Hi Everyone:
After doing the calculating earlier about the visitor stats, I realized that on the 20th of Oct. we will be 8 months old as a group - seems like I have known many of much longer and honestly, I think we have accomplished a lot of really cool things.
We have had nearly 300 members join, many who have become beekeepers during this first season of the forum although they had no plans to that first season, the help from the forum gave them enough faith in their abilities to attempt beekeeping. We have had a few spin-off forums which have had many members who have shared ideas on topics other than beekeeping, we have grown into nearly every state and many countries, raised our standing in the major search engines, now NPR wants to do a segment on Swarming and that project is in development, I had the pleasure to meet Big-Rog and he joined the ranks of beekeeper and probibly will be one forever.
Our teens, although having a tough time drumming up other teens for the forum still are filled with questions and always glad to answer other questions when ever they can. We have members from all parts of the world sharing neat and unusual hive designs that I know MOST of us in the States would NEVER have seen otherwise.
We have several topics to "post and reply to" and we are always ready for ideas to add additional forums. But most importantly, we have made friends who have joined and written and shared personal stuff with the group - your friendships and the communication, and learning we get from it are the reasons for the forum and that being said, the forum is a great success no matter how measured.
I'm adding a totally different group of forums this week, stuff to give the members additional things to do while here in the forum. One will be movie and TV series forum, where we can all discuss old, current and future films, covering many subtopics such as stars, directors, cities in films, films gendres and anything to do with film including CGI effects, scariest movies, funniest cartoons and on and on.
The second forum is an outdoor adventure forum, for all you campers, fishers, hunters, joggers, skiiers, snow-mobilers, privot pilots, surfers, hikers, bowlers and any adventure that floats your boat. This forum should really allow members to learn MORE about each other than just our interest in beekeeping.
Year Two has some special feature that will require some GROWTH in the server I have currently hosting Beemaster, but I'll be offering EACH MEMBER their own webspace to build their own websites on - this will be a free feature to all registered members, but it will be a place that you can park your family tree, share your interests, place photos and stories, share your travels, talk about your pets or just build a page or bigger site where you can ramble on about MANY MANY topics JUST as Beemaster does. And although the space may be limited to 2 or 3 pages, it will be a nice feature that I hope you all take advantage of. We'll use some simple visual editor software to get your pages up in a flas and add links to your profile!
So I'm hoping that the added features sound like a fun thing that may interest you into opening up your mind and letting all your creative juices flow.
So lots more coming and I hope that after the NPR broadcast we have a massive membership that will give our member UNLIMITED material a day to read and respond to. But if not, we still have the finest little beekeeping forum on that net, and THAT ain't too bad at all :)
FINAL NOTE: I weighed C1 and C2 today - they BOTH have been very busy, C1 weighs 154 pounds and C2 a whopping 202 pounds, both are 2 supers high and neither have any sign of varroa.
The only thing I need to do is get them into my tool shed for the perfect eind block to make that honey surplus of theirs make it through the Winter without any hitches In the Spring, I'm hoping to build up two more colonies and make a few nucs to get some family and friends pollinated for the Spring. With a little help and a mild Winter, all should be fine in the cold season ahead. I hope everyone is getting ready, I think that it might just be a cold and long long Winter. It's time like these that SeanChan comes to mind living in the paradise of Malaysia - sure beats the cold and fridged days ahead here.
So happy 8 month anniversary to all - may many many more follow!