomorrow.  The phone ran non-stop all day.

Out in the field, the each crew got four yards done which is about twice what they have been able to accomplish previously, so things are going well.  The honey house is full of honey and we will have to extract tomorrow.

Tonight: Partly cloudy. Low 9.

Normals for the period
Low 4. High
Sunrise:7:10 AM  Sunset:7:52 PM
The Moon is Waning Gibbous (100% of Full)

Friday September 15th, 2000

Mainly sunny. Wind becoming northwest 20 km/h. High 23.

We extracted today and got a bit done.  The warehouse is so packed that there is hardly room to move.  I got some bookwork done. 

Adony examined the hives and although the plot confirms what I thought going in -- showing dark comb to be the best, white comb a close second, Pierco third, and The black and the white Permadent in wood at last place -- I am told that the differences may not be significant, so I'll have to wait for further analysis.

By 6:30 PM, I was on a jet on my way to Vancouver for a second try at picking up the car.  Ron picked me up and we went back to his place via Home Depot again. We picked up the car along the way and it ran perfectly.

Tonight: Partly cloudy. 30 percent chance of showers. Low 9.

Normals for the period: Low 4. High 17.

Saturday September 16th, 2000

A mix of sun and cloud. 30 percent chance of morning showers. High 20.

Saturday morning I drove to Tswassen to catch the ferry to Salt Spring. On the way to the ferry, I stopped at White Rock to visit old friends, Brian and Sandy.  I made the 12:50 ferry and in a little under two hours, I was on Salt Spring, driving to Ganges. Bruce was at the Saturday market, as he almost always is, and I met him there.  He is a jeweller and makes candles as well.  I've known him since he was in art school in the sixties.

At the market, I noticed something of interest to beekeepers -- a mason bee house.  Click on the thumbnail for a closer look.  The holes are about 3/8", and I am told the size is not critical.  I was later told that using solid wood is not ideal, since if the larva nearest the outside opening dies, the others cannot get out.  Softer material is better.  I know nothing about these bees. Bruce and I had supper at Vesuvius and I stayed the night at his place.

Sunday September 17th, 2000

Mainly sunny. Low 7. High 23.

Sunday, I stopped by the Salt Spring Fall Fair on the way to the ferry.  The event was quite a bit larger than I expected, with a wide range of exhibits.  All in all it was the typical fall fair I remember from growing up and visiting friends and relatives in the country.

Valdy showed up to entertain, as did other local and national acts.  Salt Spring is well known internationally for its arts community and has no shortage of talent for community events.

Of particular interest to beekeepers was the beautiful  observation hive and bee display display put up by local enthusiasts.  The two pictured with the display were happy to pose, but I should have written down their names since I have now forgotten and am awaiting an email with details that they promised to send me so that I can caption this properly. I should note that the design of this observation hive is very simple and clever. The unit shown here was made for use with standard-sized frames, but currently has medium frames in it, leaving gaps of about two inches between.  That is okay for a one-day fully enclosed use, but for longer use, new grooves for top bars could easily be added or standards frames are needed to avoid the building of wild comb.

I caught the ferry at Vesuvius and rode across to Crofton. I was the second last car allowed on, so I cut it close.  I then drove down to see my cousin Gillian and her husband in Victoria, then went on to visit Eric Abel, a former Alberta commercial beekeeper, and stay the night.

Monday September 18th, 2000

A mix of sun and cloud. Low 7. High 21.

In the morning, Eric and I visited with Ulf Soehngen, a retired bee scientist and former Alberta Chief Apiarist.  Ulf was my boss when I was a bee inspector many moons ago. 

At one, Eric and I went to see Charlie Warren and then I headed for the ferry again.  It was my plan to drive to Alberta in two stages.  I planned to see a beekeeper at Chilliwack along the way and drive as far as Salmon Arm before sleeping.

That was not to be.  As I left the ferry and was about to cross Highway 99 to head east, my sister-in-law called and suggested I come by for the night and work on several computers that were acting up. 

I altered course north towards Vancouver, and shortly after the car quit dead.  I pulled over to the shoulder and managed to start it again.  I proceeded about ten miles, including a trip though the long tunnel under the Fraser, then it quit again.  Once more it started without a problem.  I then got as far as SW Marine Drive and it quit once more, but would not start.  My brother came along and we pushed it around a corner and went home to his place for the night.

Tuesday September 19th

A mix of sun and cloud. Windy. Low 7. High 23.

In the morning, the auto club towed it to the repair shop that had previously changed 3 fuel pumps on the car and left it.  They had tried to start it, but no go. 

Meantime I went down to Jericho beach and wandered around the windsurfing concession and hiked up to the Spanish Banks.  I took some pictures with the camera, but won't bother with most here.  I discovered that the batteries don't seem to last as well as with my previous camera., but then, I have to use the LCD display to set the various options on this one.

Around noon, I received word that the repair shop had gone out to look at the Olds and it had started -- first try.  I had some doubts about driving it back through the  mountains and still had a plane ticket for later that day.  So I decided to go windsurfing. The shop here has a Starboard GO.  I had heard good things about it and was determined to give it a try.  I rented for two hours and sailed with a 7.5m Ezzy.  I sailed out to the ships, in the picture and back about ten times and enjoyed the sun and salt water.  Although I did have a good time, I decided the board is a real pig.  It was like riding a log.  I'm glad I tried it because I might have bought one just from its reputation.  Uggghhh!

Wednesday September 20th, 2000
The first day of Fall

Mainly cloudy. Showers developing this afternoon. High 12.

Normals for the period
Low 3. High 16
Sunrise: 7:20 AM   Sunset:7:38 PM
The Moon is Waning Gibbous (57% of Full)

This is the time of year that day length changes most quickly. Mornings have shortened by ten minutes and evenings by 14 minutes since Thursday. 

I'm home and catching up.  The weather has changed, and although I think we escaped the frost last night, Acme had frost on windshields. Tonight looks like a real frost though, and snow is predicted for tomorrow.

The crew extracted all day and we are getting through the pileup in the warehouse. We have about four pallets of granulation so far.  That's annoying, but not too bad.  We need heavy thirds for spring when we manage the singles.

We got word that the sugar will be here around noon tomorrow.  That is fine, since we are ready.

Tonight: Frost warning in effect 
Showers changing to wet snow overnight. Wind northerly 30 gusting to 50 km/h. Low minus 2 with frost.

Thursday September 21st, 2000

Mainly cloudy with 60 percent chance of wet flurries. Wind north 40 km/h diminishing to 20 this afternoon. High plus 3.

It's 4 AM and minus 0.1 degrees Celcius outside.  That means frost. How bad it will be remains to be seen.  We have had a touch previously, but a killer frost will change things entirely.

We had rain last night, and there is a slight skiff of snow, so we checked to make sure the sugar tanker can get in.  I guess it is okay.  The mud is not too bad.  We had planned to move a yard of bees today since it will be cool all day, but mud may deter us.

The heat in the tanks somehow got turned off.   We turn it down a bit for the weekend since there is no new honey entering the system and thus requiring heat.  Since I was away, this did not get noticed until I got back and found something wrong.  As a result, the wax has not spun out properly in the spinner, and the honey going into drums is a bit waxy. 

We normally run the thermostat on the water tank at 115 degrees F and that keeps the honey at about 100 degrees F by the following morning.  When the temperature drops to room temp, the wax in the honey does not rise properly in the tank and the honey does not drain from the cappings layer on top of the tank.

We're extracting again.  Yesterday we did 20 loads and got about 10 drums.  That's about 20 lbs per box, figuring 15 boxes to the load.  Moisture is averaging 15.1, which is very low.  We are having trouble getting all the honey out.  Moreover there is some granulation.

I went to Calgary in the afternoon to pick up the formic and a few other items We have decided to use a two speed motor on the spinner, since it comes up to speed too quickly and is a problem first thing every morning.  Running a bit slower at the start and having a higher top speed would help.  I did work on the friction drive and that may help, but having two speeds is better yet.

Friday September 22nd, 2000

A mix of sun and cloud with a 30 percent chance of morning flurries. High 4.

We awoke to minus 5.5 degrees Celcius.  That's a killer frost if anything is. It's amazing how fast the season changes.  One day it's summer, and the next, it's fall.  Since yesterday was the first official day of fall, I guess we shouldn't be surprised, but I always am.

'Sunrise: 7:23 AM Sunset: 7:33 PM'.   Today is eight minutes shorter than the day before yesterday.  The morning is three minutes shorter and the afternoon is five.  We are now at a tropical day length, without benefit of tropical temperatures.

The sugar arrived around five yesterday, and the guys finished up lidding the drums around eight.  Steve moved the bees from the yards in question.  I guess now that we have had a bad frost we can start moving the yards that need moving into their winter sites.

Today Ellen & I looked at motorhomes and I caught up on some paperwork.  The guys extracted a bit and tidied. Not much got done.  looks like about three drums of honey all day, and they were here until 5. 

Tonight: Mainly clear. Low minus 2.

Saturday September 23rd, 2000

Sunny. Wind becoming west 20 km/h. High 15.

Today I'm straightening out the mess in the sump from not having enough heat in the water system while I was away.  Pretty simple, really, but too subtle, it seems for everyone else. No one seems to be observant enough to read what is happening.  People concentrate on doing tasks without any attention to whether the work is achieving the desired results. This is a problem in beekeeping , a business where we do a wide variety of tasks that are constantly changing and giving different results.

At this time of year, there is some granulation in the cappings and the honey coming from the extractor.  Moreover the central heating dries the honey in the supers out previous to extracting if the room humidity falls too low.  It is absolutely essential to keep the humidity up in the room by spraying water around from time to time and to spray a little mist of water onto the spinning wax, and onto the wax cake on top of the sump so that the normal moisture levels are maintained.  Otherwise, the honey gets down to 15% or less and is so stiff it cannot run out of the wax.  The temperatures in the room have to stay above 70 degrees F and the tanks above 100 degrees F.

I filtered mead during the afternoon.  That is a job I Hate.  I bought a new pump and filter combination unit in Calgary, and it seems better than what I had, but it is still pretty Mickey Mouse IMO.  Last tie\me I made some mead using half the normal amount of honey and with everything else the same.  I was thinking that the regular mead I make is just too high in alcohol for casual drinking.  At 18% or so, inattention can result in giddiness.  This batch is pretty bland, but pleasant.  It finished quickly and is very dry.

Tonight: Clear. Low zero. Frost.

Sunday September 24, 2000

Sunny. High 20.

I skimmed more wax on the sump and spun it, then El and I went to look at motorhomes. We spent the afternoon in Red Deer and had supper at Manzzini's with Jean and Chris.

Tonight: Clear. Low 3.

Normals for the period
Low 2. High 16.
Sunrise:7:26 AM Sunset:7:29 PM
The Moon is Waning Crescent (14% of Full)

Monday September 25th, 2000
Three more months until Christmas

Sunny. High 20.

Today I finished skimming the tank and spinning the wax. Then I fed the home yard bees and loaded 15 drums for nearby locations.  I got three yards done before it was time to quit for supper.  Bert came over for soup and a visit.

We feed open drums in the yards in the fall.  A good yard on a good day can empty drums down and put the syrup into stores.  All the yards I visited today had empty drums, except for the Elliotts' East highway location which had a bit left.

While I was out, Ralph's wife called to say that he took ill in Calgary and is in the hospital, likely for several days.

Tonight: Clear. Low 4.

Normals for the period: Low 2. High 16.

Tuesday September 26th, 2000

Sunny. High 22.

We're short handed, so I guess I'll have to drop my projects and concentrate on feeding while the others get the supers off and ready the singles for winter.  Somehow, I'll have to mange to get the pay cheques done and handle the other background stuff.

Matt went out by himself and did three yards, including several  small ones that had no singles.  Steve and Gareth did two larger yards.   I delivered 20 drums of syrup to various local yards and also managed to get the payroll done.

The drums shown on the left have a pallet  roped on top  to protect against cattle and wildlife.  Some animals find sugar attractive, but would be killed by the large quantity available in a drum. We use straw as a float on the rums and that can be a problem.

The single drum shown has louvers to allow bees in, but to exclude rain and cattle.  It works well in the spring, but is slower to use in the fall when five or more drums of syrup may be required per yard. Good straw is essential to prevent excessive bee loss.  The best straw has solid long pieces and is not chopped or crushed.

 Ralph's wife phoned to say that he was released from the hospital, but might not be ready to work for a day or two.

We decided this morning that we had better get serious about hiring some more help.  Ellen went to Linden and put up posters and talked around a bit.  She managed to hire two new young fellows to start tomorrow.

Tonight: Clear. Low 3.

Normals for the period: Low 2. High 15.

Today: Sunny. High 23.

Today we continued to remove the last of the honey and to feed.

Feeding gives me a chance to visit all the yards and appraise the hives.  As always, some yards and hives look much better than others, but all in all, things look pretty good. 

In about six hours I can get only about 20 drums delivered.  This takes some of the pressure off the guys, but it is clear that the best plan is to have them take the correct number of full drums with them on pallets when they go to pull the hives down to doubles.  This takes full advantage of empty trucks going to the yards and the forklifts that accompany them, and adds very little work to the job they are doing.

Delivering at the time of pulling ensures that the syrup is there at the earliest possible moment, while the bees are already stimulated, as well as eliminating the extra driving time that is involved in a separate delivery. 

At the beginning of the fall rounds, however, it is hard to guess how much feed the hives will need, and we started with two drums per yard.  Now that we know what is required, I am having to make up the difference.  Another factor was that we also had trouble getting deliveries of syrup on time, since Rogers fell behind again this year.

Most of our hives are pretty light this year, and most yards are needing five drums.  This is largely due to the divides we made requiring a lower box, which is always empty to start with.

Everywhere I went today, I kept running into Steve and his crew.  The picture is of them working a big yard in a river valley.

The new guys worked out quite well.   The weather has been very good so far, but as we get into October, the conditions may change.  I see the grain farmers rushing to finish their combining and there are few fields left to go. 

Ellen hired two more guys today, so we will have our hands full keeping them busy tomorrow. 

Tomorrow, we have a tanker arriving at 8AM.  I went to Trochu and got an additional 575 gallon poly tank in preparation.

Tonight: Clear. Low 4.

Sunrise:7:31 AM   Sunset:7:22 PM
The Moon is New

Thursday September 28th, 2000

Mainly sunny. Wind west 20 km/h this afternoon. High 21.

The tanker arrived right on time and it took everyone the first two hours to get it unloaded into tanks and drums.  The second two new guys showed up and looked good.

Everyone except me headed for the field in three crews to finish up the yards.  I had enough tasks to keep me tied up for the day at home.  They were all very late returning and I saw the forklifts and trucks running until after 8 PM.  El & I had a supper party with Meijers, Stepaniuks, Elliotts, and Purves-Smiths attending.

Meijers came by a bit early in order to pick up some formic acid and pads.

Tonight: Mainly clear. Low 6

Normals for the period: Low 2. High 16.

Friday September 29th, 2000

A mix of sun and cloud. Wind increasing to west 20 km/h gusting to 40 km/h. High 19.

The warehouse was chock full, so we had Steve and two of the new guys extract.  It is always slow training new people, but hopefully we can get some speed next week.  I think we got about three drums extracted today. 

Gareth and Matt continued to prepare hives for winter. We have 568 singles left and 2086 supers still on hives.  There are still 132 drums of syrup to feed. I expect that we will be done in about two more weeks, and that is about normal for us. Then we begin wrapping.

I had installed Windows ME several days back.  There was a bit of a problem with the install, and I found afterwards I was unable to respond to email.  Outlook and Outlook Express were both screwed up.   I had posted a message requesting help with my problem to microsoft.public.windowsme.setup on the free news.microsoft.com news server, before installing but was unable to get back to read the responses until I thought to use the Netscape newsreader I have installed but never use. I read the replies, applied the suggestions, and now everything is just fine.

Tonight: Partly cloudy. Wind west 20. Low 9.

Saturday September 30th, 2000

Wind increasing to west 40 gusting to 60 km/h this afternoon. A mix of sun and cloud. High 18

I spent the day trying to get the computer going and in the late afternoon, we test drove a motorhome.

We went for supper in Trochu, then called it a day

Tonight: Wind west 40 gusting to 60 diminishing to west 20 overnight. Mainly clear. Low

Sunday October 1st, 2000

A mix of sun and cloud. Wind becoming west 20 km/h. High 15.

I spent the morning trying to troubleshoot Window ME's Internet Connection Sharing.  After lunch Purves-smiths came over and we went to Carbon to hike their trails.  We stopped at the second-hand book store for a while and then walked around the island.  We had supper at the 'Good & Plenty' restaurant and then went home to watch a movie.

On the way, I stopped to look at one of the yards (50 hives) I had fed a few days back.  The syrup in the five open drums was over half gone with little sign of bee loss.  I had used good quality wheat straw in those drums and had been careful to make a mat of straws facing in every direction by sprinkling the straw in a circular motion.  The drums were spaced at 25 foot intervals and it was interesting to note that the levels in the drums farthest from the hives were not quite as low as in those closer.

Tonight: Partly cloudy. Wind west 20. Low zero.

Monday October 2nd, 2000
Becoming mainly cloudy. 40 percent chance of showers. High 8.

The forecast has changed for the worse this week. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday look pretty cool.

We are on schedule, but I would like ideally to be about two to three weeks ahead of where we are.  I don't know exactly how to accomplish that, since it seems every year we have a lull at the end of August and the beginning of September when we lose staff and have trouble finding new help.  Although the work gets easier when the weather gets cooler, we start to have problems with granulation in the supers after the middle of September some years.  That is worse some years than others and is likely related to being on pollination.

I loaded another pup trailer of 42 drums for the co-op this afternoon to make some room in the warehouse.

Tonight: Showers changing to light snow. Low minus 2.
Normals for the period: Low 1. High 16.

Tuesday October 3, 2000

Light snow ending this morning otherwise cloudy. Wind becoming southeast 20 km/h this afternoon. High plus 2.

There was a quarter inch of snow on the ground this morning and the day was predicted to be cool.  Everyone showed up and we set to extracting.  Garry and Dave are still a bit unfamiliar with the job, but willing and we are going a bit faster.  Nonetheless the chain came off a time or two and we had a plugged auger.  These thing slow us down.  We got the small tank full, but there is getting to be a lot of granulation.  I hope it is just from one area and that we will find more liquid honey in the rest of the boxes.

I expect we will get back to field work in the next few days since the weather is forecast to be nicer towards the weekend.  We always have some cold weather and snow before Thanksgiving and we always have hot days.  The days get shorter though and the warm ones get fewer.

I went for a walk at five in  the afternoon, and it was quite pleasant out by then

Tonight: Cloudy with a 70 percent chance of light snow overnight. Wind southeast 20 shifting to north 20 overnight. Low minus 4.

Normals for the period: Low 1. High 16.

Wednesday October 4th, 2000

Light snow ending by midday. A mix of sun and cloud this afternoon.
Wind northeast 30 km/h gusting 50 this morning diminishing to north 20 this afternoon. High zero.

We awoke to another layer of snow, a little over an inch more.   Sunrise: 7:42 AM, Sunset: 7:06 PM.  The days are getting quite short now. The forecasts have been accurate, unfortunately, and I think we can count on a cold night tonight. Minus thirteen Celsius is 8.6 degrees F.

Extracting is going better now, but still could be faster.  the new guys are trained, but we are hitting a lot of granulation.  That requires two men on the loading conveyer, and we are putting a lot of granulation aside.  All the honey we are doing now is from this local area, so we are hoping that we will hit another are with less, but it is becoming apparent that we are out of time.

The weather will be better later in the week and we can usually count on several weeks of decent bee weather in October to complete feeding.  We have a little over 100 drums to put out yet and about 2000 supers still I the field.  Many of those are supers we left on to provide space for the bees in late August and will be empty.  Matt went out late today and set down another 15 drums and we are set up to get the rest out pretty quickly.

Hopefully the extracting will be done within a week or so.  All depends on the weather, since we are planning to get back outside as soon as the weather is settled.

About 570 singles remain to be doubled up, so we are looking at a few days field work before we start wrapping.  Wrapping will be interesting, since we will be short of wraps.  How many remains to be seen.

My operating system has settled down now and seems stable, but the Internet sharing doesn't work.  I added Ucmore to my browser and find it works very well.

Tonight: Mainly Clear. Wind north 20 diminishing. Low minus 13.

The Moon is Waxing Crescent (42% of Full)
Normals for the period
Low 1. High 15.

Thursday October 5th, 2000

Mainly sunny. High plus 3.

I awoke just after midnight and noticed that there was quite a bit of light outside. It turned out to be the most southerly display of the Aurora Borealis I ever recall having seen.  It was directly overhead and spread from east to west and north to south.  A good portion of it was visible out our south-facing windows.  There was no colour to speak of and, remembering the debates as to whether it makes noise or not, I stepped out to see.  I heard nothing but cattle and a distant engine.

Today is my 55th birthday, if I counted correctly. I am always forgetting exactly how old I am.  I do know I was born in 1945, so I think I got it right.  Both years divide evenly by five

So far, at 1 AM, it was minus 4.6 C.  Now, at 2:15 it is minus 6.5, so we may hit the predicted low of minus thirteen.  That is not necessarily bad for the bees.  It may reveal some weak colonies, but is probably good for the strong ones, since it will slow them down and get them into a winter mood.

At 6:52, Brett phoned and he had a sting in the finger yesterday that swelled and immobilized the finger.  then the arm got sore and he cannot lift it above the shoulder.  He didn't sleep well and needs to take the day off to recover.  Joint pains are not unusual after novices get stung. I don't know why.

Tonight: Mainly clear. Low minus 13.

Normals for the period
Low 1. High 15.

Friday October 6th, 2000

Sunny. Wind increasing to southeast 20 km/h. High 8.

I drove Ellen to Calgary for an eye exam first thing in the morning and bought a suit on the way home.

The crews continued to finish up in the field and Steve extracted with Gary and Dave.

