The title speaks for the blog today, just some random thoughts. It's January 13th and I'm still getting queens mated. Not grafting a lot or trying that many, just running four mating nucs. Last Wednesday the temp dropped down to mid 40's. I lost seven grafts. I'm blaming it on the cold, they should have emerged Friday or Saturday. I candled them and saw the pupae just flopping around as I turned the cell. Cut open and it was obvious the development had stopped. I've since build an incubator, I'll do a video of it soon. It operates on 12 volts so I can plug it in the truck. Currently I have it connected to an old car battery with a battery maintainer in the garage. The thermostat reads 93.5, it runs from 91.5 to 94. Don't know how accurate it is. I have five cells in now which should emerge on Wednesday. Bee Culture magazine came out yesterday, they did a thing on my gadgets, pretty cool. I anticipate an increase in sales. Certainly hope for one. If you read this and came here because of the article, leave me a note. I've upgraded the spindle on my engraver, makes a big difference, still not at full speed, a new power supply coming next week should solve that. My Youtube channel is n_spect_r.
Today much of the country is under a severe winter storm warning, it's near 60 here with a forecast of sun and 80. We're having another club build day, trying to make some wooden-ware and stay ahead of the spring buildup. Around here Valentine's day sort of marks the kick off, drone populations rise and swarms start. Although we had some swarms in December, been a strange winter. Maple is already starting to bloom, I see my bees bring in white and yellow pollen every day and all of my boxes have some honey and nectar. I re-queened three boxes last fall, as a necessity since the original queens were lost. In all of those boxes they are totally packed with bees and the queens are laying brood on three or four frames. Something I plan to try again this fall. I think as soon as the Brazilian pepper starts to flow, I'll introduce new queens in half of my colonies and see how they winter (yeah right winter in Florida). Met some new people at the monthly club meeting this month. We had more than 40 attend. Been a club now for two years and we've had at least 30 people at each meeting. One new member said he found us from Ian Steppler's video on my gadget. On the subject of the gadgets. When I made the first one there were a few people who said it was a dumb idea, sold over 300 since then. I need some more dumb ideas. I've had some thoughts on this lately and been watching some Youtube videos on queen rearing. In most videos I see two specific items, Chinese grafting tools and JZ-BZ cups. They're almost the standard. Personally I don't like the Chinese tool but it's still the most popular. So I have an objective that five years from now, new videos on grafting will also include my disk. With that in mind I'm looking for places and people who regularly hold queen rearing classes. I'll make a deal with you for bulk disks for each student. The tray has been and continues to be a frustration for me. I should have had some inventory two months ago but constant delays. I will have limited inventory in a day or so. And I mean really limited, like less than 10. It's still a bit early, I know most people won't start the queen rearing for another two months so I'm hopeful to have some decent numbers by mid February. Stay tuned to the blog and watch the gadgets page.
