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Urban Sustainable Ecosystems Symposium

Spent all day today at the Texas Discovery Gardens ( http://www.texasdiscoverygardens.org ) – manning the Texas Honeybee Guild booth for the “Urban Sustainable Ecosystems” symposium. ( https://www.facebook.com/UrbanSustainableEcosystems )

Day two looks to be a great list of speakers scheduled as well! Amber and I will finish painting our hive woodenware before heading out to day two of the show.

Ready for Spring – but where’s the oil-based paint?

I”m ready for spring to be here! Though, I do still need to paint my hive bodies and make my screened bottom boards and top covers.

For some reason, though, I’m having a hard time finding oil-based exterior paints to use on my hive bodies. I’ve checked at Lowes (always check their “Oops” paint shelf) – and didn’t see any.. so I checked their shelf for regular oil-based paints… and couldn’t find any!! Has oil-based paint gone the way of the dinosaur? Has it become legislated off of the shelves? Maybe I need to peruse a different store.

I’ve got 10 Deeps, 15 Mediums, and 15 swarm-traps to paint.

Time-Lapse

My Borage plant was thirsty, so I watered it, and turned on the time-lapse app on my camera.

Swarm Traps Made

(Update 2/15/2013 – Over the last year – the number one search term linked to my site has been “swarm trap plans”.  Thusly – I’d like to link over to Rob’s set of downloadable plans for hive products.  (Sorry – Rob’s site is no longer accessible) Old Link here: http://robo.bushkillfarms.com/beekeeping/downloads/ )

( and now back to the original post – dated 1/24/2012 )

Last week, I started a quick little project that I saw plans for on http://www.beemaster.com. The Swarm Trap Plans are easy to interpret, and the project went quickly!

Another source of plans is on BeeSource.com – at: https://beesource.com/build-it-yourself/

Swarm Trap

Swarm Trap

I made 15 honeybee swarm traps. Each trap holds 5 “deep” frames. A pheromone lure will be placed in each trap, to attract a feral swarm to the box. Now – to paint them so they’ll last, and mark them with my identifying brand / label.

 

Back to beekeeping

December 31, 2011. It’s supposed to get up to 70+ degrees here in Richardson, so I’ll spend the beautiful day outside, building swarm traps for this upcoming spring.

The design is from Rob over at http://www.BeeMaster.com

I’ll tip up a glass in a toast for a bounty of bees this year!

Finished building – Last for 2011

Finished building

Finished building

Here’s the final parting shot of the last build for 2011. See ya next year! Now, it’s time to work on my bee hives!

Build in Arlington – Day 1

Tired. More got done today than is in today’s pictures. Will post more tomorrow.

Where the building goes

Where the building goes

Skids & Floor Trusses

Skids & Floor Trusses

Side Walls & My Helper

Side Walls & My Helper

Wood cut & ready

12/26 – I’d say that I have about 80% of the wood cut, and ready to build. Early morning and long day tomorrow for the shed to go into place. It’s right at a 50-55 mile trip each way – so I need to get as much done on day one as possible. That’s why I’ve made sure to pre-cut wood, and will have my trusty helper, Amber, with me, since my other scheduled helper is out of town visiting family for the holidays.

Year end work

11x11 Storage Building

11x11 Storage Building - Xmas Eve!

I’ll close out the year with a final storage building build in Arlington, Texas.

The build will be documented here. The first pic is of most of the materials loaded up and ready to take to the home office. As much as I hate handling all this lumber multiple times, it really makes the on-site portion of a build go much faster if as much as possible is cut to size before I arrive at the clients’ location.

Today is Xmas Eve – and there’s a light rain – so I’ll see if it’s better weather tomorrow for getting out to cut the wood.

Hoodlums

Wow.. All I can say… Well – I had MORE to say the other day.

I went to pick up one of my daughters from her Mother’s house. After pulling out of her driveway, and heading out, I heard a loud BANG as something hit the car. I really didn’t know what it was – and for an instant, thought maybe the trunk had been open, and had slammed shut. I said “What was that!?”.

Amber quickly says – “I don’t know, but someone in a blue jacket and brown hair just ran behind that house!”.

I made a quick u-turn, and pulled up in front of the house, got out of the car, and looked to see what had happened. Something had been thrown, and had hit the top of the trunk. It was dented & scratched. Pretty substantially.

I called 911, and let them know that someone was throwing something at cars along the road, and where I was at. They said that they would send an officer.

Meanwhile, I’m still standing in front of the yard, and see the person in the blue jacket trying to sneak around to the other side. I yell “HEY!!! STOP!”. Like a deer caught in headlights, he DID stop! “COME HERE!”… He starts walking to me… and Amber says “I know him! – that’s ______ ______ (name withheld to protect him, since he’s a minor). He goes to school with me and has a class with Robin!

The adrenalin was pumping through my veins, and I was seeing red. I didn’t touch him, though. I called 911 back, and let them know that I’d caught the kid, and that they’d better get an officer here pretty darned quick. The dispatcher was professional, and wanted to make sure that everyone was okay… “How old is the person?” she asked me. I asked him, and he says “14”. She then questioned as to whether I had hurt him. haha. I sure wanted to – but I had not touched him – and I made sure not to touch him through the entire episode. Amber as my witness.

The police finally showed up, and asked what happened. I smiled and looked at the kid, and said “Go ahead – tell them what you did.” I didn’t want the story to come from me – I wanted a confession from him in front of the officer – without my prompting towards any of the happenings.

He spilled the beans. His story was that he’d thrown a rock across the road to see if he could throw it across the road (2 lanes each way, plus a turn lane at that location – so 5 lanes…) Well, I hope he has no plans to be on a baseball team, because the rock didn’t make it over 1 of those 5 lanes.

Long story short… Now I need to get estimates to have the damage repaired. His parents have offered to pay for all the damages. So – as long as that goes smoothly, I’ll handle this in a civil manner, and not have the police pursue criminal charges.

Kids…