We returned mid-afternoon and found that the extractor was not working properly, so the extractor crew did tidy up and odd jobs to finish off the day.

Jean came down from Red Deer after supper and she and El and I headed for YYC at about ten to catch the Red Eye to YYZ

Tonight: Mainly clear. Wind southeast 20. Low minus 6.

Normals for the period: Low 1. High 15.

Saturday, Sunday, Monday
October 7th, 8th, and 9th, 2000
Canadian Thanksgiving Weekend

Saturday: Mainly sunny. Wind south 20 increasing to southwest 30 gusting to 50. High 16.

Sunday: Mainly sunny. Low zero. High 18.

Monday: Mainly cloudy. 40 percent chance of showers. Low 2. High 15.

The flight was delayed until 1:40 AM and we boarded finally at two.  We then sat a while while the airline looked for an essential part that was broken, then took off for Pearson.

We arrived at about eight AM and headed straight to our motel in Guelph to catch some sleep.  At about two we went to the hall where we attended our cousin Sue's wedding and spent the rest of the day with friends and family.  A banquet and dance finished off the day and we quit at twelve to catch some sleep.

The next morning we had breakfast with the wedding group and then drove to Sudbury, stopping at Erin for their Fall Fair on the way.  We dropped by the local beekeeper's booth and admired his observation hive, but he seemed very busy and ignored us so we eventually left without speaking to him.

We arrived in Sudbury at 5:30 and had the traditional Thanksgiving dinner with Mom, Linda and family.

Monday, we lounged around, visiting with Linda and family and with Ellen's cousin Brenda.  Supper was cold turkey.

Tuesday October 10th, 2000

Mainly cloudy. 30 percent chance of showers. Low minus 1. High 8.

We drove my niece, Sarah to Guelph and then caught our flight to Calgary, returning home by ten PM.

Tonight: Increasing cloud. Wind north 30 km/h. Low plus 3.

Normals for the period: Low 0. High 14.

Wednesday October 11th, 2000

A mix of sun and cloud. Wind diminishing to northwest 20 km/h. High 11.

Our crews continued to finish off the few remaining yards and had a long day in the Delburne region.  We are now very nearly out of time to feed and treat the remaining hives for mites.  I expect we should be done by the end of this week.

I examined our notes from last year and note that were are about two weeks behind where we were then.  We had good results in 1999/2000 winter, so hope we will this year too.  This is cutting it too close though, for comfort.

Our problem has been the same as always, but exacerbated by the increased hive numbers.  At the end of August, we lose our summer staff and have problems finding replacements.  Our permanent staff also tends to slack off a bit, and to put in fewer hours with less focused effort.  We are competing with harvest for new employees and it is mid-September before we have any selection.  we need to pay higher wages to get help then, but then are stuck with overpaying later.

Our extracting system also causes us grief in that it requires specially trained and competent staff compared to manual methods.  We are thus slow getting going in summer -- I think we started later than ever this year -- and have problems whenever it breaks down.  When we did the job by hand, we still had problems keeping staff at the end of the summer, but moving new people into the job was simpler and could take place in the background.  This year, our field staff has been pressed into extracting.  Not good IMO.

Tonight: Mainly clear. Low zero.

Normals for the period: Low 0. High 14.

Thursday October 12th, 2000

Mainly sunny. Wind increasing to north 20 km/h this afternoon. High 14.

Our lowest and highest temperatures since the cold spell a week ago have been minus 10.3 C and plus 26 C.  This includes the cold snap.  I like the plus 26 better.  Weather like that allows the bees to feed fro the drums.  I hope we have at least a few days above twenty before the end of the month.

As promised, here are some pictures of preparing pads for formic acid mite treatments.  I suggest examining each picture in detail by clicking on the thumbnails you see here.  You can learn a lot by careful observation.

We finished removing all honey today and are now ready to apply pads -- and Apistan if indicated by the sticky boards which are currently being gathered and assessed.  There is a little feeding left to do and the wrapping can begin.

We were alerted that a movie, The Summer of June, (about honey bees) was to be shown on Access tonight and watched it.  It was filmed at a number of locations, including our farm.

Tonight: Partly cloudy. Wind diminishing this evening. Low zero.

Friday: A mix of sun and cloud. High 13.

Saturday: Mainly sunny. Low minus 2. High 13.

Sunday: Mainly sunny. Low minus 1. High 13.

Monday: Mainly sunny. Low minus 1. High 13.

Normals for the period: Low minus 1. High 13.
Sunrise: 7:55 AM  Sunset: 6:49 PM
The Moon is Waxing Gibbous (100% of Full)

Friday October 13th, 2000

Becoming mainly sunny this morning. High 13.

We finished the distribution of feed to yards and picked up the sticky boards.  We also began the administration of formic.  We're a bit late for both these tasks, but better late than never and the if we get a few warm days -- as have been predicted -- things should work out fine.

Next week, we will start preparing to wrap the hives and to finish the extracting.  The outfeed drive motor shaft snapped again and we had to take it for repairs -- again.  This time, Matt disassembled the chain and sprockets to get to the bottom of the matter.

I loaded the truck to go to Blue Sky to take supplies over for making protein patties, but ran out of time to go over.

Tonight: Mainly clear with increasing cloud overnight. Low near zero

Saturday October 14th, 2000

Mainly cloudy. High 11.

Ellen counted mites on sticky boards and we tabulated the results against our sugar shake results.

I spent the day at my desk, and wrote a few things for BEE-L and sci.agriculture.beekeeping.  Here is a directory of the articles I have posted to BEE-L since August:

Tonight: Mainly cloudy with 30 percent chance of evening showers. Clearing overnight. Low near zero.

Normals for the period: Low minus 1. High 13.

Sunday October 15th, 2000 
Mainly sunny. High 14.

The day began foggy. I had planned to go to Calgary, but decided against driving.

By early afternoon, the fog had cleared off and I went out to look at some yards of bees.  They seemed quite heavy, which was reassuring, and the bees were flying to scout the drums, which were empty.  This seemed a good sign, since other yards are still feeding.

I called Meijers and decided to go over to get some syrup they had on hand since we are a little short.  I still had supplies on the truck for Blue Sky and wanted to get that delivery done, so I loaded a few more things and headed over.  We visited and had supper, then went to Blue Sky.  Frieda had just returned from Medicine Hat and seems eager to get the protein patties made.  We had coffee and a visit, then Sam and Joe & Oene & I went out to unload.

I have decided to reduce or eliminate the pollen in the patties, since we have very little, and it is mostly an attractant.  Sugar is cheaper and we have lots, so the new formula uses more sugar and more yeast, but less soy and less or no pollen.

After the unloading was accomplished, I drove home.  It was a beautiful moonlit evening and foreshadows the amazing nightscapes we will soon enjoy as winter descends upon Alberta.

Monday October 16th, 2000
A mix of sun and cloud. Wind westerly 20 km/h gusting 40 this afternoon. High 15.

Most mornings, I write to BEE-L or sci.agriculture.beekeeping.  Here is this mornings contribution:

It is amazing how much grief inserting this post into this page (I had the whole text included here originally).

First, I got criticized for my attitude, and secondly FrontPage 2000 revolted.  Apparently there must be a sequence of characters somewhere in the post that FP servers interpret as a control code and which triggers a revolt in FrontPage servers.  I had cut-and-pasted it into this page and experienced unexplained grief for about a month thereafter.

I have spent at least 15 hours, off and on, figuring this out.  At least it inspired me to work over my system and clean up files and the registry.

Tuesday October 17th, 2000
Mainly sunny. Wind southerly 20 km/h. High 16.

Wednesday Oct. 18th, 2000
Mainly sunny. Wind increasing to southwest 40 gusting 60 km/h. High 18
.Tonight: Partly cloudy. Wind diminishing to west 20. Low zero.

Thursday October 19th, 2000

Mainly sunny. Wind southwest 20 km/h in the afternoon. High 16.

Tonight: Increasing cloud overnight. Wind diminishing to light. Low minus 1.

Normals for the period: Low minus 2. High 11.

  Friday October 21st, 2000 

Mainly cloudy. 30 percent chance of showers this morning. Wind increasing to south 40 gusting 60 km/h by noon then diminishing to southwest 20 gusting 40 late in the afternoon. High 16.

Tonight: Mainly cloudy. Wind diminishing to light. Low plus 2.

Saturday: 30 percent chance of early morning showers then clearing. Wind increasing to west 30 gusting 50. High 11.

Sunday October 22nd, 2000

Mainly sunny. Wind southwest 20 gusting 40 km/h. High 15.

Tonight: Partly cloudy. Wind southwest 30 gusting 50 diminishing overnight. Low plus 3.

Normals for the period: Low minus 3. High 11.

Monday October 23rd, 2000
Mainly sunny. Wind west 20. High 19.

We hit 20 degrees today.  It was a beautiful warm day.

Tuesday October 24th, 2000

Wednesday Oct. 25th, 2000
A mix of sun and cloud. Wind northerly up to 20 km/h this morning. High 14.
Tonight: Partly cloudy. Low minus 2.
Normals for the period: Low minus 4. High 10.

 Thursday October 26th

A mix of sun and cloud. Wind southeasterly 30 km/h in the afternoon. High 12.

  Friday October 27th 

Mainly sunny. Low minus 3. High 13.

 Saturday October 28th

A mix of sun and cloud. Low minus 4. High 12.

Sunday: Mainly sunny. Low minus 3. High 9.

 Monday October 30th

Morning fog patches otherwise a mix of sun and cloud. High 7.

Tonight: Partly cloudy. Low minus 3.

  Tuesday October 31st

(Halloween)

We had a party and some friends came by. I'm not much into dressing up, but some of them are.  we had a huge bonfire of old pallets and bee boxes I had been saving up.

Mainly sunny. High 10.

 Wednesday November 1st 

I had troubles with MS FrontPage in October & November and a few of the pages of this diary are lacking entries. I hope to get them caught up sometime.

Mainly cloudy. Low minus 3. High plus 6.

Thursday 2nd: A mix of sun and cloud. Low minus 7. High plus 9.

Normals for the period: Low minus 5. High 8.

 Friday November 3rd, 2000

	Today: Mainly cloudy. Wind increasing to west 30 gusting to 50 km/h this afternoon. High 14.
	Tonight: Mainly cloudy. Wind west 30 km/h. Low plus 1.

Normals for the period: Low minus 6. High 6.

Saturday November 4th, 2000

	Today: Becoming cloudy. 70 percent chance of rain or wet snow late this afternoon. Wind west 30 km/h gusting to 50 shifting to north 40 gusting to 60 late this afternoon. Temperature steady near 10 then falling late this afternoon.
	Tonight: Snow and blowing snow this evening. Wind north 40 gusting to 60 diminishing to north 30 overnight. Low minus 8.

Normals for the period: Low minus 7. High 6.

 Sunday November 5th, 2000

40 percent chance of early morning flurries then clearing. Wind north 30 diminishing. High minus 4.

I worked on the presentation for the ABA convention today.  Had a lot of fun working with PowerPoint, mostly on the notebook computer.

Today: Morning fog patches. A mix of sun and cloud. High minus 2.
Tonight: Partly cloudy. Low minus 10.

This is the first day of the annual  Alberta beekeepers Convention.  I was up at 5, but found it was so foggy I could not see lights 500 yards away.  I don't drive in heavy fog anymore, and decided to wait it out.  By dawn it wasn't so bad, and I headed to Edmonton, knowing I would be late by at least an hour, and not knowing what the schedule was going to be.  There were a number of small details that have been overlooked lately, and pre-registration and proper advance circulation of the agenda is one.

I arrived an hour late and hadn't missed much.  It was good to see all my friends there.  I've been going for 25 years or so with few exceptions.  Ellen doesn't bother, but I really enjoy it and profit from rubbing shoulders with others beekeepers as well.

I always stay at he hotel for the entire convention.  It is bit more expensive, but ensures that I'm around for everything and not out in  the cold late at night on the way to a slightly cheaper accommodation.

The programme continued and was very good Sue Cobey was the featured guest and was excellent and enthusiastic.  Nonetheless, I had heard pretty much all of what she had to say before and skipped her talks.  Our convention also features local beekeepers and scientists and I find I get more out of their talks.  Adony and Rob Currie gave very relevant talks. 

The beekeeper profiles are of special interest to me and I would like to see more and longer times devoted to them.  The participants (of which I was one) put a lot of effort and heart into their talks and I must say that Neil Specht really did a dandy job with slides and good tips as did (name escapes me for the second -- age is getting me). 

As for my talk, I went quite a bit overtime (no one tipped me that my time was up) and I got some nice compliments so I assume it went okay.  I didn't see anyone walk out and that is usually a good sign, assuming they are not asleep.  If you read these pages, you have seen much of what I presented, but I may put my PowerPoint presentation onto the web some time just the same.

As it turned out, the plan  for the evening was for everyone to go to a casino or west Edmonton Mall, and no hotel common room had been arranged in advance for those who don't gamble or who have had enough of the Mall.  I tried to arrange a room at the last moment and the cost would have been only $75, but by the time I got things lined up, it was too late to publicize.  The planned trips were a bust and people drifted around the hotel, so if I had acted an hour earlier, I could have had quite a party!.

Wednesday November 8th, 2000

Wednesday: Mainly cloudy. 60 percent chance of snow. Low minus 11. High minus 1.

 Thursday November 9th, 2000

Mainly cloudy. 60 percent chance of snow. Low minus 12. High minus 3.

Today was the Alberta Honey Producers Co-op meeting in Spruce Grove.  I awoke and drove out, arriving in good time.

After the meeting, I went over to Bee Supplies and got a few items, including some menthol -- which I have never used before  -- and some Crisco to make up the Blue Shop Towel Method.

People have been asking about double Quebec escape boards.  here is one I found at that Alberta Honey Producers Co-op Bee Supplies outlet.

Friday November 10th, 2000

	Today: Mainly cloudy. 40 percent chance of light snow. High minus 11.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy. Low minus 16.

 Saturday November 11th, 2000

 Sunday November 12th, 2000

 Monday November 13th, 2000

 Tuesday November 14th, 2000

 Wednesday November 15th, 2000

 Thursday November 16th, 2000

 Friday November 17th, 2000

Saturday November 18th, 2000

	Today: Mainly sunny with increasing afternoon cloud. Wind northwest 20 km/h becoming southwest in the afternoon. High plus 1.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy. Wind becoming northwest 20. Low minus 6.

Sunday November 19th, 2000

Today: Sunny. High plus 2.

I managed to straighten out my FrontPage set-up today and access the site again. 

Our daughter, Jean stayed until mid-afternoon and we bottled some mead.

Tonight: Clear. Low minus 7.

Monday November 20th, 2000

Today: Sunny. Wind west 20 km/h this afternoon. High plus 7.
Tonight: Clear. Low minus 7.

Sunrise: 8:02 am   Sunset: 4:41 pm
The Moon is Waning Crescent (28% of Full)

8 AM: Being a Monday, today is a day off .  Nonetheless, Matt and I have to work this morning seeing as a truck is scheduled to pick up our wax.  We have 28 drums and three pallets of old frames to go.  He was supposed to be here at 8AM sharp, but so far no word.

8:45 AM:  I called Jean-Luc and it turns out that the driver we were expecting was taken to the hospital unexpectedly last night, so they are rescheduling the load.

Wrapping: At this point, we are about half finished wrapping the bees for winter.  We've done 1713 and expect to wrap 3500.  We have 3591 hives right now, but will eliminate a few more obvious losers as we go. 

New wraps: Since we are wrapping about a thousand more hives than last year, we have had to make new wraps.  We decided on a new, single hive style of wrap to try out this winter, and anticipate that it will be very successful. 

They are designed to pull down over a double hive. The wraps are made from 6 mil UV protected black poly tubing 21" wide. The insulation is one thickness of Kodel® , an industrial grade quilt batting with an R factor of around 5  We found a 2" black UV resistant poly tape rated for outdoor use and use it for the seams.  A thin spot in the wrap is made where the auger hole in the upper body is by cutting a circle in the Kodel® , then pressing the plastic with an iron (using wax paper to protect it). Later we melt a 3/4" hole for flight.

We have used single hive wraps before -- many years ago when we had fewer hives -- and this one is not much different.  The design is cheaper than the Inland four packs, uses poly tube and Kodel® , and allows wrapping hives that are three per pallet -- or even on alone on floors on the ground, thus eliminating the need to move hives around when wrapping.  Each fall, we get all the pallets nicely adjusted to four hives each, then in spring have to do it again due to dead outs.  This wrap eliminates one pass through the outfit arranging hives.

The truck arrived and we loaded the wax drums.  I guess I should say that Matt loaded them.  I was feeling a bit poorly and left the job to him. There is a virus going a round and it starts with a slight nauseous feeling, followed by vague disorientation, a 'tight' head and general numbness.

Recently, I noticed another beekeeper is keeping a log about his top bar hive at http://beetalk.tripod.com/log.htm.  Not a bad job!

Tuesday November 21st, 2000
One month until Winter Solstice
Today: A mix of sun and cloud. High plus 8.
Tonight: Clear. Low minus 7.

It's turning out to be one of those days.  We are doing all the little odd jobs that we haven't had time for.  Two guys did not show up.  Mike and Dave each have their reasons, but it means we are very short staffed until tomorrow.  I'm running a "Help wanted" ad again.  we need help for the next two weeks, then hopefully we can shut down for a while.  Gene has made 120 of the new wraps so far, so we will be trying them out soon and will find out if the guys like them as well as we do.

Here's Matt baling the new wraps after melting top entrance holes to match the auger holes in our boxes.  We stack them on the pallet and place plywood every foot or so to make layers, which we tie with baler twine.  A pallet of heavy stuff lowered on top helps drive the air out while we are tying them.  The propane tank is for the torch used to heat a piece of iron to melt a 3/4 inch hole in a thin spot in the wrap.  The hole is a flight hole to match the auger holes we use in every brood box.

These two trucks are loaded with our old-style wraps and ready to go to the field.  The steel sides save us the effort of constant tying.  we aren't wrapping today, but Steve is out moving a few of our poorer wintering yards to better locations  for winter.

Here are some links I recently came across and like:
 http://members.aol.com/queenb95/ and
 http://www.draperbee.com/webcam/pic/image.jpg?971670892

Wednesday November 22nd, 2000 

Today: Sunny. High 10.
Tonight: Clear. Low minus 2.

Well, we're back wrapping again.  Yesterday we took care of the odds and ends so things should be quicker today.  Matt is not feeling his best -- the virus has hit him now -- but I said to take a separate truck and  rest or come back if he doesn't feel 100% later.  I dropped out to see them and he is okay.  He an Brett had wrapped about 44 hives when I got there and report that the new wraps seem faster and better.  They are still learning how best to use them, but think they will be the best solution. By lunch they had done 120.  Steve is moving out some of our more exposed yards into better wintering sites again today.

I took a new hire along to help the wrapping crew.  We've started advertising again in the paper and with posters.  Mike stepped on a light bulb (at home), has a swollen foot and so is done for the year.  (He was only temporary until a Glenbow job came up).  Dave has not shown up or phoned this week, so I think he is going to be history.  The buddy (Garry) who he rode with was unable to continue working due to bursitis, and Dave was without wheels last week.  We lent him a truck for a few days to get his act together, but he didn't.  It is impossible to plan a day when we don't know who will be at work.

I'm starting to think of the weekend and find that Northern Ontario is promised snow, so the driving could be poor;  the west coast looks like solid rain and as such doesn't seem to be much fun.  As for the mountains, the weather looks fine but there is not much snow yet -- and none promised.

The guys got 300 wraps on today and moved three yards into better locations.

Thursday November 23rd, 2000  

It's another beautiful day, and the forecast is for more of the same.  The guys are off to wrap another 400 hives. 

By the end of today, we should be 2/3rds done wrapping with about a week more of wrapping to go. We'll have wrapped 2,300 by tonight. Last year we would be done in just one more day, but we have 1,000 more hives this year.

Our biggest problem may be the number of wraps that Gene, our neighbour, can make per day. He took on a new job just about the time we started the wrap making and he is burning the candle at both ends.

In checking around the yards, I discovered that, in one yard, 6 of the 48 hives had lost their lids in the last big wind on the weekend. This was in spite of having an eight-pound brick squarely on each lid.  The bees are fine, but I wonder how much they have been stressed.  We found years ago, before we began using bricks, that hives that sat for periods without lids invariably did not do as well as the ones property covered.

Around noon today I noticed that some of the hives that we wrapped yesterday were flying quite freely when l was checking the counts in one of the larger yards.  Szabo had mentioned in one study that any significant relative rise in ambient temperature -- even in sub-zero temperatures -- would cause wintering bees to generate heat and expand their cluster, and often to fly. I guess the wrapping, accompanied by some disturbance and the warm, windy (+12.4 degrees C) today triggered that response.

We are trying to be fairly random in how many hives and which locations we use with each type of wrap. The hope is that we will collect the data in the spring and have Adony run it through a statistical analysis to see if any of the wraps are more successful than others.

When the dust settled at the end of the day, the guys had wrapped 480 hives.  Not bad.  We are now 73% done.

Gene phoned tonight to say he got only 10 wraps done, but we did get a new person lined up to help.

	Today: Sunny. Wind westerly 40 gusting 60 km/h. High 14.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy. Wind diminishing to west 20 gusting 40. Low minus 3.

Friday November 24th, 2000 

Steve and Keith, the new guy, wrapped 268 hives today.  They were all in twenties.  Steve found 16 lids off at Elliotts' Ranch.  we had some little twisters pass through, I guess. 

Matt stayed here for most of the day and took care of little things that needed doing.  At the end of the day, he went to Loosemores' and wrapped the hives from Adony's experiment, which is still in progress.

We were concerned that Gene would not be able to finish the wraps quickly enough, since he has a day job a the Trochu meat plant, so we hired back Sharon and a new person, Rita.  Of course as soon as that was accomplished, Gene told me that he had left the meat plant job, so I guess I have to find some work for everyone.  We'll be shutting down for the season son. I hope, so I am hoping I can get those who want to work onto some kind of project I don't need to be managing constantly.  I need a good rest.

