Dear Friends :)

Over 1600 of you are receiving this Newsletter and I am really looking forward to sharing this exciting Season with you. The theme of this experimental season, if you need something to call it is "New Beginnings".  Simply put, except for a handful of tools, I started with all new hive boxes, frames, foundation, queen excluders, lids, bottom boards, etc.,. In the next issue I will order bees and ready all my "equipment and plans" for the day the bees arrive. Tentatively I hope to receive the Bees April 10th to April 24th. The installation season and first pollen flow always bump heads here in the Eastern US. I hate to order bees too early, but a few warm days and everything here blooms.

Throughout the Newsletter I will ask you read different sections of my site for reference. My OnLine Logbook closely follows this Newsletter as will the other 20 sections found on my Beekeeping Home Page.

Forgive me for stealing some lines from my Online Logbook, but I want to put sensible order to my newsletters, and they will closely track with THAT MONTH'S  Online Log. To better spend my time addressing as much as possible in both the log and the newsletter, I often paste short segments of text that I've already written elsewhere on the site. I Hope you understand, this is a daunting challenge to undertake, all the while interacting with many of you via email, and addressing your own special needs.

My Digital Equipment

Concerning my equipment I use to bring this ambitious Project to you with. I am armed with My Olympus Digital Camera, and my Dell Notebook Computer, I can go into the Bee Yard and not only take photos, but upload them wireless through my Dell Laptop to my website. Literally I will have photos uploaded into "Monthly Inspection Albums" to be viewed all season long. Then expect many wallpaper sized photos for all your needs. I promise to get you "Up close and personal" with the hive, like you've never been before. You have a front row seat to this entire seasons activities through this Newsletter and the entire Beekeeping Course. Please tell you friends, family, schools, scouts and 4H groups about this site. Thanks.

 Please don't forget though that a few hundred of you who receive this newsletter are owners and operators of long established bee farms, honey producers and families living from the hard work of their honeybees. To you very special people, I can only say that you special folk are keeping the species alive during trying times. Many of you are loosing your shirts to mites and a thousand other threats to the honeybee today. I am glad that you are with us. Many operators have told me that it's always good refreshing their knowledge and spark their common sense. They sometimes cant see the trees for the forest, it's far different if you are lugging 140 pound supers around cause you want to or cause you have to.

I'm sitting here with 8 inches of snow slowly melting. It is 1am and I am in my writing mode. I feel lucky that I am able to create volumes of text after some of the less informative emails I receive: Got swarm. Help!!!. Those emails are plentiful when you are the Beemaster - lol. Eventually, I hope to cover every issue of the novice beekeepers concern on my Beekeeping Course homepage. Sometimes it takes more time than one man can muster. But it's coming.

Remember, I go to the sources when it comes to Beekeeping. No One is better than the great folks of  Bee Culture Magazine and  American Bee Journal. I'm putting together a great links page, look for it soon, but if you have any bee questions Bee Culture has a huge archived articles and search engines that hunt their thousands of articles. NOTE: contact either publication for a free sample issue to see what you are missing. 

Update: on March 3, 2001 we are now expecting the largest snowfall of the Season tomorrow night. Expected 12 to 16 inches by Monday night. See what I mean, I feel for the folks who have bees out in the fields, low on food and in dire need of a cleansing flight.

I'll will be using these dividers to separate different topics or ideas. I tend to "think" rather fractally ( how's that for saying I'm Cracked ) and it's better if I hop all over the place, if the other option is spending too much time organizing thoughts in easy to swallow form. Besides, hopping around gives your mind a chance to absorb thoughts in small packets - just like a computer does.

For this Newsletter, you will need to visit my site and review Unique Tools and their uses "If" you are not familiar with the Beekeepers tools. Knowing what they do and when to use them can make your hive interaction a very pleasant experience.

The tools listed there are pretty much needed for a full season of Beekeeping. I use a very old extractor that I bought from my Mentor Mike. It spins "two" equally drawn frames quite nicely in a matter of minutes. So please review the tools section if you have any question on tools.

Next, you need to read my January and February Logbooks if you haven't done so. "I Never said my Newsletter would be easy!" The two pages cover Ordering my Complete Hive Kits, queen excluders and pollen trap ( which is really cool, by the way ) and I also treat the hive boxes and work out the plans for this years "New Beginnings" Project. Below is a short reprint of my plans for this season.

COLONY ONE

( C1 ) is scheduled to be a two queen hive. The bottom box will have a queen excluder separating it from the next super which will be for honey storage. A second queen excluder is placed on top of it and then a brood box and queen are added to top off the hive. The goal of this prolific adventure is to quickly build honey for the following Winters store. I highly doubt that I'll harvest any for my own needs, but we'll see. But with two queens and a pollen trap in place, I assume that: 1) this colony will swarm the first season 2) the center box will be for honey only and it will fill quickly 3) Excess brood from this colony will be used for all experimental nucs. 
Colony Two ( C2 ) is going to start only One Super high and quickly work into a Two Box Colony with the top box being introduced as the bottom box reaches 60% capacity. I'm trying a few experiments this year and C2 will be my "Hive of Standard" It will be treated as a normal hive in the average new beekeepers yard. Only adding  a feeder, queen excluder and medication when needed. 

All other colonies are Experimental, that is - Expect strange things to happen throughout the season, such as Queen Rearing, Drone Cell Forcing, force pollen collection, mating and insemination. This is going to be a photographic journal of great proportion. I'll have Nucs, Observation Hives and incredible Macro photography of eggs, larva, Supersedure, and so much more.

