In honor of Earth Day 2022, for your consideration, a threesome: 1) Spaces, 2) Trap out opportunities, 3) four or more decent bee books.
1) One of the really cool apps that the ABA website host (WIX) offers is "Spaces". It allows ABA to send announcements to those that have the "Spaces" app installed on their phone by push notifications - what the heck is that? Get it wherever you get apps. Real time announcements, only for members, like the one I just posted for two trap out opportunities just now. Just google "trap out" if you are not familiar. Apparently, bees like to take up residence in the west wall of houses and other buildings, that are basically, there for the taking, IF you know what your about.
2) IF you have "Spaces" installed, and you are a dues paying member, you would already know to contact me for details on some coastal trap outs that are good for maybe a few days. Just contact me via phone or email for details - location, pictures, etc...After about a week, fuhgeddaboudit.
3) I was asked by a member at the last meeting for some "good" reading material on keeping bees besides the book by Delaplane that ABA includes with the short course. Especially about bee sex, here in the land of don't say ... In the words of Ray Bradbury, "there are worse things than burning (or banning) books. One of them is not reading them". Well, here goes:
My favorite bee books tend to be the ones published by professors at Carnegie I Universities, the best of the best research universities. That said, there are many beekeepers that don't have those credentials that have put out some pretty good , uh, stuff. Lawrence John Connor and others, have a series of books on beekeeping published by Wicwas Press that provide a "decent" overview of several topics - Swarm Essentials, Increase Essentials, Queen Rearing Essentials, Bee Sex Essentials. Decent in the sense that they are short (all less than 200 pages), have nice pictures (but you always want more) and cannot be found in any local library however, are available on Amazon for $25-50. That should tell you volumes. You get what you pay for, and many times less. In this time, there are also many YouTube videos and interweb sites that provide a good bit of kit, but videos have their limitations also. Our University of Florida Lead Bee Entomologist, in his last presentation to the club, presented a series of websites on beekeeping, and if you like podcasts, I highly recommend their "Two Bees in a Podcast". I prefer books, but the podcasts are entertaining. The other side of that coin is that once published in a book, it is obsolete, that is, books are good for history, peer journals and interwebs are where the real action is. Only if you have time to track them, which is what researchers do. Since this is a forum, what's your favorite bee book? I like Tom Seely's stuff, and some of the older stuff too, like Honey Farming, A Year In An Out Apiary, even government stuff like the Australian Beekeeping Guide. Happy Earth Day ABA!
Thank you for your recommendations