	Today: Mainly sunny. Wind increasing to westerly 20 gusting 40 km/h. High 8.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy. Wind west 30 gusting 50. Low minus 2.

Normals for the period: Low minus 11. High zero.
Sunrise: 8:08 am  Sunset: 4:37 pm
The Moon is Waning Crescent (2% of Full)

Saturday November 25th, 2000
* One more month until Christmas *

Steve came in at 8 to move some yards.  Gene is making wraps. I wound up working a bit as a result. El still has the virus and is not too energetic.

We're close to done wrapping now (82% done)  and should be finished by the end of the week.  We're now waiting on the last of the new wraps.  They should be finished by Wednesday -- with any luck.

	Today: Mainly cloudy. Wind increasing to southwest 30 gusting 50 km/h. High 8.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy. Wind westerly 20 with gusts to 50. Low minus 2.

Normals for the period: Low minus 12. High zero.

Sunday November 26th, 2000

I'm off to Calgary to get a few things.

Our pond is frozen over.  I keep the aerator running, but I can see that is going to spoil our skating unless I move it to the other end.  I don't know if there are any fish left since we had another bloom of algae in August.

I figured out what caused our pond problem and massive fish kill this summer.   My neighbours spread manure last fall and did not work it in.  When spring came, and the annual runoff occurred, guess what happened?  I suppose I'll have to pump all the water out of the pond and hope the runoff is better in the future. At least when they spread manure this fall, they worked it in.  I look at the field though, and if I get my plane back together, I doubt the wheels could stand the lumps.

Monday November 27th, 2000

Monday is our day off, but we have decided we're short about 600 wraps at this point, so Sharon and Rita are working today to try to get enough ready for the week. 

We expect good weather tomorrow, then poorer weather for a day or so.  We want to finish by the end of the first week of December, so every good day counts.

It took a while to get things set up, but by afternoon, all the jigs were made and working and the manufacturing was well underway.  The job is paid on a piecework basis.  We pay $1 CAD per wrap completed.

In the picture, black poly tube has been cut up into 7 foot lengths and stuffed with Kodel® .  Rita is taping the ends of the wrap together.  A new roll of Kodel®  can be seen behind Sharon.

Normals for the period: Low minus 12. High zero.

Tuesday November 28th, 2000

Ellen and I drove to Lethbridge this morning to pick up the paintings from her show at the Yates public gallery.  We had lunch with Bob Webb, a painter friend of ours and headed back home, stopping on the way to visit Kirk.

We carry cell phones and continue to get progress reports from the crews as we travel.  Steve had phoned in with the flu, so Matt took Keith and Brett out to wrap some nearby hives.  During the day, it sounded as if things were going well, but at 5 PM we found they had done only 120 hives, so we knew something was wrong, and told them to head home.  No sense wasting more wages until we found out what was going on.

Normals for the period: Low minus 12. High zero.

Wednesday November 29th, 2000  

Today: Mainly cloudy. Periods of snow developing late this afternoon. Wind becoming east 30 km/h. High minus 3.
Tonight: Periods of snow. Wind east 20. Low minus 8.

Today began with a trip to the dentist for me.  I need a crown and had a tooth prepared for the new cap.

First thing in the morning, Ellen spent an hour with the crew giving them a tune-up -- including a hands-on demo of wrapping and a time study.  She proved that 2 man-minutes per hive was more than enough time to put the wraps on, even allowing for all the little things that always need doing. (The actual wrapping time to install one wrap was under one minute).  The crew then went out and wrapped 250 hives or so -- and got back in good time. 

We knew snow was predicted for Thursday, so we planned to work around the home yard.  There is a lot of tidying up to do before we are done for the year.  Ellen told Keith not to come in since he has little experience, and the work planned requires knowledge of what things are, and where they go.  He also proved in the morning session that he has learned nothing about wrapping after several days on the job.  We have doubts about his future here.

Joe and Oene came over for supper.  Their building project is progressing nicely.  They had some hives left to wrap still and had been out in the afternoon.  Apparently the two of them had driven 30 km, visited a yard with 120 hives, wrapped it and returned in about two hours.  They use square wraps that fit a four pack, similar to many of ours except with split pieces of pipe for upper entrances.  This makes an interesting comparison to our crew of three young guys which left at 11:15, drove about 40 km, wrapped 129 hives and returned at 6 PM yesterday. 

Meijers left around nine and took eight of our new wraps along to try out.

Thursday November 30th, 2000

Normals for the period: Low minus 13. High minus 1.

Sunrise is now 8:17 am  and sunset: is at 4:32 pm.  Days are short.  We got a skiff of snow overnight and the weather is cool.

The wrap making is going well.  We're nearly done.  Steve is still sick, but Matt and Brett are working around the yard.  Ellen called Keith and thanked him for working here, saying that we are about done and won't be needing him for the last little bit.

I did the payroll this afternoon.  In consideration of some of the performance lately, I was not as generous as I usually am with bonuses. 

Steve got a good bonus though.

Friday December 1st, 2000

	Today: Fog reducing visibility at times to less than 1 km then becoming mainly sunny this afternoon. Wind increasing to southwest 20 gusting to 40 km/h this afternoon. High plus 2.
	Tonight: Mainly clear. Wind west 20 gusting to 40 diminishing. Low minus 5.

The guys finished wrapping today, however there is one yard that will have to be moved due to horses.  Many lids were off the hives and one knocked over.

Horses are almost always bad news for beehives.  They are curious and always knock hives over or lift the lids.  It doesn't take much wire to discourage horses, or take much work to move the hives to a better spot.  It is a simple matter to move the hives once they are wrapped in four packs, so we'll have to get up there next week and either fence or move. 

Matt wrapped 125 hives single-handed today using the individual wraps.  He left late and went north to yards 60 miles away.  As a consequence, he was a bit late getting back.  Steve and Brett did 150, but were back earlier.

The total hives wrapped came to 3,572.  That's almost 1,000 more than last year.   We expect to lose roughly 20%, so in the spring, we should have about 2850 in late April unless we have an especially harsh or long winter.  The increased numbers should reduce the need to split hives or buy packages.

We still need to go around sometime before spring brood rearing to add more top insulation to some hives that are short of pillows and to change the lids for modified ones that don't compact the pillows or rock in the wind.  We may also add some more bricks at some locations.

We Use a Variety of Winter Wraps Over the years our wraps have evolved a lot.  Here is what we are currently using: All our hives have our black poly and Kodel®  pillows on year round.  We are now using two 1" pillows in winter and changing to 2" pillows over time.  Some hives are wintered with telescoping lids inside the wraps.  Others have only the pillow under the wrap. Our original belt wraps: When wrapping, the telescoping lids are removed, the hives are crowded together on the pallet, and a 14 foot strip of double tarp with Kodel®  industrial quilt insulation (~R5) sewn inside goes around.  An R10 to R20 pillow goes on top and plywood protects the materials from water.  Upper entrances are 3/8" by 2" slots in inner covers.  Holes through the wrap line up with the slot, and a plywood square with a small hole is nailed onto the front to hold things in place. One can examine the wrapped hives from the top by removing the plywood and pillow, but it is slow and awkward.

The belt wraps shown here are the same as above, but thicker (~R10), taller, and use the auger holes which are located 2-1/2" up from the bottom of every hive body for flight and air instead of the inner cover slots shown in the previous illustration. In this method, the hives are not crowded together, but left spaced about 3" apart on their pallets.  The telescoping lids are left on all winter inside the wraps.

Square wraps: these 7' x 7'  wraps are made of the same tarp material with one or two thicknesses the same Kodel®  insulation sewn inside.  Holes in the tarps line up with the auger holes, as above, although we have altered some so that we leave the telescoping lids off and use grommets for air holes.  The 1/2" grommets line up with the front edge of the top box. Examining the hives while wrapped is a bit easier with this method, but the tarp must be removed and replaced each time.  This may mean re-nailing the plywood chunks holding the wrap aligned with the flight holes.  This makes winter and spring inspections less fun and thus encourages unwrapping earlier than is good for the bees, simply to make the spring work possible.

20-pack wraps:  These long wraps are the same as the square ones above, except that they cover five pallets moved together.  In these wraps, and the ones above, the hives are left with summer spacing on their pallets.  1/2" Grommets through the tarps provide an upper entrance.  The pillows are left on the hives inside, but are pulled back about an inch at the front to allow air and bees to access the grommet hole.

Individual wraps: These are our latest design.  Each covers one hive.  The material is 21" poly tube with a single layer of Kodel® inside.  The ends are taped together to form a tube that slips down over each hive.  A single tacker staple is used to hold the warp tight against the hive next to the auger hole.  Normal telescoping lids are left on -- with the same plastic and Kodel®  pillows that we use all year under them. The main advantages we anticipate are: In the fall, for all the other current methods, we have to have four hives on each pallet .  This means moving hives around and slows things down a lot.  Then in the spring we have deadouts and find ourselves once again moving hives.  With single wraps, we can easily wrap pallets that are missing hives and eliminate one shuffle If a hive dies in a four pack, then the live hive next to it is colder than necessary.  Individual wraps allow each hive to warm itself. These wraps are compact and easy for one person to handle alone.  They have no extra parts to confuse and complicate planning and loading of trucks. The hive lid can easily be removed at any time for inspection and feeding.  Other wrapping methods make inspections cumbersome and thus hamper and discourage necessary inspections and beneficial spring work. Hives need not be unwrapped at all during the spring.  Conceivably, wraps could be left on year round. These wraps are much cheaper to make.  They can be made in our own shop without special tools or skilled labour.

Rita decided that her feet swell too much on this job from standing so much, and resigned.

Bill & Fen came over for supper.

Saturday December 2nd, 2000

	Today: Mainly cloudy in the morning. A mix of sun and cloud in the afternoon. Wind west 20 km/h gusting to 40 km/h. High plus 5.
	Tonight: Mainly clear. Wind northwest 20 gusting to 40. Low minus 7.

I spent the morning at the computer fine-tuning these pages.  Sometimes I think I spend too much time on these things, but writing clarifies my thoughts and, I am counting on reading this material next year to guide me through the season.

Actually when it comes right down to it, I wound up spending all day on this site, but I think it was worth it.  (I have to say that).

Do you like the new look?  Do you miss the popup index window?  I don't.  Is anyone using a browser that does not support frames?

Sunday December 3rd, 2000

I spent today at home, tidying and working at my desk.  In the afternoon, Jean and Chris came to borrow a vehicle, since Jean's Micra had thrown a timing belt on here way to work Friday.  They took the GMC 3/4 ton, AKA Spot.

They stayed for supper.  Walt Landymore joined us too, since were having turkey, and he loves turkey. His wife does not eat turkey, so he has to get it elsewhere.

	Today: A mix of sun and cloud with 30 percent chance of light snow. Wind becoming northwest 20 gusting 40 km/h. High plus 1.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy. Wind northwest 20. Low minus 12.

Monday December 4th, 2000

I started off this AM, as I often do, writing to BEE-L, the premier internet bee discussion list.  (I remember when I joined in 1994 --  I would have joined earlier, but my sources printed it as BEE-1 -- and it took 6 months for me to finally find it in those days of UNIX).

Anyhow, here is my article, an article which will likely be refused.   Lately writing for BEE-L has been less enjoyable due to uneven moderation.  I promptly approve others' posts day in and day out, but do not get the same consideration from the other moderators.  (We have a gentleman's agreement not to approve our own posts).  

So, lately, I have been favouring sci.agriculture.beekeeping since it is un-moderated and I now have a good newsfeed.  I had problems for years getting a good fast, reliable link to the newsgroup, but I now have two.

	Today: Light snow and fog ending. A mix of sun and cloud this afternoon. High near zero.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy. Low minus 9.

Tuesday December 5th, 2000

Today: Mainly sunny. Wind west 20 km/h diminishing this afternoon. High plus 4.
Tonight: Increasing cloudiness. Wind becoming west 20. Low minus 4 this evening then temperature rising.

I reviewed the notes and we have 3,544 hives going into winter.  I had entered 40 hives into an unused yard and forgotten the 12 at home.  We use MS Excel to manage the totals and assignments.  We cleaned up a few more details in the notes, then Steve went out to move the yard bothered by horses and to check a few more yards for minor details.  Apparently the horses had knocked the plywood covers off two four-packs -- twice.

Meijers had been going by on the weekend and put them back on once, then the covers were off again when Steve got there today.  At another yard where we used 20 packs, the horses were not doing any apparent damage.  Some horses just like to nibble on plywood.

Here is another BEE-L-related response that did not make it past the censors.  Ooops! Did I say that? Of course, I meant to say moderators, although the baiting and whining that provoked it was happily okayed and published by a fellow moderator. Oh, and while we are at it, here is another reject.

Every so often we get some self-important manipulator that decides he is above the rest of us, needs to save the world, and wants to use BEE-L for promoting his propaganda.  There is usually some loose connection to bees, so he gets some leeway.  In the current example, I am not even sure the individual has any bees or works with them.  GMOs is the hobby horse.  Pasting in articles from other sources is a favourite trick.  We get one or two of these guys a year.  Some of the moderators aren't wise to this and let it happen again and again, then publish the inevitable whining when he gets told to smarten up and hamper my efforts to get things straight..

Wednesday December 6th, 2000

Sunrise is now at 8:24 AM  and sunset at 4:30 PM.  That is gives us only about 8 hours of daytime.  No wonder I don't much care for this time of year.  It's not even very good for skiing or boarding, since there is generally poor light and the rocks are not yet well covered with snow.   Spring is much better because the days then are long and the snow is deep.

We were up early this morning and off to Calgary for Ellen's 8:30 AM eye appointment.  We left instructions for the crew yesterday.  We had a lot of things to do in town, but decided to keep things simple and took the car, not a truck, and left the tasks at home.   While El spent time at the eye doctor, I wandered around the Chinook mall.

The Chinook is the oldest mall in Calgary; I knew the project manager when it was built in the '60s.  It has grown since then, but the expansion appeared unattractive and piecemeal.  Recently we have not enjoyed visiting that particular mall due to constant construction but we keep returning since that is where the eye doctor's office is located. 

During the changes, we had concluded that the 'improvements' we not going to work out.  Were we wrong!  It is now as nice or nicer than the West Edmonton Mall IMO.  As one who is married to an artist, worked at an art school, and is an admirer of sculpture and commercial art, I was really struck by the great job they did.  I'm no critic of architecture, but I must say the place Works.

I have lately been complaining about hating Christmas, and the commercialization and that I do often not enjoy the holidays anymore, mostly due to all the neurotic expectations and activity that often accompany them, but this morning, listening to carols and enjoying the decorations in the early hours before things got busy and people got tired and rushed, I had an epiphany.  It was amazing to see how all those people strive to serve one another and to create a pleasant and artistic environment for all to enjoy, and that underlying all this is a message of hope and love. 

I have been crabby for the past few days.  Short days get to me and El and I both had a virus that just wouldn't leave.   One of its effects is periodic bad temper and lack of patience.  Ellen is still very short with me.  I posted to BEE-L in 1996 on the topic of viruses and their effect on history:
Item #12502 (19 Dec 1996 09:54) - Re: The Future of Antibiotics

I'll quote a bit here.  We never know when BEE-L and its archives may disappear:

Speaking of BEE-L, I offered my resignation as moderator today.  Maybe its the virus, but I'm sick and tired of the politics and undermined by my fellow moderators when I try to do what I consider to be my job.  Maybe because I'm a commercial beekeeper, I have different understanding, standards, needs and interests.  I've tried very hard to stimulate and maintain a high level of discussion on the list, but I think the idea is doomed.  

I've spent too much of my life on BEE-L and it's starting to look like a waste.   I've made some good friends, but the static is too high.  The list will go on fine without me and be whatever it wants to be.  Anyhow, as a result of my involvement with abeilles@fundp.ac.be , a French language list out of Belgium and a visit this summer from a French beekeeper, I'm now working on a site to try to deal with the threat -- real or imagined -- of imidacloprid to beekeeping and natural pollinators.  It is coming well.  Here's a preview of the site.

Remember it is still quite embryonic. Stay tuned.

	Today: A mix of sun and cloud. Wind west 30 gusting to 50 km/h. High 13.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy. Wind westerly 30 becoming light northwest overnight. Low minus 5.

The Moon is Waxing Gibbous (74% of Full)

Thursday December 7th, 2000

The sticks for raising our lids are now ready and will be in Spruce Grove by 2 this afternoon, so one of the guys is going to run up to get them.  He'll take a load of honey too, since our trucker has been indefinite about what he wants to charge.  We have a standing rate for a semi load.  each time we send a load, they bill us for a higher amount.  We pay the quoted amount and note the quote on the stub, but then get a letter saying our rate has now changed prohibitively.  We call and ask what is going on and are assured that the original arranged rate still stands, then go through the whole thing again.  Who needs that?

This way we save the freight on the honey and on the wood, but spend a day's labour and the fuel.  We have 33 drums left, and we can only carry about 26 full drums of honey on one of our truck/trailer units, since they are one-tons, so we'll have to take the balance along later.

We have had Roger Parent up at Girouxville make things for us in the past and found him really good, reasonably priced and co-operative.  He is making these sticks for us and running them down to the honey co-op.

Matt returned about 7 from an uneventful trip to spruce Grove. We'll start stapling the strips in to adapt the lids tomorrow morning and the boys will go out to try a few lids and pillows on some nearby hives later in the day. We won't be here, since El & I plan to attend the Aventis Growers Meeting in Lethbridge,.

Now that we have made some new pillows using our new method, I am almost thinking that we need deeper strips than the ones I just bought. We are finding the pillows with double Kodel® are over 2 inches thick. We allowed 1" space with the new strips and the strips do sit on the pillows, so they may be adequate. We'll see.

We're still trying to design a simple system to keep our telescoping lids on the hives. We are using two bricks in the winter, since losing lids is such a serious matter, but would like to eliminate bricks come spring. We have some ideas, such as rubber flappers on the edges that toggle when the lid is pushed down, then have resistance initially when the lid is lifted.

Here is a cross-section view of how our lids and Pillows work.  The pillow sits directly on top of the frames.  We don't scrape the tops of the top bars much and actually encourage wax bumps to lift the plastic slightly so bees can go where they please and get into the frame feeders we keep in each box as well.  They usually do not place excess wax up there.  A main advantage of this system is that we can place patties on top of the frames and still have a good seal at the edges in spring. Click the thumbnail to enlarge.

The plastic and Kodel® make a really nice warm pillow.  The plastic has a low coefficient of heat and the bees do not find it cold.  They cuddle right up to it.

The drawing is actually was made to show an idea I have about how we could use rubber strips to hold the lids on and eliminate bricks. We plan to experiment with this right away.

	Today: 40 percent chance of light snow this morning. A mix of sun and cloud this afternoon. Wind north 20 gusting 40 km/h. High minus 1.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy. Low minus 12.

Friday December 8th, 2000

Winter weather is now here.  We're in for a week or so of below normal temperatures according the the weather guessers.   Ellen and I are driving today to Lethbridge, a town  known for wind, and returning tomorrow.  The forecast is not the best.

Before we left in the morning, we got the guys started on stapling riser strips (shown left) into the lids for the individual wraps and tested the improved lids on the 12 hives at home.  They seem pretty good, but the new pillows with double Kodel (shown left) are thicker than we anticipated and we'll have to see how they look after they are in use for a few days.

We discovered that some of the wraps were starting to separate a bit at the back where they are taped.  The tape we were sold apparently does not do what Lowry's in Calgary promised.  They have not been getting back to us about it either.  Fortunately, we realised we had an adhesion problem half way through the manufacturing and started using a steam iron and pressing rag to set the tape better.  We also did tests in our home freezer and proved tape that was not ironed on just fell off at minus twenty when flexed, but the tape that had been ironed on stayed well attached.  After that we had ironed all the subsequent wraps.  The tape is holding properly on the wrap shown at the right

We assure ourselves that, in service, wraps are not flexed at minus twenty and should stay on until spring without problem, even if they do open up slightly.  We must be careful not to disturb them in the cold and hope that the tape adheres better over time or iron all the wraps in the spring.

This is an excellent example of why beekeepers should not just go whole-hog with a new idea.  We have proven repeatedly over the years that there are wild cards in every deck and at least half the time, they play against success.  We deliberately resisted temptation, did a limited trial, and did not keep the assembly line rolling after we had enough wraps for our test, even though we have extra labour now.  Until more results are in, we will just have to be patient.

We have pollinated hybrid canola for what is currently the crop science arm of Aventis in Southern Alberta since1998. They are excellent people to work with, and each year, after the season ends, they have a growers' meeting to discuss what has been accomplished in the year and what has been learned. After the business meeting, there is a dinner and entertainment. It is always fun. This year was as upbeat as always, even though sales are not good due to depressed canola prices, high inventories, and the GMO scare that is currently underway.  The take- home message of the meeting was that cutbacks in growing acres are forecast for the coming spring.

After the meeting, I noticed that it was the beekeepers and bee scientists who showed up in the bar to talk, while the growers went home.  Maybe it is because beekeepers are scattered and don't see each other every day, but maybe it is just the nature of beekeepers everywhere.  Aventis had kindly arranged hotel rooms for those of us who had travelled at all far, so we did not have to worry about driving in blowing snow.

By bedtime, there was an inch of soft white snow.  Castle mountain opens Wednesday.

	Today: Sunny with increasing afternoon cloud. Snow developing towards evening. High minus 1.
	Tonight: Snow and blowing snow. Wind becoming northeast 30 gusting 50 km/h in the evening. Low minus 15. High windchill near 1700 developing. Risk of frostbite.

Saturday December 9th, 2000

In the morning we awoke and had a leisurely breakfast. When we went down,  Neil and Jan and Les were the only beekeepers in the cafeteria.  Adony had driven Lynn to the airport early and the rest of us were either sleeping or gone.  We said our farewells again and kidded that we'd likely meet around town somewhere, but of course, we did not make any plans to do so since we were all headed home at that point. 

