Birthday Week of the Blog

My blog began in April 2006 on Easter Sunday. This week upcoming marks the birthday week of my blog. My twelfth year begins this month. That's a long time to keep a blog pretty continually.



I look forward to this year of posting and seeing what kind of year my bees and I have as another bee season gets fully underway with the blooming of the tulip poplar which began in Atlanta last week.

Today is the Birthday of the Blog!

Happy Birthday to the Blog!













Today I begin my eighth year of beekeeping!  It's been a great ride so far and I appreciate everyone who visits, watches my slide shows and videos, comments, and emails - and there are lots of you.

This is my 1088th post on this blog.  I've shared with you all of my triumphs and failures, what I've tried and what has worked and what has not.  I've been through several iterations of my beekeeping self, but I've always remained true to what I believed in at the beginning - that it would be better to lose bees than to treat them with poisons and that I wanted to be as natural a beekeeper as possible.  I've tried to be a beekeeper and not a bee-haver, as per George Imrie, and I work hard at it.

I usually put up stats in this post, so here I go again.

1040 - people subscribe to this blog by RSS feed
552 - people are "followers" on Google
8000 - hits for this blog since April 1, according to statcounter.com
193 - the number of countries from which people have visited
146,971 - the number of links to my site from various places  on the web - it's been my particular pleasure to find that my site is listed on a number of state and club websites across the country as a good resource!  What a compliment!

Thanks, everyone, for coming to visit, for cheering me on, for all the support and friendly outreach over these past seven years!  You're the best.

It All Adds Up

**

• 0: the number of chemicals or pesticides I use in my hive.
• ⅜ of an inch: bee space.
• 1: the number of queens in most beehives
• 1: the number of times a worker bee can sting
• 2 days: the amount of time in which a larva can still become a queen if fed royal jelly
• 3 times a month: the number of times I inspect bee hives during bee season
• 3: the number of segments to a honey bee body.
• 4 minutes: the amount of time it takes for a honey bee to remove and manipulate a scale of wax exuded from the abdomen of a bee (4th to 7th abdominal segments if you are interested!)
• 4 - 5 pounds: the approximate weight of a full medium frame of honey
• 4.9 mm: the width of a natural-comb worker brood cell.
• 5 : number of eyes on a honey bee
• 7:  the number of hives I have in my Virginia Highlands backyard
• 8 feet:  the average height of a wild colony inside a tree
• 8: the number of frames I use in my hive bodies
• 9 ODA:  9-oxodecenoic acid or queen substance - queen pheromone
• 10 nails: the number required to build a frame properly
• 10 - 15 trips a day:  the number of times nectar and pollen gatherers fly out
• 12 - 25 days:  The age of most guard bees
• 16 days:  the number of days it takes for a queen to emerge
• 17: the number of states having the honey bee as the state insect
• 17 - 30: the number of drones needed for a well-mated queen
• 18.6% moisture: the maximum moisture content a honey can have and not ferment.
• 20 times its own weight: the amount of honey a comb can support
• 21: Current number of Master Beekeepers who have earned their certification from the Young Harris Beekeeping Institute
• 21 days: the number of days it takes for a worker to emerge
• 24 days:  the number of days it takes for a drone to emerge
• 24 km/h: average honey bee flight speed
• 25: the number of talks I’ve given to bee clubs and others since January 2011
• 36: the number of days from egg to sexual maturity for the drone
• 40 liters: the size of a hive cavity
• 56:  the number of workers a single worker touches with her antennae in 30 minutes
• 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit:  the temperature of the core of the brood nest in a hive
• 120 degrees: the angle between adjacent cell walls in honeycomb
• 600-800 meters: the average distance a swarm moves from its parent colony
• 800 km:  The distance a forager accumulates in foraging flights before her death
• 
• 1000:  The number of posts on this blog as of this very moment!
  
• Infinite: The amount of joy and pleasure I get from beekeeping and the amazing  people and experiences that it brings to my life............

**Many thanks to Noah Macey for all the help he gave me with this post.

Birth of the Bee Blog

I try to notice every year when we reach an anniversary of the blog.  As of the end of April, my blog has been ongoing with regular postings for six full years - now begins the seventh year of my beekeeping experience and of my record keeping on this blog.

• Thanks to all of you all over the world who follow this blog - you make my day!
  
• Thanks to all of you who comment on my posts - it's such fun to hear your thoughts!
  
• Thanks to all the beekeepers out there who, like me, are learning, growing and sharing with each other all the time.

I'm having a great time with this blog and will keep on posting!

As of today there are 993 posts on this blog, heading for 1000.  On the Internet there are almost 135,000 links to my site.  It appears on many bee club links pages as well as bee association pages.  It has been linked 6,700 times from Beemaster Forum.  The two most watched videos are how to harvest honey by crush and strain and how to build and use a solar wax melter.  There are 932 subscribers to the site as well as 508 Google Followers.  People have come from 185 countries - the most visitors from the US, of course, followed by Great Britain, Turkey and Canada.

I won't bore you with the rest of the statistics, but it is all gratifying to me - thank you, all of you, for continuing to visit and be interested.

Birthday of the blog!