Back Live - I like that, if you see Italic Text on my Newsletter, it is a reprint for another page on my site. That way, you know when I'm talking to you and not just cutting and pasting. Cool.

So now you've read where I stand with equipment and what my initial hopes for the colonies are. I do look forward to capturing everything with my digital camera. I have hundreds of photos that I haven't uploaded, but for this project I will be using all newly capture images. The tools page has a few pollen trap shots that took me an hour to capture. But once it's there it speaks volumes when trying to press an idea.

TextAloud

I got to tell you all about a free download that has totally blown me away. It is a text to speech generator that has many voices both male and female: The magical part is, just copy any text from your email, website, any word doc or text file AND it automatically loads into TalkAloud and the text is read in a very human like voice instantaneously. Imagine just listening to this newsletter instead of having to read it. Or, read along to help you retain information from any website. And how about the kids? Just think how much fun it would be for your kids to have their online history homework read to them while they read along.

I can not say enough about this awesome program, I hope you download it . I use it to proof read all my many hundreds of web pages. I just sit back and listen to my own writings and I can easily catch any typos. If nothing else, this is the most fun program you will ever try. Clue: tweak the Pitch and Speed of each voice until it sounds best. It comes with one voice named Mary. But at the website they offer about TEN other free voices. Including a British on that is very cool. 

Personally, I enjoy free Ebooks, I just copy them from any website and boom they are read to me. No internet connection required to use either. Just copy any text and it plays. Sooooo cool.

Classic Beemaster Photo

Here is an older photo I enjoy looking at. Look at the white healthy looking larva being tended to by the workers. I hope to take you in even closer this season with all my new photographic equipment. 

I'll be sending out a follow up later this week with links to about a dozen 1024x768 images for you to use as wallpaper or to print out for displays or lecturing. Perfect for you kids to use for school science, 4H or Scouts projects. And od course, I'll keep in touch throughout the month if important matters come up concerning our "New Beginnings" beekeeping project. But until the follow-up newsletter, keep checking the Beekeeping course. I'm dividing my Inspection section and Tai-Chi Inspection sections and adding a Beemaster's Favorite Links and also a detailed collection of hive design plans ( courtesy of www.beesource.com ) I highly suggest you go there and check out the great collection of equipment plans and articles. Also, I'm going to attempt a detailed medication and mite section: It daunting from a hobbyist point of view, but I'll do all I can to fill this void on my site.

Email of the Month

Where do I start?

After re-reading most of my pages concerning  Is Beekeeping For You? and Just How Big Should Your own Bee Yard Be? and Beemaster's Logbook  and  Ordering Bees and Supplies and on and on... I wonder what I missed in order to receive this particular email. Four words that tore apart over 50 pages of my  Beekeeping Course . Did I really answer his question though? I tried, but something tells me that I just missed the target.

Maybe he's got a hundred bucks, no equipment and a dream to be a Beekeeper this Season. Maybe that was his question. When I thought of it that way, I realized that I need to address a co-operative effort I expect from each of you. Because this is of benefit to both the new and established hobbyist, or an owner / operator of a bee business of nearly any size.

 You guys need to work together at getting new beekeepers into the hobby. All Beekeepers with spare bees and equipment should always make available starter hives to sell at a fair price. That includes making an effort to find new hobbyist in your area. Offer affordable starter hives and kits available for sale and put a small ad where the most people in your area will see it.

New Hobbyist, you will want to start with a healthy hive assembled by a qualified beekeeper, also ask for some basic hive tools and some sound advice. When buying bees from a Beekeeper, you have duties too that should be addressed. Make sure that the beekeeper you are buying from is knowledged in parasites and all the other maladies of honeybees in the 21st Century. 

If you are selling starter hives to new Beekeepers, let me know how much you are getting. I think $100 to $120 for a top board, inner cover, bottom board, brood box, healthy queen, honey super ( 6 frames filled with honey and 4 drawn frames ) and a smoker and hive tool is fair. I know you ain't getting' rich at that price, but you are making another Beekeeper and breaking even. 

So to answer my email question of the month. Where do I start? It starts here!

This feature is exciting. I'll bring to you a Favorite Site of the Month on each Newsletter and also add great links to the  Beemaster's Logbook each month too.

This Great Site is Alberta Beekeeping, Pollination, Honey, Bee & Art by Allen Dick. I respect the amount of content that Allen Dick has compiled. I'm envious that I didn't get an earlier start with my Logbook Sections. Allen Dick lives in Alberta Canada and owns around 3000 hives. He is absolutely detailed in EVERYTHING he does with his bees and with his life. I could never match the content Allen Dick has created and compiled. He also offers it in an easy to navigate way. Bravo for an Amazing website that Beemaster is proud to name Favorite Website of the Month. What I really enjoy is that Allen is at the extreme opposite end of Beemaster in the world of honeybee raising, but our interest are very very similar. Visit his site and read his incredible stories of Beekeeping in Alberta.

Thanks for reading my Newsletter.

Please write and let me know if it was enjoyable. I have wonderful hopes for this Newsletter and of course the Main Beekeeping Site. I'll continue to wait for Spring, but until then I'll be busy working toward making Beemaster the most entertaining and informative Beekeeping Site on the Internet.
 
 

Best Wishes to you all :)

John the Beemaster

please address any feedback to honeybee@beemaster.com
 

Beemaster.com  - over 150 pages, 35 topics, 900 photos.
Beekeeping Course - 50 pages and 20 topics about Beekeeping.
Beemaster's Logbook - detailed logging of my beekeeping.