Lethbridge is a city of about 50,000 and has pretty good shopping.  El & I headed to Costco just to poke around a bit.  Later she decided she wanted to go to Chapters which is on the far corner of the town.  We arrived there and had just begun to browse when Neil walked up and said, "Hi".  They were sitting at a table in Starbucks having coffee.

We did a little more shopping at the Park Place Mall (which is pretty darn nice these days). and then left town. On the way home, we stopped to see Richard & Bonnie Cote and family, beekeepers we have known for years.  We enjoyed a tour of their new house built with a fabulous river view in Diamond City, then headed home.

Tonight: Mainly cloudy with occasional light snow. Wind easterly 20 km/h. Low minus 25. High windchill near 1800. Risk of frostbite.

Sunday December 10th, 2000

The Moon is Waxing Gibbous (100% of Full)
Sunrise: 8:35 am  Sunset: 4:34 pm

Adony sent me this note the other day and I thought I would pass it on since stats is the science that allows researchers to draw conclusions from murky-looking data.  There are very definite rules as to where various analyses can be used. 

My pet peeve with  bee -- and other -- researchers is that  when I read a study, I often suspect that these very definite prerequisites for statistical analysis have not been met and that statistics have therefore been misapplied.  If that is so, then conclusions presented are not proven, even though they appear to be. 

The confusing thing for many people is that conclusions reached by bad science are not necessarily out of line with the truth or what people already 'know' to be true.  That is not the point.  The point is simply that if the prerequisites for statistical analysis are not met, then the conclusions -- right or wrong --  are not scientifically proven and moreover, the use of stats in such situations amounts is totally invalid and lends a deceptive aura of science to what is really just mucking around. 

If nothing is proven and all we have is still opinion and improperly controlled observation, then what was the point of spending the time and money?  Such studies only muddy the water and confuse people into thinking that the issue was scientifically studied -- when it actually was not.

On the topic of research, some bee research was presented at the Aventis meeting, since they are trying to get a clear understanding of the  pollination process and the factors that determine how and how well bees work in the crops.  There was some work on how far the bees penetrate into the crop and some work on the effects of colony size. 

My personal impression of what was presented  (and that of my wife and some others to whom I spoke) is that some of the research presented had enough obvious flaws to render it meaningless.  We saw the same problem with the work last year.

Unless an experiment is well planned, and unless the controls used in an experiment are carefully evaluated, comparisons are invalid.  Very often assumptions must be made going in, and very often, it becomes obvious in the middle of the project that the comparisons are not meaningful.  What then?

We have a bit of snow now, and the snowmobile is out and waiting, but we don't have enough snowpack to snowmobile or ski-jore yet. The picture is from last winter.  Although the days start to get longer soon, the coldest and snowiest part of winter starts in January.

Suddenly I feel free.  I can only assume it is because the wrapping is done -- right on time.  There is nothing pressing anymore.  We have some loose ends to finish up, but nothing pressing.  We're talking about going south for a while if we can find a suitable house-sitter.

I spent the day tidying around the house and playing around with the computer.

	Today: Occasional light snow. High minus 21.
	Tonight: 40 percent chance of light snow in the evening then partly cloudy. Low minus 26.

Monday December 11th, 2000

It's cold out there -- Minus 29.5 C as I write this at 5 AM Monday.  We had to shift our coal stoker into second gear Saturday night.

It looks as if it will be a cold week -- too cool to go skiing, I think.  Minus ten is okay, but anything around minus twenty gets uncomfortable.  I remember patrolling years ago at minus forty, but there were mighty few skiers on the hill on such a day and we got to spend quite a bit of time in the Ski Patrol shack.

Adony has said he will drop by today to discuss several projects.

This morning I spent a few hours doing a family newsletter to accompany outgoing Christmas cards.

We are thinking the new pillows are too thick and will have to fine-tune that design a bit before we go too far with production.

	Today: Mainly sunny. Morning ice fog patches. High minus 19.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy. Low minus 23.

Tuesday December 12th, 2000

It's warmed up to minus 21 here at 6 AM. I'm off to the dentists and hope he gets  the tooth capped with no hassles.  It's been acting up a bit with the temporary cap and aching sometimes.  I think the cap does not seal out food and that sugar gets in there and ferments a bit.  The permanent cap should not have that problem.

Adony is heading back north.  He arrived after supper last might and we had a good visit.  Meijers were here as well, so we discussed the pros and cons of a number proposed research projects and potential involvement in them.  

In our part of the country, at least, researcher/beekeeper partnership in research is a fairly new idea.  Instead of the researchers just proceeding with their work using their own ideas and resources, beekeepers and researchers are meeting, designing projects, then working together on them.  The beekeepers supply the hives and much of the labour, vehicles, supplies, etc..  The researchers supply the expertise in the scientific area plus the trained observers and the analysis.  The beekeepers donate their resources and the projects are able to attract matching funds from government and private foundations for this 'sweat equity'.

The major bonus of this approach is the buy-in from all parties, since everyone has a say in how resources are allocated.  Many remember back to huge wastes of government funds under the top-down approach that held sway in the past and are determined that such abuses should never occur again.  With everyone involved in the decision making, and everyone sharing the expense, there is much less moral hazard in this approach. 

I spent the day paying bills and such work.  It is amazing how fast the paper piles up.

	Today: Mainly cloudy. 40 percent chance of flurries this morning. A mix of sun and cloud this afternoon. Wind becoming north 20 km/h. Temperature minus 15 falling this afternoon. Windchill near 1600.
	Tonight: Mainly clear. Low minus 27.

Wednesday December 13th, 2000

The guys are still repairing lids and stapling in the risers.  we decided that our double pillows are too thick and will stick with single ones for now.  I'm getting deskwork caught up and working on the files.

It looks as if I'll be co-moderating BEE-L for a while longer.  We still have some differences in opinion about what is appropriate to the list, but the job must be done.  We've decided it needs a firm hand and plan to cut off some of the abuses a bit faster.

I'll continue to do most of my writing here on these pages though.  When I write to BEE-L, as a moderator, I have to rely on another to approve my posts and that means that days can pass sometimes before another moderator logs on.  By then the hand, having written, has long passed on and my comments have been made by someone else or they are out-of-date.

I learned something interesting from my neighbour Paul H. recently.  He was talking about making splits in the spring:

It is necessary sometimes to be able to screen bees in the nucs if you are planning to move them.  It is also sometimes necessary to keep the bees confined for a while after arriving  at a new yard, especially if there is a discrepancy in the amount of brood or in the case where cells have been used instead of mated queens.  He uses the type of self-adhesive drywall mesh tape shown here.  Apparently the bees are able to chew their way out through the screen or remove it if you don't get back as soon as planned.

I got word this afternoon that there will almost definitely be pollination cutbacks beyond the 90% level and that perhaps more beekeepers will be bought out of their contracts.

Here's a fun link to Nick's Bee Beard page.

	Today: Occasional light snow this morning then becoming mainly sunny. High minus 20. High windchill near 1600. Risk of frostbite.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy this evening otherwise mainly clear. Low minus 30. High windchill near 1600.

Thursday December 14th, 2000

We're off to Calgary again this morning.  We spent the day shopping, not that we need much, but that we enjoy a mall in the way some enjoy a museum.  We got back around six, had supper and that was about it.

	Today: Cloudy with light snow. Wind becoming southeast 20 km/h in the afternoon. High minus 18. High windchill near 1700. Risk of frostbite.
	Tonight: Light snow. Wind shifting to northeast 20 overnight. Low minus 22. Windchill near 1700.

Friday December 15th, 2000

I was up at 3 AM and wrote to sci.agricuture.beekeeping on the subject of making tapers (see below).  The wind is definitely strong as forecasted, and although we are getting a few inches of soft snow, it will all be in drifts or in gullies.  So far it is not too promising for snowmobiling.

I notice that these diary pages are getting quite a few hits lately and suspect that the improved navigation aids and absence of the popup index window has helped a lot.  No one is saying though.  I'm curious if the type I use is large enough for the important stuff (I know the weather text is small) and shows well on all browsers, so I'm open to Write me.

I D/Led a new newsreader -- XNews -- after reading a recommendation on sci.agricuture.beekeeping and am now trying it out.  So far it seems pretty  very good.  It's only 500K and free with no ads. It's made and distributed in the original spirit of the net.  I'm glad there are are still a few of us that think the net is something other than a get-rich-quick scheme.

I also got a freeware program to replace Winzip which ahs been annoying me.  It was originally freeware, but became overpriced shareware.  Of course I only found that out after loading an 'upgrade' which turned out mostly to be an 'upgrade' to pesterware from a its former incarnation as a useful, quiet ap. 

FWIW,  I find that shareware is typically overpriced compared to really intensive and complex software like operating systems, and often priced at about 200% of what I would gladly pay.  So I don't pay for them.  I look for alternatives.  There are some really good utilities out there at http://www.webattack.com/freeware/

I wonder on a day like this about people who believe that bees can survive without shelter in extreme cold conditions.  My neighbour's flag is flying straight out in the wind at minus 22 degrees.   "Cold doesn't kill bees, moisture does', is what they say.   They may be right about moisture killing bees, but exposed human flesh freezes in minutes (seconds?) with winds like I am observing right now.  How can a bee survive on the outside of a cluster in a direct wind?  I know they cannot for long.

I'm doing payroll and bonuses today and will use any excuse to procrastinate. I've got a new 20 gig drive to install sometime soon so I can backup properly and also installs of  FreeBSD and Linux to play with.  I am also putting off the next round of work on the imidacloprid problem, but had better get with it soon.  Some people pooh-pooh the new paradigm, but it is here:  Dinosaurs can learn.  Beekeepers can work together.

Sitting at a desk gets to me after a while, so I went out snowmobiling a bit this afternoon.   The drifts are deep, but there is not much snow on the level.  I got stuck in a drift for a while.  It felt good to heave that heavy old machine around.

We have been planning to go south for a few weeks (months?) , but after hearing that the pollination business is falling apart, we are thinking that we might have to stick around.   Bummer.   This is the first year in a while that we are ready to go.   So, we'll be home for Christmas. 

Not really.  We'll be at Fortress again -- shredding.  My favourite way to spend Christmas is at a ski hill.  It is so peaceful.  All the neurotics are at home trying to please everyone else and everyone is mellow on the hill.  I skied with six Santas at Sunshine Village one year, and almost no one else.  Gosh, maybe I need a Santa suit.

	Today: Snow and blowing snow. Snowfall accumulations 3 to 6 cm. Wind increasing to north 40 gusting to 60. Wind diminishing to north 30 late this afternoon. High minus 20 then falling this afternoon. Very high windchill near 1900. Frostbite likely in minutes.
	Tonight: Mainly cloudy. 40 percent chance of snow. Clearing overnight. Low minus 32. Windchill near 1700.

Saturday December 16th, 2000

It's minus 22 again this morning.  This is the day I have promised to get the imidacloprid site done, so here goes...

Well, I spent the whole day on it and have it pretty well finished.  The only thing I gave not accomplished so far is to present a clear case against the chemical.  The necessary information is spread around the web and mostly in French.  I will have to do this soon, I guess.  For the meantime, there is an interesting discussion in French with English translation available and lots of references and references to the demonstrations with pictures.  Over 1,000 French beekeepers showed up for at least some of the demonstrations, so I suppose that indicates some serious concern.

	Today: Periods of snow developing by this afternoon. Wind increasing to southeast 30 gusting 50 km/h. High minus 14. Very high windchill near 2000 this morning diminishing to 1700 in the afternoon. Frostbite likely in minutes.
	Tonight: Periods of snow ending then clearing. Total accumulations near 5 cm. Wind becoming southwest 30 gusting to 50. Temperature rising overnight to minus 6.

Sunday December 17th, 2000

It's minus 12 C this morning and rising.  Wind is predicted for later, however.  We're off to Calgary today to a coffee party.  I hear we'll be discussing the impending removal of Lorsban from the market and other impending events.. 

As I read all the material about insecticides, I am getting the strong feeling that they are all bad things to spread around the country and on our food.  There are subtle ill effects on both the environment and on people.  But what is the solution?

	Today: 40 percent chance of light snow this morning then a mix of sun and cloud. Wind increasing to northwest 30 gusting to 50 km/h. Temperature falling to minus 11 in the afternoon. Windchill increasing to 1600. Risk of frostbite.
	Tonight: Clearing. Wind northwest 20 gusting to 40. Low minus 16. High windchill near 1600. Risk of frostbite.

Monday December 18th, 2000

I think the guys are coming to work today.  They have enough lids ready to go out and change some.  The weather looks good. 

It's the 18th already, so I think we'll take time off for Christmas any day now.  Time flies.  we had planned to go south, but so far, it just is not happening.  Maybe we'll just fly somewhere for a week or two.  I had been playing with the idea of going to France, but don't know.  Next thing I know, the bee meetings in San Diego, Saskatoon, Moncton, etc. will be upon us.

	Today: Becoming mainly cloudy. Wind increasing to southwest 30 km/h. High minus 3.
	Tonight: Mainly cloudy. 40 percent chance of light snow overnight. Wind southwest 30 becoming northwest 30. Low minus 9.

Normals for the period: Low minus 15. High minus 3.

Tuesday December 19th, 2000

It turns out that we've run out of bricks and we're worried that the lids will blow off in some of the less sheltered locations.  So, I'm off to town to get more.

I have torn my whole computer system apart and added a 20 gig drive and system Commander.  I'm planning to add Linux to my system to play with it a bit.  I am extremely tired of MS's instability for power users.  Rebooting five times a day is a bit much.

Wednesday December 20th, 2000

Sunrise: 8:37 am  /  Sunset: 4:30 pm
The Moon is Waning Crescent (23% of Full)

Everyone was off to a quick start this morning -- except me.  I was up until 1:30 AM working on the imidacloprid site and adding the info about the big demonstration in Paris the day before yesterday.  Ellen handled the morning meeting.

The guys were out of here -- without a courtesy call on the intercom to say they were ready -- to put the lids with risers on within a half-hour or so.  They were obviously hoping to finish today.  Usually they are glad to sit around for a few minutes before leaving. 

Today they broke about 5 of our written standing rules in their hurry to leave.

• At minus twenty, they started a diesel truck that had not been plugged in

• They left without final instructions

• Only one truck had a cell phone

• ...And two more things I've already forgotten.  Am I too forgiving?

I caught up with them after about 10 miles and explained that we were very concerned about the tape falling off the wraps at this temperature and that we had planned to test to be sure that it would not be a problem before doing 400+ hives.  When I had put samples of the the tape into the freezer the other day as a test, it had fallen right off and we were concerned this could happen outdoors.

I went to several yards with them and assured myself all was okay, and left them to continue.

It is a gorgeous sunny day, and at minus twenty C, it is a bit crisp, but fun to be out.  The bees we peeked at were just fine and there is not much moisture inside.

I have many things to say here -- and some good email -- but not as much time as I'd like, so ...

Meijers came by for supper.  We had a good time as always.

Thursday December 21st, 2000

This is the first day of our holiday.  Sharon is here for the morning, and Matt and Steve still have  to come by for a chat, but otherwise, we are free.

	Today: Mainly sunny. High minus 6.
	Tonight: Mainly clear. Low minus 18.

Friday December 22nd, 2000

It's foggy and minus 16 here this morning.  At 9 Am it's hardly brighter than a moonlit night and we have hoarfrost. I guess this must be the first day of winter.  Could be; we've been running about ten to twenty degrees below normal for the past week or two.

I am enjoying not having to worry about the staff, other than getting the payroll done in the next day or so. 

I continue to have computer problems.  Now my printer has stopped working and the video is running slow.  Restore has no good restore points, so it looks like a big job to get things tuned again.  I was writing about this the other day and got a nice email from Al Lipscomb, LipscombA@hsn.net to which I have not yet replied.  I'll reply here since he reads this and I am sure he won't mind having his good and concise advice shared...

I am grateful for the advice and actually have OpenBSD on hand.  A partner of mine from my computer days runs the distribution for OpenBSD out of our old shop and brought me a copy last time her came to visit.  I also have a Linux distribution on hand too.  I tried BeOS some time back, since it can be run just like a Windows® program and I was impressed. I removed it due to lack of disk space, but may install it again after I get this beast stabilized again.

The biggest problem is that I am used to and dependant my current aps and unless I can switch O/Ss quickly and access files from all of them, I am inclined to stay with the devil I know.  For example I use FrontPage to maintain these pages and don't want to reboot every time I get a notion to make a change.

No sooner had I gotten relaxed and the payroll done but there was knock at the door and Ralph is back, looking to work.  His medical problems have cleared up and he is ready to go.  I put aside my holiday mood and found him a project.  He left in one of the trucks and I went back to relaxing.  An hour later I got a call: the truck had quit and he had ridden to town. Could I rescue the truck?  I did and he got back on track.  He later  unloaded some of our trucks and got a load of junk ready for the dump.  He'll be working tomorrow, and I expect -- to some extent -- so will I.

Jean and Chris will be here tomorrow and we will trim the tree.

	Today: Cloudy. 60 percent chance of light snow. Wind northerly 20 km/h becoming easterly. High minus 14.
	Tonight: Mainly cloudy. Low minus 18.

Saturday December 23rd, 2000

Hoarfrost again this morning, and minus twenty-two degrees -- again.

Ralph took a load of trash home last night intending to take it to the dump near his place when it opens this morning. 

He called last night to report that a friend had mentioned noticing that the wraps were off some of our hives near Acme where he lives.  He went out this morning and discovered four wraps off -- and three lids missing completely.

Apparently the farmer had dumped several semi-loads of newly-purchased cattle into the field, maybe at night.  Normally cattle that know the territory are no problem, but the 200 or so strangers had milled around, knocked our drums over, disturbed the hives and generally made a mess.  Ralph found the wraps a half mile away, blown, I suppose, by strong winds we've had lately.

He tidied up as best he could and came back here for some more supplies and will go and finish in a while.  Right now, he is loading a truck to onto a trailer to  take over to a shop nearer his home for painting.  We tried to start it, but although everything seemed to be there, and it cranked over well, it just would not fire. We pulled it -- no luck.  Probably Matt borrowed some essential part and did not tag it -- and he is away.

In the next weeks Ralph will be working on two trucks we bought and never got onto the road, then repairing lids and supers.  Hopefully he can work independently and I'll still get some peace this winter.  Having him back has already paid off: we'd have lost all of those 16 unwrapped hives by spring if not for him and that would have meant  about a $1,000 loss -- even after allowing for the fact that we normally lose about 20% of wintering hives.

I spent some time installing the TurboLinux CD I got with System Commander onto my notebook (a non-essential system) and found it is not as simple as it was supposed to be.  All went fairly well, except that the instructions are not consistent.  I had trouble booting the Linux install.  It would not boot from the CD, even with some tinkering, and when I finally did get it up -- from a floppy, I discovered that I had not made a large enough partition (1meg) for the full install which wanted 1.2 megs or so.  I had done what was recommended.

I ran it anyhow, since it said it could make do.  Watching the automatic install was impressive.  I had no idea how much good stuff came with the free system.  Maybe I don't need M$ after all.   BUT, when I finally booted into Linux for the first time I saw a localhost login_ prompt. 

I was not prepared for this.  Localhost?  What localhost?  Anyhow, I tried all the user and password combos I could think of and never got past the username part.  I am still at this moment locked out.  Bummer!

	Today: A mix of sun and cloud with 30 percent chance of flurry. Morning fog patches. Wind southerly 20 km/h. High minus 15.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy. Wind becoming light southwesterly. Low minus 17.

Sunday December 24th, 2000

Adony did a survey of Alberta beekeepers asking what they consider the biggest problem they faced.  I believe he said that the price of honey was the highest ranked problem.

Considering we spend most of our effort preparing bees for winter,  re-establishing lost hives after winter and building hives back up after winter, I wonder if this is true.  Of course a honey price increase would help, but if we did not have the huge expenses associated with wintering, we would be away ahead and much more competitive.

I spent the day playing around trying to get the TurboLinux to work. Maybe a notebook was not the best choice of computers to install it on.  The install did not recognise the S3 Video and its 8 megs of RAM.  Then after I decided to forget the GUI, I found the Linux wouldn't boot.  Oh well.

Jean & Chris came around noon and we had lunch and a walk followed by traditional Christmas dinner with turkey, etc. one day early since we are a off to Fortress or Nakiska for a day of skiing and snowboarding tomorrow.

	Today: Mainly sunny. High minus 9.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy. Wind increasing to south 20 km/h. Low minus 15.

Normals for the period: Low minus 16. High minus 3.

Monday December 25th, 2000

Christmas Day.  We're off to do a bit of snowboarding.

We got to Beisker, about twenty miles down the road, and stopped for fuel.  We noticed some smell and smoke and discovered that the engine had burped out a bit of oil and that the automatic choke was stuck on.  I concluded that the oil was diluted and that maybe there had been a bit of an explosion in the crankcase, driving out some oil.  The dipstick was out a bit too.  The others lost confidence and thought we should return home, not wanting to risk a breakdown in the mountains a hundred and fifty miles away.  I drove them home and went on my own.  No problems.

It was a perfect day with no line-ups at Nakiska.  I made 6 runs off the Silver Chair, which was about right for the first day out and was home by six PM.

	Today: A mix of sun and cloud. High minus 1.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy. Low minus 6.

Tuesday December 26th, 2000

Boxing Day.  The temp was +1.1 C at 9 AM and was 5.5 by noon.  Snow is melting.