Well, belated birthday, anyway.  I missed it!  On April 15, my blog began its sixth year and I began my sixth year as a beekeeper (although this year started so early that it's hard to say it began two days ago!)

I am so grateful for all of you who visit from all over the world (from 176 countries) and comment on my bee adventures.  It has been such a challenge for me to keep learning and sharing.  I appreciate knowing I want to post on the blog.  That always sends me out to take a photo or look up something interesting to share with you.

At this point there are 747 of you who are RSS subscribers, 410 or you who "follow me" on Blogger, a few Twitter subscribers (34) and a few others who subscribe in some other ways.

I've posted 844 times (including this one) which is a lot of picture taking and writing.

It's been a great ride so far - thanks to all of you who stay interested in my bees!

It's the Birthday of the Blog

On April 15, 2006, I wrote my first blog post!  My post tonight on April 15, 2010 is my 682nd post.  Tomorrow I begin my fifth year as a beekeeper and my fifth year keeping this blog.  I've been so lucky along the way.  I've had contact with so many interesting people and have enjoyed learning from each and every one who has shared his/her own experience.

 A few facts you might enjoy:

• As of this moment 558 people subscribe to this blog through RSS feeds

• As of this moment 298 people "follow" this blog which is another form of subscribing

• People have visited this blog from 163 different countries.  The top five countries from which visitors come are the United States, Turkey, Great Britain, Canada and Australia, in that order.
  
  
• This blog is linked to by 714 other sites, including many state and local beekeeping association sites
  
  
• According to Google Analytics, the site has been visited 171,594 times since I first put the site on Google Analytics in July 2007.  There have been 319,898 page views by those 171,594 people.
  
  
• The second most popular page (next to the first page) is the video on how to use the simple solar wax melter.  That has been watched from this page 14,279 times!
  
  
• Next most popular is the video on honey harvest via crush and strain which has been viewed from this site 10,441 times!
  
  
• It took about a year for the number of visitors in a day to top 100.  For the last five days here are the numbers of visitors who have stopped by:
   
• Sunday the 11th 785, 
• Monday the 12th 724, 
• Tuesday the 13th 519 and 
• yesterday Wednesday the 14th 617
  
  
• Thanks to all of you for your support, your kind and helpful comments and your interest in bees in general and my beekeeping in particular.  I hope we all have a great bee season in 2010.
  
  

Thank you all for your interest in my bees

When I woke up this morning, I found myself looking at statistics on this blog.

• I've kept the blog since April 15, 2006, the day I got my first bees (the Saturday before Easter that year). I am now a little over a month into my fourth year.
• As of today, the 28th of May 2009, there are 365 people who subscribe to my blog through RSS feed and
• An additional 200 people are "followers" of this blog
• I put a stat counter on the blog on May 10 2006. On that day 14 people visited my blog
• Yesterday May 27, 2009, 316 people visited the blog and loaded 574 pages
• Of those, 249 were visiting the blog for the first time
• Since I put the counter on the blog, 103,333 unique people have been here
• Last month I put a "flag counter" on the side bar and in just the past month people have visited this blog from 92 different countries
• I also have a map at the very bottom of the blog showing red dots for the places from which people come and it's fun to see dots all over the world
• The top ten Google search terms that got people to my site last week were:
  

1. Solar wax melter;
   
2. small hive beetle trap;
   
3. mortician bees;
   
4. harvesting honey without an extractor;
   
5. linda's bees;
   
6. hive beetle trap;
   
7. crush and strain honey;
   
8. linda's bee blog;
   
9. hive beetle; and
   
10. small hive beetle

• According to Google analytics, the most popular pages on my site in the last month (as in most months) were:

1. the video on how to use the simple solar wax melter
2. the video on harvesting honey using the crush and strain method
3. the video on building the small hive beetle trap
4. the newbie questions at the beginning of keeping bees
5. what's involved in a hive inspection
6. how to install a nuc
   

Keeping a blog is a commitment I made to myself to force me to keep up with what was happening in my hives in a somewhat organized way. Having so many other people keep up with what I am doing makes it really a lot of fun.

Thank you, everyone, for the interest, the comments and the emails. I hope all of you who are beekeepers are having as much fun and learning as much as I am in the tiny world of the beehive.

Linda T

It's the Birthday of the Blog!

Actually as of yesterday I've been keeping this blog for one year! Think how many bees have come and gone on my deck during the year.....thousands upon thousands! I've done my best to record all the successes and failures. In the process I've

• lost one hive and one camera,
  
• learned to use a hammer and nails for many different construction projects including building hive bodies, putting together frames, and creating a robber screen.
• harvested honey using both the crush and strain method and making cut comb honey
• learned several ways to feed the bees
• tried to cope with the Varroa mite and the small hive beetle using non-chemical methods
• worked with starter strips and began the process of regressing to small cell
• learned a lot about the weather
• paid much more attention to what is blooming when in Atlanta
• found wonderful resources for bee knowledge on the web, in classes I've taken, and in my Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association
  
• met both in person and on the web a very diverse and fascinating group of people who also keep bees
• realized how much, much more I still have to learn about bees and beekeeping.

Keeping this blog has kept me on track with my project and has been very fulfilling. I will BEE continuing as I grow and increase in my bee experiences in this second year of the blog.