I've been getting email:

> I HAD PLANNED TO ASK AS TO WHAT YOU DEEM > A NORMAL WINTER LOSS & THEN I READ YOUR > DIARY FOR THE LAST FEW DAYS... We lose hives all year long -- a few dwindle and drift out, leaving empty hives -- unless we are working through them constantly.  I estimate we lose 10% from the end of splitting in late May and early June until we wrap in late October and November. That is 2% per month over a 5 month span, and that is summer. The root cause is invariably queen loss or failure. In the next five months, we lose that normal ten percent (2% per month) plus another ten or fifteen percent are weakened beyond usefulness or die, depending on the year. That latter number is the real winter loss IMO.  Some years that number can be much higher There are several ways to deal with this attrition that amounts to 10+10+15=35% over the year.  One is to split the remaining hives in the spring to make up the numbers.  Many years this results in all the hives being weaker than ideal and can mean missing the honey flow if it comes early.  Other years when he flow is late, nothing is lost. A less than obvious point here is that if you lose a third of your bees you need to successfully split half the remainder to get back to where you started.  If you lose half, then you must split the entire remainder in half just  to get even.  If you lost that many, then conditions are such that the remainder may not be all that splittable. Another is to get nucs or packages. This means spending some money and there is always risk, since the quality will vary a lot from year to year.  In the case of nucs, there is a also real danger of spreading disease, including the new antibiotic resistant AFB strains.  The advantage is that you do not weaken your good producing hives. Another angle is to make up extra hives the year before when things are good.  The splitting is usually done on the leading edge of swarming season in mid to late June around here.  At that time, weather is good, the hives have brood to spare and cells are easy and cheap to raise.  Such splits are usually made up with only a frame or two of brood and a cell or queen, and removing a frame or two has little effect on the parent colony.  Such splits usually don't make any honey, but require little, if any, attention.  Some don't work out, but they are just combined with others when time permits.  Most achieve wintering strength by fall and subsequently winter well.  By spring they are indistinguishable from the other colonies. We have tried all these methods, but this year decided to rely more fully on the third approach.  The downside is the extra labour of splitting at a busy time of year, and the extra floors, lids, brood boxes and stands that are needed (as well as wraps), the upside is that spring work is a breeze and can start a month later.  This splitting method also results in examining brood combs and can give early warning of disease and queen problems compared with our normal method of simply separating the two brood boxes and re-queening one half.

Ralph was sanding the truck and also was doing an oil change on the car at a shop he borrowed 10 miles away.  We set that up to avoid rearranging our own shop (Three hours work) and to keep, me from being disturbed constantly.  It sounded like a good deal at the start, but when he found he had the wrong oil filter, I wound up driving there and back.  All the spare parts are here.  We need a shop nearby.  So much for my vacation.  I can also se that I will need to supervise a bit more closely.  Drat!!

Efficiency is so important -- and so few people understand efficiency.  If we waste much effort running around we simply cannot make it as beekeepers.  Everything has to be planned, and in place, and on time -- or all profits and leisure are lost.

	Today: A mix of sun and cloud. Wind west 30 km/h gusting 50. Temperature steady near plus 7.
	Tonight: Mainly cloudy. 30 percent chance of light snow. Wind becoming light northwest. Low minus 8.

Normals for the period: Low minus 16. High minus 3.

Wednesday December 27th, 2000

It was still +1 Celsius when I woke up and snowing fairly heavily.  I decided to go for a bike ride.  Being inside gets to me after a while and I think that if I get moving and do something strenuous first thing I have a more productive day.

I wore my Snowmobile helmet and visor and things were quite pleasant -- although I was damp from the wet snow when I got back .  Wet snow is good news, since it will stay where it falls and we can snowmobile across the fields soon and not have to stick to where the wind has drifted it.

I finally got the TurboLinux set up -- on a desktop machine.  (I don't quit easily). It looks pretty good, too, but there were a few things that I should have done during install that will have to be corrected when I have time to play with it.  Seems they expect you to print out the entire 250 page manual PDF file prior to installing.  I thought I would save the cost and wing it...  If time is worth anything, I didn't save much.

A GUI seems strange with a *nix to me, but I was able to drill down through pretty quickly and find a prompt. First impressions are that there is no good reason to use M$ Windows® other than the amount of software available, and maybe that is not even a good reason, since TurboLinux seems to come with a decent suite of software including and office suite that can read MS Office docs. (Apparently, I have not tried it yet).

What has this got to do with bees?  Not much.  Ralph's wife phoned at about ten to say he is sick and it sounds as if he will be for a few days. I was expecting to hear from him at eight and have been hanging around to keep him busy.  Oh, well.  El and the kids went to Red Deer yesterday and stayed at their place overnight, so I am here alone.  I enjoy that.

I have some more to do on the imidacloprid tar-baby and then the real project I need to get to work on: a job qualification matrix for beekeeping help. 

I have noticed that my beekeeping friends who hire Mexican help are getting robbed -- not by their foreign helpers, but by the inter-government system that sets up the labour  imports.  The workers themselves are, without exception,  honest people with a good work ethic and an eagerness to put in whatever hours are necessary to get the job done.  The problem is with the system.

I have, myself, considered hiring Mexican help, but if I paid as much as my friends did this past year for unskilled Mexican help, I would lose all my Canadians, plain and simple.  A number of beekeepers are in a bind, since they have grown to depend on the imported seasonal help because their bee operations are located far from population centres and because the job market in Canada is currently tight. 

This particular situation highlights a problem that I encounter frequently myself.  How do I explain to my Canadian employees how they can improve themselves and earn more money?  How do I explain why one person gets one wage and another less?

I plan to create a listing of desirable abilities, accomplishments, and behaviours and link them to remuneration.  I'll need some help, but it should not be that hard...

(Several hours later...)  Okay, here is what I have so far.  It's a work in progress.  I hope to eventually have a worksheet into which I can enter some rating numbers and come out with the correct pay rate for a given employee.  Hopefully he  or she could do the same and get a similar answer.  Any answer below the minimum wage would mean a farewell was in order.

I plan to share the resulting employee appraisal grid with my fellow beekeepers and with HRDC.   How about sending me suggestionsfor additional skills and characteristics?  Format?  Presentation?...??

	Today: Cloudy with occasional snow mixed at times with rain this morning. Risk of freezing rain this morning. Wind becoming northwest 30 km/h this afternoon. High plus 1 this morning then slowly falling.
	Tonight: Mainly cloudy. 40 percent chance of light snow. Wind becoming light northwest. Low minus 10.

Normals for the period: Low minus 16. High minus 4.

Thursday December 28th, 2000

Can't decide whether to go to the mountains or work.  It's minus 9 this AM.  Anything down to minus 15 is okay for skiing.  Checking out Nakiska, I see:

Hmmm. 

(Much later...)  Well, I went to Nakiska and made a few runs.  the place was a zoo.  Christmas day it was quiet, but today it was packed and there were 10 to 15 minute line-ups at the base area chairs.  The Gold (expert area) had no line-ups, so i spend some time up there.  The problem is that with the short days, the sun leaves that slope (north east face) early in the day and it is gloomy and cold there.  In a month or two things will be better.  By the end of the day, it was getting icy too, since the intermediates go up there and then scrape the snow off skidding down.

In the lodge there was a coin-op internet booth ($1 for 10 minutes) and I thought I would take a peek at -- what else? -- this page.  The machine was running Netscape at a 800 x 600 and the page looked very good, except that when I tried navigating from my home page, part of the referring page was shown to the right of the new page and I realised that their browser was defective -- it could not open a new page.  This is a fairly major flaw.  I have received the same complaint from at least one reader of this page.  If you have this or any browser problem, I recommend visiting Fred Langa's BrowserTune 2000 and also considering downloading an upgrade to what you currently have.

On the way home I went to Calgary to hang out in the malls a bit and while at Marlbourough, I discovered something quite fascinating relating to my current employee evaluation  project.  An HRDC kiosk that was set up to assist with job searches and I tried searching under 'beekeeper'.  There was no such designation and the machine referred me to general farm labour.   No wonder we have problems finding new help and maintaining a pool of skilled workers. No one realises that this is as much a trade as 'mechanic'.

	Today: Mainly sunny. High minus 2.
	Tonight: Mainly clear. Increasing cloudiness overnight. Low minus 13.

Normals for the period: Low minus 16. High minus 4.

Friday December 29th, 2000

Although, after a good fall, we ran as much as 10 to 20 Celsius degrees below normal temperatures for much of the past several weeks, it appears we are now back to slightly above normal temperatures for a week or so.  That should be good for the bees.  Today is another dull day and minus seven C at  10 AM.  We slept in and -- for the first time since I can't remember when -- had no calls or demands on us.

I'm looking at what needs to be done and what I feel like doing.  We had planned to go south for a month or so, but I have people who need to work.  If I can get that set up then I suppose we may go, but for now, it looks as if we'll be busy for a while.  I think I'll just fly down top the ABF meeting and come back.  Maybe we'll get away in Feb.

So far I have no feedback from readers on the job description project.

We went to town for lunch and then out to Purves-Smiths for supper. It was very foggy when we left, but cleared up.  Since before Christmas,  we have had heavy hoar frost all over southern Alberta.  Driving to the Kananaskis for snowboarding the past two times has been like driving through fairyland.

	Today: Mainly cloudy. High minus 4.
	Tonight: Periods of snow developing. Low minus 12.

Saturday December 30th, 2000

It's sunny today, but was still around minus eight in the morning.  Tomorrow is going to be plus two with one of thise famous Chinook winds, gusting up to 50 KPH.  By Wednesday they are talking about plus twelve Celsius as a high. That means we'll lose our snow, I'm afraid.

Today, we are getting ready for a indoor/outdoor games party tomorrow.  That means checking out the skating rink on the pond and tidying the house some more.  We're cooking a turkey for snacks and planning lunch and a fun afternoon.

So far only one comment about the employee evaluation sheet.  I see that these pages are getting lots of interest though -- hundreds of hits since yesterday.

	Today: Mainly sunny. High minus 2.
	Tonight: Mainly clear. Wind increasing to west 20 km/h. Low minus 7.

Sunday December 31st, 2000

Today we had our traditional New Years Eve day party .  Robinsons, Orams, Landymores, and the Purves-Smiths all came and we played a little hockey on the rink, did puzzles and some ski joring behind the snowmobile and ate turkey and ham.  The weather was perfect, hovering above freezing.  That is cooler than the last few years, but just about perfect.

Everyone including the kids left by evening and we went to bed early. 

Here comes the real new millennium.

	Today: Sunny. Wind southwest 20 km/h this afternoon. High plus 3.
	Tonight: Becoming cloudy in the evening then clearing overnight. Wind increasing to west 30. Low minus 5.

Normals for the period: Low minus 16. High minus 4.

I (left), Jean, Johnny and Chris were up at 5 AM and off to  Sunshine Village for a day of skiing.  I had some doubts, having heard that the conditions were less than excellent, but they all wanted to go, so went there.  Having been going to Nakiska lately, I found it interesting to compare the hills as far as travel time and conditions. 

Whereas I had been taking about two hours and less than  1/2 tank of gas to get to Nakiska, I had an extra hour (almost) of driving,  more fuel consumed and a $10 park pass to buy to get to Sunshine.  Once there -- we are pictured in the parking lot -- we had a 20 minute gondola ride to get to the Village and the lifts.  The ride home was equally elaborate and we got home after 8:30 whereas we would have made it by 6 from Nakiska.

I think that the main reason for going to Sunshine was auld lang syne.  Jean had been a level two ski  instructor there.  I had taken my level one there, and it seemed like a nice trip.  I usually plan to take two days if I go there, though.

The problem today was that there was very little snow.  Some of the terrain was fine, and we had a generally good time, but some of it simply would have been closed at any properly managed resort.  I was shocked.  Goat's Eye was a destroyer of skis.  There was no escaping it once up at the top -- and no warning at the bottom 

The traverses were horribly maintained and the Angel traverse was very dangerous by late day.  The track had worn narrow and fast and there were serious rocks on the hill side.  Traffic had developed undulations that made any speed unmanageable, but there was no room to manoever to slow down.  Basically it was a perfectly designed death trap.  Lighter people could make it down, but heavier people accelerate and require much more breaking to maintain reasonable speed.

As it happened, I had a wreck about half way down and sprained my ankle a bit.  There was simply no escaping it.  I am very disgusted and will leave it at that.

My advice: Don't go to Sunshine until they get some snow and maintain their hill.  Go to Nakiska.  I will be.

Tonight: Partly cloudy. Wind west 30 km/h. Low minus 4

Tuesday January 2nd, 2001

Jean and Chris are still here from yesterday.  Today is one of those days.  I'm getting nothing done and just don't care. The sore ankle has me running a bit slow too.

J&C decided to leave around supper time, but their Volkswagon Gulf would not start.  We checked the glow plugs and they seemed to be working.  We then pushed it a mile or so, but no joy.  They finally had it towed 50 miles to a shop.  The owner checked it right away, even though it was getting late, and after changing a fuse had it going.  They retrieved it and went home.

Tonight: Partly cloudy. Wind west 40 gusting 60 km/h. Low plus 5.

Wednesday January 3rd, 2001

I'm getting caught up today.  I finalised my plans for San Diego yesterday and today, opting for the full meal deal.  I'm not going to Hawaii though.  I leave on the 9th and come back on the 20th.  Hope to learn lots and also relax a bit too, so I will be busy, and also hope to make a trip or two more to the mountains before I go.  My ankle is getting better fast.

	Today: A mix of sun and cloud. Wind increasing to west 40 gusting to 60 km/h. High plus 12.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy. Wind west 30. Low plus 2.

Thursday January 4th, 2001

I leave in five days.  Aaron says there are wild fires in the area east of San Diego where we are going on the bus trip Thursday.

My ankle is almost okay now and I walk almost normally.  I have to go out this afternoon to move a yard of bees.  Seems the cattle are still harassing that one yard.

It also seems that I'm spending too much time on the bee discussion groups again.  It can be a tar baby.  If I just leave inaccuracies and false claims alone, then more people wind up believing them and things get worse.  If I jump in and try to set the record straight, then the same people make the same unfounded claims and more people believe them.

I was sceptical about what was predicted about the quality of science would wind up being on the net, but can see that "a man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest.  La la la..etc..." (The Boxer). 

I hate to believe this, but evidence shows that any hope of reasoning with certain types of people is futile.

Ralph & I went out and moved the 56 hives that keep getting disturbed and set them in a better yard.  They were unwrapped again and will need straightening and re-wrapping tomorrow or sometime soon.

I arranged to get Dave to paint the truck when it is sanded and ready to go.  We went to look at it this evening and found it is not ready.  Ralph will bring it back here to finish it.  I need to supervise, it seems.

The weather is very mild lately and should be for the foreseeable future.

	Today: Mainly sunny. High plus 6.
	Tonight: Increasing cloudiness. Wind increasing to west 30 gusting to 50 km/h overnight. Low minus 2 then temperature rising.

Friday January 5th, 2001

I'm tired of desk work, but have a bit more to do.  It was most refreshing to get out and move bees yesterday.  I keep forgetting the fun parts of this business.  I have to line up work for Ralph while I'm away and do some book work still before I go.

It's beautiful out and I can already see an increase in the angle of the sun above the horizon at mid-day (up from 16 degrees).  The days getting noticeably longer and colours are warmer.  We're losing snow fast.

	Today: A mix of sun and cloud. Wind increasing to west 40 gusting 60 km/h. High 10.
	Tonight: Windy. Wind increasing to west 50 gusting 70. Partly cloudy. Low zero.

Normals for the period: Low minus 16. High minus 4.

Saturday January 6th, 2001

	Today: Mainly cloudy this morning. Clearing this afternoon. Wind westerly 30 gusting 50 km/h diminishing to 20 gusting 40 by afternoon. High plus 4 this morning then temperature falling.
	Tonight: Clear. Low minus 8.

Sunday January 7th, 2001

It's a beautiful sunny day.  On days like this, I can't remember why I think January is so depressing.  El & I are running up to Red Deer this afternoon to see Jean & Chris. We'll probably look at some bees along the way.

Adony came last night about nine and stayed over.  He'd been X-country skiing in the mountains and reported horrible snow conditions. We of course chatted until midnight and then for an hour or two in the morning before he headed home to Beaverlodge.  We always have a lot of fun arguing and comparing notes.

... (later).

El & I drove to Red Deer and stopped at two yards along the way to see how they are doing.  One yard, (Vanovers) was wrapped in the old four pack belt wraps  and some of the newer ones.  They still seem like a really nice, solid wrap.  All in all the pallets looked great even though some of those wraps are 20 years old.  We did not open any hives, since easy access is not possible with those wraps, but I noticed that, being east of a hedge, some pallets  were too close to the trees.  Thus they were in partial shade in mid-afternoon, the time when the air is warmest, and they could be benefiting from the warmth from the sun.

We next stopped at Winthers to take a look.  There was little snow there and  we were again able to drive right in with the car. These hives are all in the new wraps, which also look really good.  We opened 8 hives, since they are easy to open and examined the bees.  In all cases, the bees were at the top of the hive and in a nice cluster, although we did see some individuals out at the walls of the hives.  we assumed they were gathering water, since there were a few drops of condensation out there. 

The bees look good, but are quite sluggish right now.  We thought they looked slightly damp, but the area around the cluster was dry.  In the corners we saw some dampness and a little water on the pillow. One hive of the eight was dead and had a small cluster.  There was no weight to it either.  We figure it had been a goner when wrapped - probably a bad queen and old bees.

We continued to town and did a little shopping, then had soup and a sandwich with Jean & Chris at their place, then drove home.

	Today: Sunny. Wind southwest 20 km/h. High plus 7.
	Tonight: Clear. Wind southwest 20 km/h. Low minus 2.

Monday January 8th, 2001

This is my last day at home before my San Diego trip, and I have a lot to do before I go.  We still have to wrap the hives that we moved,  and I have deskwork and packing.  I also have to get my laptop set up better so I can keep in touch while on the road.  Moreover my QuickBooks Pro software has screwed up its files again and I have to reconstruct several days of entries so I can pay bills before I go.

These pages will likely not be updated much until the 20th, but anyone who has not read the older material may find something there to read as a substitute until I return.

I expect I will still post on BEE-L occasionally during my absence and may also send some material to this page.

Ralph showed up around 9:15, and we all decided that he was still too sick to work and he needs another two weeks to recuperate from his surgery and the flu he had over Christmas.

 *       *       *       *       *       *

Matt came in this afternoon and we went out to re-wrap the hives that Ralph and I moved the other day.  We removed the existing square wraps and put on the new individual-style wraps.  Some of the square wraps were from a batch that Inland made using inferior material a few years back (they charged full price).  These particular ones are really tattered, and their recent ordeal had not improved them.

We found one dead hive out of the 40 we re-wrapped, and several others looked a bit small, but on the whole the hives looked quite good considering what they went through.  Of course this means nothing, since pretty well all hives look good in January in spite of occasional dead-outs.  In March we start to find out how many we will really lose.

We did the job in about two hours including the 40 minutes of driving, although Matt spend an hour loading the truck before the trip and a few minutes afterwards unloading the surplus materials.

 My ankle is getting better but still aches a bit when I sit and is painful if  turn it, but It was good for it to get some exercise, I think.

	Today: Mainly sunny. Wind increasing to west 20 km/h in the afternoon. High plus 9.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy. Wind west 20 gusts to 40. Low minus 2.

Normals for the period: Low minus 16. High minus 4.

Tuesday January 9th, 2001

The day was spent in travel, first to Seattle, then to San Diego.  I arrived late in the day, picked up a rental car and headed to Mission Bay.

Wednesday January 10th, 2001

I spent the day settling into San Diego and getting rested up for the convention.  I stayed at Mission Bay Motel and wandered the beach a bit.  I'm pretty well burned out from work and tired from the trip down.

Late the day, I returned my car and met Aaron at the Marriott.   We went down and had a beer and met other early arrivals.

Thursday January 11th, 2001

	Early this morning, our tour left for the Ashurst operation near El Centro in the Imperial Valley.  The weather was cool and we encountered snow in the mountains east of San Diego.  On arrival at Ashursts', we looked around a bit, then went on a tour of the valley.  The picture of the beekeepers snooping in hives is along the All American Canal.  The land in the background is across the canal in Mexico.  When we again returned to Ashursts', we were given a detailed tour of the warehouse and the yard and learned about some of their management techniques.  Buddy then treated the whole group to lunch of carne asada.  We we then had a further tour of the valley, including Caleico and the new commercial border station and then went back to our hotel.

Normals for the period: Low minus 16. High minus 4.

Friday January 12th, Saturday January 13th, Sunday January 14th, & Monday January 15th,2001

The convention started in earnest Friday with a wide variety of speakers. 

Aaron was scheduled to speak about 'Bees in Cyberspace', so we worked on his presentation which used my laptop computer to show selected websites. 

Saturday night, we went on a tour to Tijuana to look around and do a bit of shopping

On Monday, I came down with a cold that had been going around.  It started with a sore throat and lowered my enthusiasm level for several days.

We have been able to check in  to BEE-L regularly during the week, and I have written to Bee-L with some of what I found to be highlights of the convention.

Here are all my BEE-L posts since Nov 1, 2000

	Tonight: Mainly cloudy with a few flurries. Wind northwest 30 km/h diminishing to light. Low minus 11.
	Saturday: A mix of sun and cloud. High minus 3.
	Sunday: Morning cloud otherwise mainly sunny. Low minus 13. High minus 2.
	Monday: Sunny. Low minus 9. High plus 4.

Tuesday January 16th, 2001

The convention is now over.  We had thought to make some contacts and visit local beekeepers during the balance of the stay, but since I have been sick, I did not get anything set up.  Although there were some reports that the almonds were almost beginning, a trip to see them means a 500 mile drive and we don't have a car.

We moved out of the Marriott, and over to a cheaper accommodation at the Mission Valley Super 8.  We bought 4 day Trolley passes for $12 each, got onto the Trolley and before long found ourselves at The Mexican border.

We walked over the foot bridge into Tijuana and enjoyed the tacos, the people and the beer -- and Aaron went nuts about the stained glass on sale in the markets there. 

I was still a bit weak and the weather was cool, so we returned to our hotel early in the evening.

	Today: Becoming mainly sunny. Wind increasing to northwest 20 km/h. High minus 5.
	Tonight: Mainly clear. Wind northwest 20. Low minus 11.

Wednesday January 17th, 2001

We relocated to a more central motel in Little Italy, and then went down to Tijuana again.  I had made a friend of a street vendor who happened also to be a beekeeper and he told us how to catch the cab to Rosarito.  I had not been there for 10 years, so we jumped into the back of a station wagon and of we went to Las Playas de Rosarito.

We arrived about mid-afternoon and headed to the beach.  Just as I remembered from years back, horses were available to rent on the beach. Aaron wasn't interested, but for $3, I made a deal and went for a ride.  The horse was slow, but that was just fine by me. We wandered the beach until sundown, then went up town.

We looked around, then got another cab back to Tijuana and then caught the trolley back to our motel in San Diego.

	Today: Snow mixed at times with rain ending this morning. A mix of sun and cloud this afternoon. Wind northwesterly 20 gusting 40 km/h. High plus 3.
	Tonight: Increasing cloud overnight. Low minus 8.

Thursday January 18th, 2001

Aaron was intent on returning to Tijuana to buy some of the beautiful and inexpensive stained glass that we saw there.  I had had enough by then and wanted some time alone to just wander the city, so we split up for the day and I headed back to the beach.

This is the Giant Dipper roller coaster at Belmont Park at Mission Beach in San Diego.  It is one of the original wooden roller coasters and I try to make sure I ride it whenever I am in San Diego.  (Hint: take the 24 bus from downtown).  I also like to walk the beaches and watch the surfers.

San Diego transit is excellent. We each bought a four-day Day-Tripper pass for $12 and were able to travel freely from Tijuana to La Yolla on the trolley and on any bus that passed.

Later in the day I returned downtown and was thinking of going to Balboa Park, but the 901 bus came first, and I was off to Coronado.  I had no plans, but decided to get off at the Hotel del Coronado for a while, then rode the 901 on down to Chulla Vista and took the trolley back to Little Italy to meet Aaron for chips and beer at an English pub near our motel.

	Today: Mainly cloudy. Clearing this afternoon. High plus 2.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy. Wind increasing to west 20 km/h overnight. Low minus 5.

Friday January 19th, 2001

We had set Friday, our last day, aside for a zoo trip.  We bought tickets at the motel for $22 each and caught the motel shuttle over to the zoo.  we had the bus tour included in our admission as well as the sky tram, however the sky tram was closed for cable replacement, so we had the bus tour, then walked.

The San Diego Zoo is reportedly one of the world's best zoos, and I have no doubt this is true.  All the exhibits looked clean and well-planned and the animals looked well cared for, even if they did not all seem delighted to be there.

My favourite exhibit was a family of Orang-utans.  They were pleasant to watch and seemed to enjoy the visitors. The old male in the group carried a piece of burlap sack with him and would pull it over his head from time-to-time.  Youngsters would then put their heads in too and play peek-a-boo.

	Today: Increasing cloud. 30 percent chance of late afternoon rain or snow shower. Wind increasing to west 30 km/h. High plus 6.
	Tonight: Mainly cloudy with 40 percent chance of rain or snow in the evening then partly cloudy overnight. Wind northwest 20. Low minus 7.

Saturday January 20th, 2001

Aaron left early and I caught my plane at 11 AM, returning to Calgary via Seattle and arriving around dark.

Today: Mainly sunny. Wind southwest 20. High plus 3

Tonight: Increasing cloud. Wind increasing to west 30 km/h overnight. Low minus 6.

Sunday January 21st, 2001

The ten days in San Diego are now over.  I returned home last night about 7 PM.  Ellen met me at the airport.

I'm catching up on my diary today. My cold is almost better.  There are few symptoms now, except I did notice that my ears were hard to clear on the return flight.  My ankle is almost 100% and only bothers me a little.

As I have mentioned before, Ellen, Matt and I are all pretty burned out after the long hard season and looking forward to some complete rest.  Complete rest is not in the cards though, since the entire pollination project is up in the air and we are having to decide whether we want to do both honey production and pollination -- or cash out. We're thinking that maybe we should reduce the operation to a smaller size with less hired labour, since managing hired labour seems to be the major source of stress.

	Today: Mainly cloudy. High plus 5.
	Tonight: Clearing this evening. Wind becoming northwest 20 km/h. Low minus 7.

Normals for the period: Low minus 15. High minus 3.

Monday January 22nd, 2001

I slept in today and then caught up on some desk work.  After lunch, Ellen & I decided to check a few hives and went to Metzgers' to look.  We opened 15 and all were fine.  We had the lids to complete Winthers' on the truck and headed up that way. 

In the 28 hives we opened and on which we changed lids , we found 2 dead and several that were less than strong.  Of course, it is still too early to judge from the top, since some hives are now just up to the lid, while others are already spread out under the lid.

We found an interesting example of a  mouse nest, made from the formic pads dead centre in one hive.  We did not disturb the brood chamber, and will see if the bees can deal with it.

We completed the yard, and then went to Red Deer to have supper with Jean and Chris.

	Today: Mainly sunny. High plus 8.
	Tonight: Clear. Low minus 11.

Normals for the period: Low minus 15. High minus 3.

Tuesday January 23rd, 2001

It's been another bookwork day.  I am always amazed at how much time I spend doing books and paying bills.  I wonder if everyone has this burden, or if I am just too fussy.   I reconcile everything and keep careful track of things.  I sometimes wonder if it would not be cost effective to just not do some of this work.

We continue to have weather that is quite a bit warmer than the averages.  With the exception of the 10 days or so in December when the temperature was 10 degrees below the norm, we have had very mild weather.

Jerry and Leroy Poelman dropped by this afternoon and we went out to open a few hives in nearby yards. 

We opened about 20 hives at The Carraganas and all looked okay.  We then proceeded to Zieglers where we found the hives had been nudged by cattle and we straightened the wraps on several four-packs.  Matt had been there for the same reason a few days earlier, but either he did not do a very good job or the cattle had returned.  The warps there are mostly square wraps, and they don't look too good compared to our other wraps, since they don't cover as well and they also are aging fast due to the substandard material Inland used in making them.

We did not set out to open the hives at Zieglers', but in the process of re-arranging things, we did get to look into a few and they were all okay. There was a raw southeast wind, and although it was sunny and the temperature was around freezing, we found it cold without hats and headed back home.

The individual wraps tend to have more moisture on the top pillow than the hives with the wraps designed to include all the hives on the pallet.  Whether that is bad or good is hard to say, since bees need some water to liquefy the granulated honey. 

Time will tell which wraps have the best success.  We hope to have a researcher tabulate the success, both in terms of hive survival and in terms of hive vitality and splitting potential this coming spring.

I am noticing quite a difference between individual hives.  Some, especially the yellow bees in the all-inclusive wraps are spread out under the pillow.  Others are just getting up to the top of the hive and are up only at one end of the box, usually the front. Some clusters are smaller than others, but our own experience and outside reports indicate that one cannot predict which ones will be good in May by looking at them now.

	Today: Sunny. Wind becoming southeast 20 km/h this afternoon. High 6.
	Tonight: Clear. Low minus 4.

Wednesday January 24th, 2001

It's another bookwork day again.  Cleaning up the accounts from the past year in preparation for the year end and planning for next year is a big job.

El & I were invited to Brian and Cheryl's for supper.  We drove up around six and had a pleasant evening.  This was the first time we have been to their place.

	Today: Sunny. High 5.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy. Low minus 7.

Normals for the period: Low minus 15. High minus 3.

Thursday January 25th, 2001

Eleven more months until Christmas.

Another (beautiful warm, sunny) day of accounting entries, sitting indoors at a computer :(~

I went for a bike ride to get some exercise and break the boredom, and met up with a neighbour who has done some odd jobs for us.  He expressed some interest in doing some box repairs for us soon.  We have 2,000 empty supers sitting around in need of minor repairs, and enough foundation in frames to fill 1,000 of them, so we are anxious to get the job done.  I just don't want to wind up involved all the time or paying too much.  I want to get it done on a agreed-upon-in-advance price per each unique batch or by piecework.  I don't want to pay someone to tinker around.

	Today: Mainly cloudy this morning then clearing. Wind northerly 20 km/h. High plus 3.
	Tonight: Clear. Low minus 11.

Friday January 26th, 2001

More bookwork, and a trip to Three Hills for groceries this afternoon.

	Today: Mainly sunny. Wind increasing to northwest 20 km/h. High plus 3.
	Tonight: Mainly clear. Wind northwest 20. Low minus 8.

Normals for the period: Low minus 15. High minus 3.

Saturday January 27th, 2001

Sunrise:8:19 am / Sunset:5:18 pm
The Moon is Waxing Crescent (4% of Full)

Days are now noticeably much longer.  They are now seem longer than they were in San Diego last week.  Currently San Diego sunrise is 6:46 AM  & sunset is at 5:16 PM, so I guess they still get an hour and a half more daylight in the morning.  I didn't notice, since I usually was not up that early when I was there.

With the warm temperatures, things are very pleasant here at home these days.

Ellen had her art group over for a workshop today.  I spent the afternoon helping neighbours install and configure a new hard drive.

	Today: Mainly sunny. Wind increasing to west 20 km/h. High plus 5.
	Tonight: Mainly clear. Wind west 20. Low minus 3.

Normals for the period: Low minus 15. High minus 3.

Sunday January 28th, 2001

Sunrise: 8:17 am / Sunset: 5:20 pm

We gained another four minutes of daylight today for a little over 9 hours of daytime, and actually this is not the time of fastest change.   That happens around equinox on March 21st.  Nonetheless, if this current rate were constant, in a month, we'd have gained 4 x 30 / 60 = 2 hours! 

I'm asked about checking bees in the winter:

I really do not know the answer to this question.  I always say that opening a hive and working on it is like open-heart surgery; nonetheless, we always do go and look into some hives each month as the winter progresses, and the hives seem to survive just fine. 

Some winters, bees seem to use twice as much feed as other winters.  We need to know condition and survival well in advance of spring to be aware of -- and able to react to -- any catastrophic losses or shortage of feed.  Hefting hives would tell us something, but the hives are wrapped and a quick glance in the top tells us what we need to know.  The bees are up there by now, and we can see the capped cells of feed nearby -- or not.

One winter, many years back, we opened all our hives several times to feed them syrup in the division board feeders because they were too light to make it otherwise.  Survival that year was lower than usual, but we blame that on the feeding of syrup, not the opening of hives.  Maybe it was both, however one thing I do know for a fact, is that hives that are fed in an emergency -- due to being light -- never nearly equal hives that have had good stores all along, without interruption.

When opening hives, we do not usually remove any frames. We merely glance in.  I am sure that this is a bit of a disturbance and likely does not do any actual good for the bees, but it makes me feel good, and I think it does little, if any, harm.  Occasionally, we do pull a frame or two to see if there is any brood, but if we do, the action is accomplished quickly and on days above freezing. So far, I have not pulled any frames, since there is no need to see what is happening. Come March, though, I will pull a few now and then.

On occasion, however, we find an individual hive is out of feed in our rounds in March.  In such a case,  we do move feed frames around, thinking that even if it is a bit hard on the bees, it is not as hard on them as starving to death.  

Rob Curry, a researcher in Manitoba was doing work on treating mites in hives wintering indoors, and inserted probes into some of the hives at random.  He later noticed that the probe equipped group had  noticeably reduced survival rates come spring.  I am assuming that he had to move frames and generally make a fairly major disturbance to install the probes.  Maybe not.  I'll have to ask him sometime. 

	Today: A mix of sun and cloud. Wind northwest 20 km/h gusting to 40 km/h becoming southwest 20 km/h. Temperature near 7.
	Tonight: Mainly cloudy. 40 percent chance of snow. Wind southwest 20 km/h. Low minus 5.

Monday January 29th, 2001

Normals for the period: Low minus 15. High minus 3.

It's 6 AM and I'm off to drop off a few drums of honey at the co-op, pick up my wax drums in Edmonton, visit a few beekeepers and return.  It's still black as pitch outside.

Here's the question of the day:

... I am planning to build frame feeders shortly out of masonite. I remember seeing the ones that you use off your internet site. I was wondering though if you used 1/4" or 1/8", tempered or none tempered masonite and if tempered was the hard smooth side towards the inside of the feeder or the outside? Another question as well, you have a feeder in the top brood chamber as well as the lower. Is this necessary or do you use two to reduce the amount of time returning to the yard. Thank you for your time and look forward to your response...

Click here to visit my illustrated page about syrup feeding.

We have built a few feeders in the past, but find it hard to compete with the cost and the quality of the ones we can buy ready-made at the Alberta Honey Producers Co-op.  We buy hundreds at a time and always pay less than the singles price.  If we are in a rush, and no masonite ones are available, we just buy the black  plastic ones.  They are much improved in recent years and have a rough inner surface for the bees to climb.  They are perfectly okay and work very well.

Having said that, if you have the time and want to build, we tried both tempered and untempered 1/8" masonite.  The tempered does not work.  It is too brittle to nail or staple.  The untempered material works fine.  The rough side must go in to provide traction for swimming bees to climb. 

Bees like masonite better than plastic and often empty masonite feeders in half the time.  Moreover, we seldom find masonite feeders full of wet gunk like the plastic ones occasionally are if water wicks through the hive wall at a crack and runs down into the feeder or condensation runs down hive walls in winter. 

The decomposition of syrup, honey, wax, bees, etc that can take place in feedersor on floors without adequate drainage can produce butyric acid -- among other things.  Butyric acid is the active ingredient in Bee-Go and the smell can demoralize bees or cause them top drift out.  The new plastic feeders from Mann Lake and others have little plastic standoff tabs to prevent the trapping of water off hive walls, but masonite is still a bit better.   Buy a few masonite feeders as samples to copy, or better yet use one you have had for a few years -- and like.

I understand that the glue that works best is a PL-300 type construction glue.  Make sure it is waterproof, since I am not sure of the exact specs.  Use a sufficient quantity that it can be seen squishing out all around.  Economizing is a waste, since leaking feeders cannot really be permanently sealed after they are assembled, no matter what anyone says. I notice the ones we buy have some liquid wax swished around inside in the manufacturing process. That probably protects the masonite from moisture in the syrup. 

A perfect leak-proof seal at time of assembly is essential.  Syrup is too expensive to have leaking onto the ground, and leaks can cause robbing and expensive colony loss.  We burned hundreds of feeders someone had made that were just not well glued and which came with an outfit we bought.  That was after we tried everything people recommended to fix them.

We use feeders in both broods because carrying feeders around and putting them in and out damages them, wastes time and aggravates bees.  Sometimes we fill both, but often just the top one. If we reverse or split, we don't have to hunt for a feeder.  We don't worry about comb built in the feeders unless it gets so bad that it severely reduces the capacity.  When filling, though, remember the queen could be in there, especially if there is comb and the hive is wall-to-wall or you have been smoking a lot.

	Today: Mainly cloudy with a 30 percent chance of light snow. Wind increasing to west 20 gusting 40 km/h in the afternoon. High plus 4.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy. Wind west 30 gusting 50. Low minus 8.

Tuesday January 30th, 2001

I returned from Edmonton last night about 8 PM, after dropping off a few drums of honey at the co-op, picking up some empty wax drums and visiting Barry T.  I was very impressed at his bees.  They are up and spread out quite a bit compared to ours -- I think we fed a bit more heavily and his wraps are very warm.  They have a black un-insulated south face and on a sunny day like today, the bees get warmed up quite well.  He generally gets good results wintering.  He has a good system.

Today: A mix of sun and cloud. Wind west 30 gusting 50. High near zero.

Wednesday January 31st, 2001

Ellen & I flew to Vancouver today to make another attempt to pick up the car and to visit Eric and Marnie Abell who have retired to Victoria. 

Along the way, we visited my brother and family and had an enjoyable time, but the focus of the trip was really to visit the Abells and discuss their experience selling their beekeeping operation the previous year. 

We found ourselves waiting around most of today to get the car out of the pound, since it seems the licence had expired and it had been towed.  In the meantime, we visited, worked on our laptop computer drafting letters, etc. and took an evening stroll at Jericho Beach.

Eric & I corresponded quite a bit in the past few years and we came up with the plastic hive pillows we both prefer under a telescoping lid by collaboration.  He did very well in his last couple of years of beekeeping and got very good crops, then one day he decided he would like to retire and move to Victoria.  Shortly after he did just that and managed to sell his entire outfit and house within about six months.

	Today: Increasing cloudiness. High plus 3.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy. Low minus 8.

Normals for the period: Low minus 14. High minus 2.

Thursday February 1st, 2001

We managed to get the car brought over from the pound and what would have been a simple matter -- testing it was made difficult by the fact that the battery was dead flat.  Ron has a battery charger, but it is a two-amp model and it would take twenty-four hours minimum to charge a good fresh battery, not one that had been sitting flat for several weeks.  He has booster cables, but the good ones were in his trunk.  We managed to do a bit of testing, but only concluded there was fuel pressure and spark, but not enough battery to crank for long.  We gave up and worked on business matters for the rest of the day.

	Tonight: Clearing this evening then increasing cloud overnight. Wind west 40 gusting 60 km/h diminishing overnight to southwest 20. Low minus 3.
	Friday: Morning cloud otherwise mainly sunny. Wind west 40 gusting to 60 in the afternoon. High plus 10.

Normals for the period: Low minus 14. High minus 2.

Friday February 2nd, 2001

In the morning there was enough battery that we were able to test the car and observed that there was spark and fuel pressure.  We therefore decided that it must be something more subtle, like a timing problem or something.  We called AMA to tow it to a shop -- Ellen had found a shop in the phone book that would appraise the problem for $25, and we thought that would be fine.

BCMA arrived and the driver dutifully repeated all the tests I had done and noted that there was fuel pressure and confirmed what I had observed: the tank showed 1/3 full, and fuel could be smelled at the exhaust when cranking.  He even pulled a spark plug and pronounced the car flooded.  There was not enough battery to crank it dry and he towed it off to Minit Tune.  Minit Tune happened to be on the other side of town, rather close to the pound from which we had had it towed the day before.

We followed in Ron's Tempo and spoke with the mechanic, then headed for Victoria. 

I called a while later.  We were on the ferry as we spoke by cell phone.  I asked how things were going and he announced that there was indeed fuel pressure and spark and that everything checked out OK -- however there was a lot of air coming through with the fuel.

"How that could be?",  I asked .
He said he did not know, but the fuel filter looked old.

"How can air get into the pump if the pump is in the tank?" , I asked. "The air must be coming from the tank.  Have you tried adding fuel?"
"No", He said, "There is 1/3 tank showing on the gauge."
"Well, let's put $5 into the tank and see what happens.", I said. "Call me and let me know".

El & I soon disembarked at Swartz Bay and proceeded to Abell's.  They had been expecting us for some time. I had been phoning them with our progress -- or lack thereof as we went along, but I suspect they were wondering if we would ever arrive.

We had a good visit and went to Brentwood Bay for supper on the wharf.  It was raining, so we ate inside, but the weather was a nice change from Alberta, even if we were experiencing abnormally warm conditions for January.

	Today: Becoming sunny near midday. Wind west 20 km/h increasing to west 40 gusting 70 in the afternoon. High plus 10.
	Tonight: Mainly clear. Wind diminishing to west 20. Low minus 2.

Saturday February 3rd, 2001

We stayed the night and were on our way in the morning.  we headed downtown to visit my cousin Gillian, but she was working and we strolled around Beacon Hill Park instead. We had an enjoyable two hours and then realised that we had not heard from the mechanic.  I called him and he said, "No problem".  The car ran fine with gas in the tank. The gauge had been lying..

By then I had reserved a return flight because I had doubted the car would work out.  I cancelled it and we decide to immediately head back to get the car before the shop closed for the weekend.  We caught the 3 PM ferry and made it to the shop by closing.  We drove to Ron's by 7 PM, returned the Tempo and headed east.  By ten or so, we were in Merritt and took a motel for the night.

	Today: Mainly sunny. Wind west 30 gusting 50 km/h. High plus 6.
	Tonight: Mainly clear. Wind becoming light west. Low minus 6.

Sunday February 4th, 2001

We were on the highway by 8 AM and drove all day, arriving home in the evening.  By now we had decided for certain that we could not accept any reduction in the terms of the pollination contract and that we would take the opportunity to retire unless our customer was willing to pay the full amount specified in the contract for such an eventuality.  We expected not, and concluded that the other option was for the customer to buy out our contract and release us from pollination.  There are other factors too; the matter is quite complex for us.  Some of the rationale is further explained at the sale website

It is ironical, since this year, for the first time since we began, we are entirely prepared for the pollinating season and would have had a much easier year than the past few have been.  We split last year and now have more than enough hives, so no package bees or splitting would be required to make our full quota.  We fed well last fall, so we don't really need to open the bees until mid-April, if even then.  There is no disease in our outfit that we can detect, so we don't need to worry too much about that.  And all the trucks and equipment for moving is in great shape and ready to go.  

We were ready for an easy, profitable year pollinating for the first time since we began moving bees south, but it was simply not to be.

The trip provided a chance to work out some of the details and do some planning.  Our letter to the company was already written while we were in Vancouver, but we always like to sit on something like that for a few days and review it after we have slept on it. 

Sunday: Increasing cloud in the morning. Wind west 20. High plus 4.

Normals for the period: Low minus 14. High minus 2.

Monday February 5th, 2001

We were happy to be home.  We faxed off our letter to George in the morning and started listing our assets for sale.  We contacted our accountant and began the long process of arranging things for sale.

	Today: Periods of snow tapering off this afternoon. Accumulation 2 to 5 cm. Wind northerly 20 gusting 40 km/h. High minus 6.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy. Wind northerly 20. Low minus 14.

Tuesday February 6th, 2001

El and I drove to Lethbridge today and attended an Aventis beekeepers meeting in Lethbridge at 12:30 PM.  But, before we went over, the beekeepers held a meeting at Luigi's to try to get a common understanding of what the options are in relation to the pollination cutbacks being proposed. 

No one knows for sure what the number of hives required will actually be, but the company has bought out the contracts of all the BC, Saskatchewan and Northern Alberta beekeepers and intends to keep the southern ones.  Those of us invited to the meeting apparently made the cut.  Nonetheless, everyone has been notified that the company wishes to renegotiate the contracts to get out from under the guaranteed payments they originally had to promise for time like this to get beekeepers to risk the investment of getting involved in pollination.  El & I have evaluated this situation and concluded that it is indeed fortunate that the contract is written the way it is -- and we have given notice to the company that we have no room to renegotiate our contract.  We ahve also told them we would like them to exercise their option to buy us out.  More details later.

	Today: A mix of sun and cloud. High minus 7.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy. 40 percent chance of light snow. Low minus 18.

Normals for the period: Low minus 13. High minus 1.

Normals for the period: Low minus 13. High minus 1.

Wednesday February 7th, 2001

I've been away and I've been busy.  Hope to catch up soon.  In the meantime here are some pictures. (below)

	Today: Mainly cloudy. 60 percent chance of snow. High minus 9.
	Tonight: Mainly cloudy. 60 percent chance of snow. Low minus 16.

Thursday February 8th, 2001

	Today: Morning fog patches otherwise mainly cloudy. 40 percent chance of light snow. Wind southeast 20 km/h in the afternoon. High minus 13.
	Tonight: Mainly cloudy. 40 percent chance of snow. Wind southeast 20 diminishing. Low minus 18.

Normals for the period : Low minus 13. High minus 1.

Friday February 9th, 2001

	Today Mainly cloudy with occasional light snow. Morning fog patches. Wind increasing to southeast 20 km/h. High minus 15.
	Tonight Mainly cloudy. 60 percent chance of light snow. Wind southeast 20. Low minus 20. Windchill near 1700.

Normals for the period: Low minus 13. High minus 1.

Saturday February 10th, 2001

	Today: A mix of sun and cloud. 40 percent chance of light snow. High minus 13.
	Tonight: Mainly cloudy with 60 percent chance of light snow. Low minus 21.

Sunday February 11th, 2001

Today is the first day of the Saskatchewan Beekeepers convention and I headed east on a five hour drive to Saskatoon.  I arrived a little after two and things had just begun.

Sunday: Cloudy with occasional light snow. High minus 16.

Monday February 12th, 2001

Monday: Mainly cloudy. 40 percent chance of flurries. Low minus 22. High minus 14.

The convention continued for the day and the banquet was in the evening.  Although we had a provisional indication from the company that they would buy out our contract, I wanted to make sure that I had definite word.  I phoned George and he made it definite.  I went down and put up posters advertising our bees and equipment for sale.  We are committed.

Tuesday February 13th, 2001

Tuesday: Sunny. Windy. Low minus 25. High minus 12.

The convention ended today and I headed out in the afternoon and  I dropped Jean Marc off at the airport along the way.  The I headed off , in  time to make it home before too late.   I stopped at Meijers for a visit and supper, then we looked at their new building which is very nice and quite massive.  I was home around nine.

Wednesday February 14th, 2001

Valentine's Day

	Today: Periods of snow developing this afternoon. Wind increasing to north 40 gusting to 60 km/h giving reduced visibility in blowing snow. Temperature falling this afternoon to minus 10 by evening. Windchill increasing to 1600. Risk of frostbite.
	Tonight: Periods of snow. Total snowfall accumulations near 5 cm. Wind north 30 gusting to 50 giving local blowing snow. Low minus 20. Windchill near 1800.

Normals for the period: Low minus 12. High 0.
Sunrise:7:49 am / Sunset:5:50 pm
The Moon is Waning Gibbous (67% of Full)

Main Diary Page

Thursday February 15th, 2001

	Thursday: A mix of sun and cloud. 40 percent chance of flurries. Wind north 20. High minus 15.
	Tonight: Mainly cloudy. 40 percent chance of light snow. Wind north 20 km/h diminishing. Low minus 20. High windchill near 1600. Risk of frostbite.

Normals for the period: Low minus 12. High zero.

Friday February 16th, 2001

	Today: A mix of sun and cloud. Wind increasing to southeast 20. High minus 13.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy. Low minus 20.

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.

	Today: Sunny. High minus 5.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy. Low minus 14.

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.

	Today: Mainly cloudy with a 40 percent chance of light snow. High minus 1.
	Tonight: Mainly cloudy. 40 percent chance of light snow. Low minus 16.

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.

	Today: Occasional snow giving slight amounts then a mix of sun and clouds later this afternoon. High minus 7.
	Tonight: Becoming mainly clear. Low minus 19.

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

	Today: Mainly sunny. Wind south 20 km/h in the afternoon. High minus 3.
	Tonight: Mainly clear. Wind becoming northwest 20 km/h. Low minus 13.

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.

	Today: Mainly sunny. Wind northwest 20 km/h. High minus 2.
	Tonight: Mainly clear. Low minus 15.

Normals for the period: Low minus 11. High 1.
Sunrise: 7:34 AM : Sunset: 6:04 PM
The Moon is Waning Crescent (5% of Full)

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.

	Today: Mainly sunny. Wind southeast 20 km/h in the afternoon. High minus 2.
	Tonight: Mainly clear. Wind southeasterly 20 becoming westerly. Low minus 10.

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.

Today: Occasional snow tapering off in the afternoon. Total accumulation 3 to 5 cm. Wind easterly 20. High minus 14.

Tonight: Mainly cloudy with occasional snow giving less than 2 cm. Wind northeast 20 km/h diminishing. Low minus 23.

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.

	Today: A mix of sun and cloud. 30 percent chance of flurries. High minus 17.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy. 30 percent chance of flurries. Low minus 22.

Monday February 26th, 2001

The meeting started at 9 and was very well attended by 'all the usual suspects', but there were some new faces too.  There were about 60 beekeepers in total.  The sessions covered American Foulbrood quite thoroughly as well as other disease issues.  Gary Reuter spoke on hygienic bees and also the SMR bees that Harbo developed.  Apparently the latter are better than hygienic at varroa control, but experiments so far indicate that occasional varroa  treatments will still be require even if SMR bees are adopted.

I had spent some time in my room the night before making disks and 8-1/2 x 11 sheets advertising our sale and set them out on the registration table. At first they just sat there, but as the meeting went on, about 50 disks and sheets were picked up, so I'm hoping we get some response.  Quite a number of the attendees asked me at one time or another for details, so I expect that we'll hear from some of them in the next while

I distributed disks of my Retirement Sale website and a flyer, hoping to develop interest.  Initially the response was muted, but enthusiasm built over the two days.  I think my fellow beekeepers felt a bit puzzled at first, but later got used to it.

	Today: A mix of sun and cloud. High minus 12.
	Tonight: Mainly clear. Low minus 15.

Tuesday February 27th, 2001

The Bee Colony Disease Update continued this morning.  After a panel discussion at 1:30 PM, we adjourned to Barry and Julie Termeer's place to tour their new plant.  I had been there only a few weeks ago, but had not taken my camera along.

This time I took some shots that I'll post here. About half the group came along and Barry and Julie treated us all to donuts and juice while we watched a movie they made last year showing the methods they use to control bee diseases.  On the way to Termeers', I dropped Adony at the airport.  He was on his way to speak at the Beemasters Course at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, near Vancouver.

This is a picture of single hives stacked in Barry's wintering room.  The room is normally entirely dark and held near freezing temperatures with constant low-level air flow to ensure healthy bees. Success is generally pretty good.  Termeers built this new building several years ago and it is a beautiful facility.  Click on any of these thumbnail pictures for an enlargement.

This is Termeers' extracting line.  On the left, a crane style deboxer removes the frames from supers and places them between upright guides and they slide down to the uncapper (on the right). At the uncapper, one operator removes the combs from the guides and places them one-by-one into the Dakota Guness uncapper infeed.  Once uncapped, they travel down the moving conveyor and are taken off by operators who place them into extractors.

While one operator loads an extractor, the other on that line unloads another.  Meanwhile several machines are spinning out honey.   Two pumps (one is a spare) are in the foreground. One or the other carries the honey and cappings from the triangular drip tray/extractor manifold and the uncapper to the heat exchanger and Spin Float in another room.  From there it goes over to the bulk tank and awaits drum filling time. Barry reckons they can handle 15 frames a minute continuously using the Dakota uncapper and the five Dadant extractors.  Four students work on the line at a time.  Barry is able to leave them with the job and go out to work bees without worrying too much about breakdowns or damage to the equipment.

	Today: Mainly sunny. Wind increasing to west 20 km/h. High plus 4.
	Tonight: Mainly clear. Wind west 20. Low minus 10.

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.

	Today: Mainly sunny. Wind increasing to west 30 km/h gusting 50. High 10.
	Tonight: Clear. Wind becoming northwest 20. Low minus 5.

Normals for the period: Low minus 10. High 1.

Main Diary Page

Thursday March 1st, 2001

What will I do when I retire?  It's not as if I am dying or any such thing -- I hope.  I'm just selling off a large commercial business so I have less responsibility and can do more of the things I like -- and less of those I don't.  I like the bees and the trucks and the work -- and the beekeepers.  I don't like being responsible for 10 people all the time.  I'm actually quite introverted and like to spend a great deal of time alone. Of course, it is obvious I do enjoy groups, but even then, I disappear for hours to be by myself.  That is hard to do when people are constantly needing guidance, supplies, paycheques...

As I imagine it, I'll be free to go work with my friends when they need help, and to speak at meetings if asked, to travel to meetings and to help with research.  I may keep a truck, trailer and forklift and be available for bee moving, queen rearing, and any other project that appeals.

Normals for the period: Low minus 10. High 1.

Friday March 2nd, 2001

We worked on mailing out letters today, and then went for turkey supper with Walt and Fen at The Coffee Break.  We then went to the Swalwell Community Hall to attend Vi Fyten's 80th birthday party.

Saturday March 3rd, 2001

This is a red letter day.  One year ago, I began this diary and wondered how long I would have the patience to continue.

Normals for the period: Low minus 10. High 1.

Sunday March 4th, 2001

We had several visitors today, including a couple who carted off some of our empty supers and another who spoke for tanks and took a good look at our Swingers.  I heard very encouraging news about the price of honey going up as high as 65 cents in the States recently, and the prospect for strong demand for bees this spring.

Monday March 5th, 2001

Things are picking up as far as our sale is concerned.  We had another buyer come by today and several phone calls.  It seems I could have sold five times the tanks we have and also 5 wax spinners.  Hives are moving a little more slowly, but it is early yet and every day I have fewer doubts that they will all go at our advertised price.  Beekeepers have not had a chance to look at their losses yet or absorb the fact that honey prices are on their way up.  Rumours have it that the price is approaching 65c US and that means a dollar in Canadian money.  I'm hoping everyone who is interested contacts us soon and expresses that interest, even if the money has not been lined up yet, so we can figure out who gets what. 

I'm a bit worried that some people won't speak up in time and be disappointed in the end.  I'm also concerned that some of my neighbours who fail to act may find 1,000 or so hives right in their back yard or over the fence when a new buyer comes onto the scene.  It's in their best interest to act now and buy those bees before someone else does, not drag their feet or buy packages.

We are painting the trucks and forklifts to get them ready for sale.  For ourselves, appearance is not that important, as long as everything looks respectable.  Mechanical condition is very important. However, when people are buying things, no matter how perfectly a machine runs, a coat of fresh paint instils confidence and adds value.  We also got a pin striping kit.  Pin striping really makes decks and trailers look sharp.

Matt decided today that he could use some help, so I phoned Gareth and Steve to see what they are up to.  Gareth is busy, but Steve will be here tomorrow at 8:30 and will do the sandblasting while Matt paints.

I drove to Calgary this afternoon to get some industrial enamel and primer for the truck decks and trailers and to borrow a Lemmer airless sprayer.  I had supper with my friend Pat (formerly AKA VE6CFP) who works at Lemmer and discussed the future.  Seems he is at a point where he is thinking of  changing direction too and of going back to university.

There are reports of storms in the Northeast USA, but no such thing is happening here.  Jonathan phoned Sunday to say he was off to the Redmond campus to take a two day course Monday morning, so when we hear about the flight cancellations in the East, we wonder how things are in Rhode Island where he lives.  I think he may have flown out just in advance of the storm and be returning after it is over, missing the worst of it.

Tuesday March 6th, 2001

We are off to see a business councillor this morning and our lawyer this afternoon.  One thing about selling out is that it is necessary to get good counselling and to set things up properly with the accountants and lawyers before preceding.  Once set in motion, the process goes on and on...

Sunrise: 7:08 am  Sunset: 6:25 pm
The Moon is Waxing Gibbous (77% of Full)

The days are getting quite long now -- almost 12 hours -- and, after a colder than normal spell, we are into nicer than average weather.  It's is only a week to ten days until runoff, but there is no snow to melt.  My snowmobile sits forlorn in the yard.  We have only had enough snow to run it  a few times, and even then only on drifts around the yard.  My ankle is almost 100% again so I guess I'll have to go to the mountains if i want to play in the snow.

Wednesday March 7th, 2001

Today I have a lot of bookwork to do and tonight I go to Calgary to the Calgary Beekeepers meeting at 7PM.

The weather forecast looks auspicious for spray painting today, so if we don't get any wind, I think we'll paint some of the equipment we have sandblasted.

Normals for the period: Low minus 10. High 2.

Thursday March 8th, 2001

In spite of the cold February, runoff came ten days early this year, indicating to me that this is going to be a good spring for bees, although the lack of snow leaves us short of moisture for now.

We are having great weather today and plan to paint several of the truck decks and trailers. Several are are all sandblasted and ready, and Matt is hard at work painting them. The truck in this picture has the (optional) sides on it for painting.  they come off for normal bee work, but are handy for carrying wraps around, etc.

I attended the Calgary Beekeepers meeting last night and was surprised to see that they had 35 or more people in attendance. I had taken disks and hand-outs for twenty. I also learned that only two or perhaps three in the group have more than 50 hives.  It was almost embarrassing to explain that we were running up to 4,500 and had 3,600 in winter.  Ron Miksa has been a real sparkplug and got the group together about three years ago. Years back, he ran about 1,000 hives in Saskatchewan and Florida, but gave it up to go back to school and now works in Calgary's oil patch. He maintains one of the web's most impressive bee sites out of interest.

Heather Clay, National Co-ordinator for the Canadian Honey Council (CHC) also was in attendance and gave a presentation to the group, mentioning that the next CHC meeting will be in Banff on February 1 and 2, 2001, and that there is a joint meeting planned between the CHC, CAPA, and the US counterparts for Niagara falls in the first week of December 2002. It is hoped that both US organisations, ABF and AHPA will be in Niagara Falls as well as the US inspectors and scientists. If this works out, it will be as big as Apimondia was in Vancouver and hopefully just as good!

Robin Owen was the feature speaker and he gave a fascinating talk on bumble bees. He told us that there are about three hundred species of bumbles in the world and that our area of Alberta has about thirty. He showed how they can be raised in the lab and also discussed predation by flies.

Walter D. came by to look at some items and we went out to look at bees.  We deliberately went to the yards I though would be the worst and saw 25% losses in the packs we opened.  We opened the worst ones, though out of curiosity, so the count is skewed.  The pack at right is a twenty pack and is not typical.  Most of our hives are wrapped in four packs or individual wraps.

We did have one surprise.   I was very concerned about one new yard that appears windswept and cold although it is on a south-facing slope.  When we got there the bees were flying from every hive and working on the feed remaining in the feeder drums from last fall.  Later we went to better yards and saw near 100% success and larger clusters. It is still a long time until May when we find out the final success rates. 

As a note of interest, in conversation Walter volunteered that he always figures his attrition over an entire year to be about 30% of the hives -- and that just happens to the very figure I use.

Normals for the period: Low minus 9. High 2.

Friday March 9th, 2001, 2000

There is a skiff of fresh snow and it's around freezing and overcast.  Our truck painting will have to wait until next week now, but there is a lot of preparation to do.  We ran out of paint yesterday, so I ordered another 20 gallons of black.

We had quite a few beekeeper visitors interested in our sale and the last did not leave until midnight.  We did manage, however, to slip away to Three Hills for the Feast of the Arts at supper time.  Ellen had donated a painting to the fund raiser and we had tickets, so we went.  The food was excellent, but the auction was a disappointment. 

Ellen and her work were well featured in the program, since she is one of only three people contributing who is a nationally known artist, but was up second in the auction.  The auctioneer glanced at the painting and said something to the effect of, "For anyone who likes this kind of stuff", and "There's something for everyone...".  He started the $500 painting at $200 and wound up getting $170 largely due to his own ignorance.  Anyhow...

Saturday March 10th, 2001, 2000

Looks like another dull day.  Jean and Chris are coming down this afternoon and the Meijers and Purves-Smiths are coming for supper.  I have some cleanup to do and a trip to town for water.

I didn't make it to town.  Jean and Chris came at one, and by the time I got a few things done, Joe and Oene showed up promptly at four. 

We did a little business, then we went out to look at bees.  It was cool, but we opened a few and they looked pretty good.  There are some weak and dead as may be expected, but there are many strong ones too.

When we got back, the others had shown up and we had a good meal, then watched "The Summer of June", a movie that we helped make by providing bees, hives and consulting.  It has been shown widely on TV, but is is in limited distribution otherwise.  Great North Productions sent us a complimentary copy and it arrived recently.

Normals for the period: Low minus 9. High 2.

Sunday March 11th, 2001, 2000

It was dull but mild again this morning too. 

Normals for the period: Low minus 9. High 3
Sunrise:6:57 AM / Sunset:6:34 PM--  The Moon is Waning Gibbous (99% of Full)

The normals are creeping up quickly now and we have been running above average temperatures again for a few weeks now.  The days aer much longer.  That's a good thing for the bees, since it lets them get out for a flight and also rearrange their food in the hive.

Monday March 12th, 2001, 2000

Andy came by for some formic and we had a pail of pads on hand, so he took it.  Of his two yards, one was 95% alive and the other was 95% dead.  He had not treated for tracheal, so I suspected that would be the problem.  He is using the Kona Hawaiian carniolans and they have recently proven quite susceptible to TM.

El & went to the lawyers to complete the papers for Ibex ventures Inc, our new company. 

The wind picked up this afternoon. Matt continued to work on the trucks, but it was too windy to paint much.

	Today: Mainly sunny. Wind west 30 km/h gusting 50. High 11.
	Tonight: Increasing cloud overnight. Wind west 30 gusting 50 diminishing. Low minus 1.

Tuesday March 13th, 2001, 2000

We are now waiting for the spring.  It is surprising how many beekeepers are opening their hives and working on them.  Over the years, we have proven that it does not pay for us to start too early.  There are some years like '98 that pay off, but in other years, the amount of good done is balanced quite precisely by the amount of harm.  The intervention is costly, so we choose the easier path.  We fed extremely well in the fall, and expect that few will starve. We are concerned about getting Apistan and OTC into them before too many brood cycles pass if they are not sold by May.

	Today: Increasing cloud with 40 percent chance of showers in the afternoon. Wind west 20 km/h with gusts to 40 by late afternoon. High 9.
	Tonight: Mainly cloudy with occasional showers changing to snow in the evening. Wind becoming north 30 km/h gusting 50. Low minus 3.

Wednesday March 14th, 2001, 2000

Sold two trailers today, and lent out a truck to take one of them home.

	Today: Mainly cloudy with occasional wet flurries. Wind north 30 km/h diminishing. High 3.
	Tonight: Clearing. Low minus 6.

Thursday March 15th, 2001, 2000

I went for a blood test this morning -- the kind where one fasts overnight, then has blood drawn, then eats a big breakfast, then goes back 2 hours later.  I had time to kill, so I wandered around town and happened to meet some computer club pals. we had coffee, just like the retired farmers do.

Today is the deadline for ABA's magazine, BeeNews.  We are putting an insert in again, and I am rushing to get the copy ready.... Made it!

Sandblasting and painting continues.

	Today: Mainly sunny. Wind becoming southwest 20 km/h. High 8.
	Tonight: Mainly clear. Low minus 5.

Friday March 16th, 2001, 2000

I have to remind myself it is only March.  The snow is gone and the weather is warm, but it is still 6 weeks until May. The days are getting much longer and I find this change most pleasant.

Here are my BEE-L posts since Feb 1, 2001:

	Today: Mainly sunny. High 8.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy. Low minus 4.

Saturday March 17th, 2001, 2000

I took the day off from desk work and went to Calgary to the zoo, the flea market and a few hobby shops The purpose behind the trip was to try to find a pin striping tool to use on the trucks and trailers we are painting.  It has proven very hard to find one.  A few years back, they were common, but now everyone is using vinyl stripes.

	Today: A mix of sun and cloud. Wind increasing to west 30 km/h. High plus 9.
	Tonight: Clearing. Wind northwest 20. Low minus 4.

Sunday March 18th, 2001, 2000

El & I took the day off and stayed home, except for a bike ride over to Grant and Shirley's for coffee.  Ellen and Shirley have gotten very interested in stained glass work and have made a few pieces.  Their work is quite good.  It will be interesting to see how far they carry it.

	Today: Mainly sunny. Increasing late day cloud. Wind south 20 km/h gusting to 40 km/h in the afternoon. High 12.
	Tonight: 30 percent chance of showers then clearing overnight. Wind southwest 20 gusting 40 increasing to 30 gusting 50 overnight. Low plus 2.

Monday March 19th, 2001, 2000

We started off with sun, but by 7:50 we had winds gusting to over 60MPH and now at 9:30 AM we have 1/4" of snow and more coming.

We went to Meijer's tonight for supper and dropped off the soy and sugar we had on hand.  Blue Sky will be making patties tomorrow and they need everything ready.  We went by their building and Ellen saw it for the first time.  It is coming along nicely and is almost useable as it is, although they still have concrete to pour in the unheated storage and loading area which is 120' x 70'.

We picked up the menthol and Apistan we had ordered from the co-op.  We plan to put blue shop towels on all the hives and Apistan when we inspect them -- if we inspect them before we sell them.  The blue towel method has been recommended highly by several beekeepers I respect who say that they virtually wipe out the tracheal mites for a year or more.  A single strip of Apistan at this time of year is the most economical and effective varroa control in this country.  We test as well, and last fall and put strips in the four yards that showed significant mite numbers.

	Today: 40 percent chance of morning showers then becoming mainly sunny. Wind southerly 20 km/h shifting to west 40 gusting 60 this morning. High 12.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy. Wind westerly 30 gusting at times to 50. Low plus 1.

Tuesday March 20th, 2001, 2000
The first day of spring

...and the weather is cooler, if anything.

I spent the day on accounting again and hope to get a handle on it really soon.  I am getting very tired of the set-up involved in getting the new company going.

Requests for information have tapered off a bit lately.  They seem to be related to the weather and I have been warned to expect a deluge when the weather warms and people get out to look at their bees.  We got the Arataki advertising letter today and it is amazing how much they are charging for their package bees.  It makes our prices for overwintered hives look cheap.

Matt went to Three Hills and got the blue cab and chassis ready for sale -- it was at the painter's.  We drove it out to the highway and put a sign on it.  We'll see if we get some response.  It's a bargain.  I'm selling it for what I paid for it, even though put a new windshield and new paint on it and we never drove it.  Nonetheless, vehicles depreciate whether they are driven or not.  At ten years old, though, depreciation stops and the condition dictates the selling price.

Joe met Matt in Three Hills.  He needed the scale paper.  Apparently Blue Sky had already finished the soy burgers and was half way through the pink patties.

Still no pin striper. 

	Today: Increasing cloudiness. High plus 4.
	Tonight: Mainly cloudy with a 30 percent chance of evening showers or flurries. Clearing overnight. Low minus 7.

Wednesday March 21st, 2001, 2000

The days are getting quite long -- over twelve hours and the normals are getting higher almost daily.  Nonetheless we are again in a cool period and will be for the rest of the week.

I am now looking forward to going out to look at the bees and to put on patties.  We had hoped to have them all sold by now, but realise that May is the time they really sell fast, not March.  At any rate they must be cared for and we will medicate, feed, adjust and generally care for them until they find a new home.  We have several buyers coming this weekend and hope to get some commitments.

Today I must prepare for my trip to Edmonton tomorrow.  I address the Edmonton and District Association Thursday night and will give a PowerPoint presentation about how we operate.  I plan to go up early (it is  a three hour trip) and perhaps stay overnight.

	Today: Mainly cloudy. 60 percent chance of flurries. High zero.
	Tonight: Mainly cloudy. 60 percent chance of flurries. Low minus 10.

Sunrise: 6:35 am: Sunset: 6:51 pm
The Moon is Waning Crescent (19% of Full)

Thursday March 22nd, 2001, 2000

We have fresh, fluffy snow, six inches of it.  I have to drive to Edmonton today to be at the Edmonton Beekeepers meeting tonight.  I've been asked to speak.  I made a  presentation (using PowerPoint) at the ABA convention last November showing how we do things in our outfit.   Several EBA members who saw it want to see it again and share it with members of the group who have not seen it.  This is also a chance to offer our bees and equipment for sale, so we are getting a few disks and flyers prepared.

I left for Edmonton around 1PM and was there in time for supper with Tom Hegan at 5.  The meeting started at 7:30 with about 30 people in attendance. 

One of the first items on the agenda was the matter of future package bee importation into the Peace river area of Alberta.  The Peace River beekeepers have long held the position that the closing of the US/Canada border to importation of packages has destroyed their profitability.  They feel that they did much better buying package bees each spring and gassing hem in the fall. Recent finds of varroa in New Zealand and subsequent relaxation of the rules against importation from that varroa positive country has renewed the hope that the Peace could get access again to California bees.  The Peace beekeepers have always held that the California bees were much better and also cheaper.  Apparently they had to get the backing of the ABA to proceed with their efforts with the provincial and federal governments.  We were told that the ABA executive had taken it upon themselves to endorse the efforts of the Peace group, at least until the next AGM.

My presentation, with its 45 slides, took about an hour and a half and went well.  Quite a few of those present sought me out during coffee to thank me and say how much they enjoyed the presentation.  That was a relief, since if the talk had been dull, no one would have said much.  I really like this kind of project and would not mind at all being invited to meetings anywhere to give talks.  I realise that actually this diary would make a good basis and with just the diary and a projector for my laptop I could talk for a long time...

This diary is now a bit over a year old.  One of my main purposes in writing a diary was to be able in future years to look back and see how I was thinking when I made decisions and to spot errors before I made them again (and again).   I recently went back a year and started reading.  I' m finding it interesting, but am also realising how much material is in it.

	Today: Periods of snow. Wind northeast 20 km/h. High minus 9. High windchill 1700 diminishing. Risk of frostbite.
	Tonight: Occasional snow. Wind diminishing to light southeast. Low minus 14.

Friday March 23rd, 2001, 2000

After staying the night at a motel in South Edmonton, I hit the road for Road for Red Deer in the morning.  I then  spent the day shopping for odds and ends for various projects we are working on, and then had supper with Jean and Chris at their place.  Jean made taco salads and I learned how simple they are to make and was reminded what good meal they make.

I did some more shopping at Costco and then headed home.  In particular I was looking for a good deal on blue shop towels and was not disappointed.  They were 1/3 cheaper than Canadian tire, and 1/4 cheaper than Wal-Mart.  

When they turned me out -- they close at 8:30 -- it was dark and cold with a stiff breeze from the north.  I recalled that the predictions were for minus 17 C.  I proceeded south on #2, then turned east onto #42.  After about ten miles, I noticed sparks in the rear view mirror and remembered that once or twice while still in in Red Deer, I had heard what sounded like alternator belt slipping, but had not seen anything definite when I looked under the hood.  Now I realised that the alternator bearings had failed seriously and the armature was dragging on the fields.  I pulled over to verify what was happening, and when I pulled over the engine stalled, then refused to crank. The alternator bearings was now seized.  

That was my guess anyhow, and the proof would have to wait for more favourable working conditions. Fortunately I had purchased AMA full coverage (the plus) for the BC trip and it was still in effect, so I called their 800 number.  In no time a truck appeared, hooked the car up, and hauled it the fifty miles home to Swalwell.  I rode with the driver and was in an unusually talkative mood.  He was an excellent audience and, if he was not entertained by my tales, he did not let on.

	Today: Mainly cloudy. 30 percent chance of flurries. High minus 7.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy. Low minus 15.

Saturday March 24th, 2001, 2000

In the morning, I confirmed that the problem was indeed the alternator and phoned around, but could not find a replacement locally. 

Joe and Oene came by to drop off some grease patties, since they were going to Acme to get some supplies and after they left for town, I realised that I had not tried the NAPA in Acme.  I found an alternator there and caught the Meijers in time to have them pick it up.

By the time they got here again, it was lunch time and we had a good visit.  After lunch, we did a small scale trial run preparing the blue shop towel treatment. It  seems pretty straightforward.  I'm told not to do this in the kitchen and the instructions say to use eye protection, etc., but we found it was pretty simple and not too odorous until the bagging part, at which point we decided to open a window for a few moments.

The Blue Shop Towel Method for Tracheal Mite Control in Honey Bees         Dipping 1/3 roll of towel (core removed) into a 50/50 mix of Crisco and menthol.  Keep the mixture just above the melting point. Removing the saturated roll of towel.  The roll is hot and it drips.  There are strong fumes.  Be careful.  Work outdoors if possible. Bagging a finished roll of towels. Menthol evaporates if not enclosed.  Use ASAP, and store towels in a cool place until needed 1/3 towel placed at back of hive to avoid driving bees away from the brood. The pink is an extender patty. Feeder in foreground   Makes 60 rolls of 55 sheets each.  Treats 3,300 hives once or 1,650 hives twice Melt roughly equal amounts (by weight) of Crisco vegetable shortening and menthol crystals in a pot.  Do it outside or under a fume hood.  Be aware: the mixture is very flammable.  Avoid excess heat, since menthol is very volatile -- and too expensive to boil off for no good reason.            *  1 box Crisco is 20 kg.  That is 20,000 g (or 44 lbs)            *  1 drum of menthol is 25 kg.  That is 25,000 g (or 55 lbs)            *  1 ice cream pail of menthol is about 4 lbs.            *  Melt 1/2 box of Crisco and 5-1/2 pails menthol at a time, using a washtub and torch or burner. Cut 20 rolls of blue shop towels into thirds to make 60 rolls about the size of toilet paper rolls . Remove the cardboard inner core.  Soak the rolls of  towel in the menthol/oil mixture until fully saturated. Drain a bit and place the rolls into ZipLoc bags.  Store them in a cool place until needed.             *   Result: 60 (1/3 size) rolls x 2 batches             *   60 x 55 sheets per roll = 3,300 sheets each with 6g menthol and 6g Crisco            Take them to the field and place one of the 1/3 sheets on the top bars of each hive at the front or back, not right over the cluster.  Daytime temperatures should not exceed 70 degrees F or be much under 50.  Results will vary with the hive and entrance design, location and whether the bees are still wrapped or not.  Menthol will evaporate if left in the sun or a hot place.  Keep unused rolls sealed and in a cool place.  Warning: Too much menthol will drive bees off the brood or kill brood. Repeat in ten days or two weeks That's it.  Forget about tracheal mites for a year or more. (Do check a bit in the fall, though) We only got around to one treatment and found a year later that we did not find tracheal mites  in a cursory exam that should have turned up any serious problems. We treat in spring before the weather gets too hot. It's best to check your bees twice a year, though -- spring and fall. Don't just assume you have control. Be sure. Note: Samples taken after treatment will test positive, since dead mites remain inside  the adult bees until the bees die of old age.  Therefore subsequent testing to prove  efficacy must wait at least six weeks after the treatment. Here are four good articles from BEE-L with more details about the Blue Shop Towel Method   034929  034930 034931 034934

When Meijers left, I installed the new alternator and the car runs just like new again.

For supper, we went to the annual wild game supper at the Three Hills Rural School with Bert, Zeke, and Fen.  The meal is buffet style and features a wide variety of game cooked in creative fashion.  An evening of cards follows. 

	Today: Mainly cloudy with occasional snow. Wind southeast 20 km/h. High minus 8.
	Tonight: Mainly cloudy with occasional snow. Wind southeast 20. Low minus 14.

Sunday March 25th, 2001, 2000

It is cool and windy this morning.  This is exactly the kind of weather I was hoping we would not get.  Cold is one thing, but wind like this drives cold air into hives and chills clusters that are already weakened by the long winter, and just beginning brood rearing.  They are most vulnerable at this time of year.  Our neighbour reports losing ten calves to the cold wind, and I am sure it cost us too.

	Today: Periods of snow developing. Wind southerly 30 km/h. High minus 2.
	Tonight: Occasional snow tapering off. Total accumulation up to 3 cm. Wind southeast 20 km/h shifting to west overnight. Low minus 5.

Monday March 26th, 2001, 2000

The morning I spent at my desk, then after lunch, El, Jean, Chris and I went to Calgary. We passed a few hours at the zoo, then went to the Stromboli Inn for supper. As always, the pizza was excellent -- perhaps the best on this planet.

Our intention had been to go to Ikea, then pick up Orams' car at Bernies, just northeast of Calgary, where it had received a new clutch, but on leaving the restaurant, we found that heavy wet snow was falling.  Traffic in the city was awful due to the slippery conditions and we took the first chance to get onto a highway out of town. 

Once on the highway, we discovered that storm conditions were more widespread than we expected from the report Chris had received when he called Bernie, so we realised that the weather was moving in fast. Six inches of heavy wet slush were already making progress difficult on the Trans-Canada and the falling snow was blinding and confusing in the headlights. It caked our windshield and the headlights; we had to stop several times to remove packed snow by hand so that the wipers could function. Driving was an act of faith. Visibility approached nil at times due to streaking and oncoming flakes blurring hypnotically in the headlights. Once on the highway out of town, though, we were committed since traffic continued, and to try to stop to wait it out was to risk causing a pile-up. We decided to postpone getting Chris and Jean's car and to try to make it home -- or somewhere safe -- by getting ahead of the eastbound storm.

We continued cautiously east at speeds as low as 60 KPH and finally got ahead of the storm around the junction of Highway Nine.  We then headed north and, by the time we were home a half hour later, we no longer saw signs of any storm. 

Below are links to my BEE-L posts since the 15th of this month.

	Today: Mainly cloudy. Rain at times mixed with snow developing. Wind southwest 20 km/h becoming northwest. High plus 8.
	Tonight: Rain at times mixed with snow this evening then partly cloudy. Wind northwest 20. Low minus 5.

Tuesday March 27th, 2001, 2000

This was another day of desk work and little else.

	Today: A mix of sun and cloud. Wind increasing to southwest 20 km/h. High plus 8.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy. 40 percent chance of snow overnight. Wind west 20. Low minus 3.

Wednesday March 28th, 2001, 2000

It's a sunny morning, but we're expecting a wind later today.  Some years can be calm, and some years are windy.  This looks like another of the latter.  I guess I should be thinking of doing some windsurfing.

The stock market has been quite turbulent recently after a long period of little change in the Dow accompanied by declines in the NASDAQ and the TSE.  I have very little to do with the markets these days, but I do keep an eye on it. So far the long term trend is not definitely broken, but the next little while could be very interesting.

The Europeans are currently suffering under the Foot and Mouth outbreak.  A recent post to BEE-L makes it clear what a serious problem this could be to beekeepers.

Stan Sandler, the fellow who first alerted me the to potential problem with imidacloprid several years back, has been following up and I will be updating the imidacloprid site with new data.

This afternoon I had reason to go to Linden and swung by the Willows yard to see how things are going.  I expected the worst, since these are the bees that were twice trashed by cows last winter and then moved and re-wrapped.  I was delighted to see they were ALL alive and looking good, although several are light.

	Today: Wind northwest 30 gusting to 50 km/h. Mainly sunny with increasing cloud this afternoon. High plus 7.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy. Wind northwest 20. Low minus 4.

Thursday March 29th, 2001, 2000

I see that this diary is getting quite a few hits lately.  That is nice.  I also get complimentary emails from time-to-time which I enjoy.  I am planning on  working soon on the print version a bit more.  100 people have gone to look at that page and I have not had any complaints -- or any feedback, so I wonder how it is working for folks who try it.

Here are two shots of the toolbox full of bees I picked up the other morning and which seems to be doing nicely.  The previous owner cut quite a bit of comb from it for honey last summer, as you can see in one of the pictures.  In the other shot, the bees are visible.  I'll have to feed and treat them soon, I imagine.

Speaking of swarms, Kim tells me that the picture I sent him (left) will be on the cover of the April Bee Culture magazine.  I am looking forward to seeing it. The swarm seems to have died over winter. This afternoon I entertained a beekeeper who came to look at our trucks.  He spent a lot of time looking at and driving them, but apparently could not make up his mind and left empty.   This afternoon, I loaded bees for a customer.  This is the first load to go.  I expect things will pick up quickly as the weather gets better.

	Today: Mainly cloudy. Wind increasing to west 30 km/h. High 8.
	Tonight: Mainly cloudy. 40 percent chance of evening showers. Wind diminishing to west 20. Low minus 3.

Friday March 30th, 2001, 2000

Normals for the period: Low minus 6. High 7.
Sunrise:6:14 AM / Sunset:7:05 PM
The Moon is Waxing Crescent (20% of Full)

The sun is now rising in the northeast and the days are almost 13 hours long.  The temperature normals are now increasing weekly . 

Jean and I went to Nakiska for a day of spring skiing.  My ankle is pretty well 100% now, although there is still a bit of sensation from the sprain I received New Years Day.  

Conditions were excellent.  There was about 15cm new powder overnight.  Although we got there at noon and found it somewhat tracked up, there were still lots of fresh patches since the hill was not too crowded.

	Today: 40 percent chance of morning flurries then a mix of sun and cloud. Wind northwest 20 gusting 40 km/h. High plus 4.
	Tonight: Increasing cloud with 30 percent chance of flurries overnight. Wind northwest 20 diminishing. Low minus 7.

Saturday March 31st, 2001, 2000

Not much happened today.  Outside it was overcast and windy.  I went for a bike ride, but wore my snowmobile helmet to break the wind.  That worked okay, but the shield is designed to cut wind from directly in front, not the side as was the case on the bike.  In the evening, I did a bit of reading and figured out the VCR I bought a while back.

	Today: Increasing cloud. 30 percent chance of showers developing. Wind increasing to southerly 20 km/h. High 8.
	Tonight: Partly cloudy. Wind southerly 20 gusting 40 becoming westerly. Low minus 1.

Sunday April 1st, 2001, 2000

All the clocks have to be set ahead this morning.  

It looks a bit nicer out today. We had some people come by today after lunch today to discuss hives and equipment. It looks as if things should go well. 

It's at times like this a person finds out who his friends really are. When I announced my retirement, found that some people rallied immediately to help me by offering to buy equipment and by helping find buyers. Others helped me by suggesting fair prices to charge and by scouting out the competition and letting me know id my prices were too high -- or low. Curiously, others almost shun me since I have announced my intent.  I've discovered over the years that some beekeepers are public minded and can see the value of assisting other beekeepers.  They can can see that making sure there is a good market for the equipment retiring beekeepers want to sell will enhance the value of their own equipment when their time comes.  Others think only of themselves and send money offshore even to their own detriment.  I think it will go well, but occasions like this remind one that one cannot ever have too many friends. 

I miss the old internet. But maybe it is returning to the times when people gave for the joy of giving. Poor Richard sent out his newsletter again today after a long hiatus. Seems dot.com dreams have shattered and he is back to his old stompin' ground.  The greed rush on the internet was distressing to many of us old netizens and the sight of so many people defiling our meeting place with get-rich-quick fantasies was saddening. Now they don't talk so loud, now they don't seem so proud. I still appreciate the credo of many old-timers, exemplified in this statement by Larry Wall (the inventor of Perl): "If I make a living off it, that's great--but I come from a culture where you're valued not so much by what you acquire but by what you give away," 

	Today: Increasing cloud. A few morning flurries or afternoon showers. Risk of a thunderstorm. Wind becoming northwesterly 20 km/h. High 6.
	Tonight: Wet snow and risk of a thunderstorm this evening. Mainly cloudy with 60 percent chance of flurries overnight. Wind northerly 20. Low minus 6.

Monday April 9th, 2001, 2000

The days grow longer quickly at this time of year.  In the last fortnight days have increased in length by almost an hour.  The normal daily lows have increased by three degrees and the highs by four.  Conditions are rapidly improving for bees.  In about two weeks, we should have crocus pollen.

Normals for the period: Low minus 3. High 10.
Sunrise: 6:52 am / Sunset: 8:22 pm.  The Moon is Full

The semi arrived with sugar syrup this morning and was unloaded in a matter of an hour or so.  We decided that, since the weather is cool, and will be for a few days, that there is no reason to rush to get syrup out to the yards, so Matt and Ritchie are changing the tranny in the Red Hive Loader Truck (sold), dropping the tranny in the white gas truck and sandblasting the Green Swinger in preparation for painting.

El & I may go out later in the day to distribute some syrup into drums.  The problem is that, by providing some open feed in drums, we want to make sure that any light hives don't starve, but do not want to plug out the strong hives or have syrup left in the drums when flows start in May.  Bees will empty drums in March and April , but may not take much in May and June. If it rains, syrup can ferment and be wasted.  Moreover, any syrup we put in drums is not easily available to feed directly into hives using our pressure system.  Individual feeding in frame feeders ensures even distribution and is preferable in many ways, but until we open our hives, only the individual wraps are easily accessable.

When I started this diary, I was counting on it being useful a year down the line (right now) to show me when I was on schedule and when I was jumping the gun.  It has already proven to be invaluable, since I see that last year we did not really get started on unwrapping and feeding until the middle of the month.  I also can see from my comments that even then we were plenty early.  

 I've been getting a bit worked up about getting out to the bees and can see after reading the diary from last year at this time that I can relax a bit.  I also can see that there is a lot of reading in the diary and that maybe I should have stuck more to just chronicling the events since some of the material seems a bit dull at this point.  Nonetheless, it is illuminating to see how what and how I have been learning in the past -- and I am assured by regular readers that their eyes do not glaze over when they read the diary.

	Today: Morning fog otherwise mainly cloudy. 30 percent chance of afternoon showers. Wind west 20 km/h. High 8.
	Tonight: Mainly cloudy. 30 percent chance of showers or overnight flurries. Wind north 20. Low minus 2.
	Tuesday: Mainly cloudy. 40 percent chance of flurries. Wind north 20. High 4.
	Wednesday: A mix of sun and cloud. Low minus 6. High plus 3.
	Thursday: Mainly sunny. Low minus 3. High 8.
	Friday: A mix of sun and cloud. Low minus 1. High 10.

Monday April 2nd, 2001, 2000
Heavy snowfall warning in effect
And I'm driving Ellen to Calgary for cataract surgery this morning...

	Today Snow. Further accumulations 5 to 10 cm. Wind increasing to northeast 30 km/h. High near zero.
	Tonight Snow. Further accumulations 5 to 10 cm. Wind northeast 30 gusting to 50 giving blowing snow in open areas. Low minus 6.

Tuesday April 3rd, 2001, 2000
Heavy snowfall warning in effect
Back to Calgary for a check on El's eye after the cataract surgery yesterday

	Today: Snow. Further accumulations near 10 cm. Reduced visibility in snow and blowing snow. Wind northeast 30 km/h gusting to 50 km/h. High minus 2.
	Tonight: Snow tapering off then mainly cloudy. Further accumulations 5 cm. Wind north 20. Low minus 6.

Wednesday April 4th, 2001, 2000

I went to the dentist at 8 to get a crown glued on permanently.  In the attempt to pull off the new cap on a top tooth, one on a lower tooth came off, so he had to glue on two instead of one. Once tha