In the north, winter preparation is critical for everyone. We put up wood to keep our house warm. Now, we need to help our honey bees keep thier house warm, too.
There are various opinions held by experienced bee keepers regarding proper winter hive preparation. Choosing the proper method is somewhat confounding to novice bee keepers, such as ourselves.
Most bee keepers, though not all, wrap their hives in tar paper. This protects from wind, and has the added benefit of attracting solar heat. In addition, some sort of insulating material under the top cover of the hive is essential. The trick is to use a porous material, so that condensation, which develops when the warmth the bees produce comes into contact with the cool walls of the hive, is absorbed and doesn’t drip down onto the bee cluster and freeze. A bee popcycle is undesirable on every level.
Among the materials suitable for insulation are ceiling tiles, burlap, and homosote (whatever that is). We are leaning toward using a material popular with old timers: newspaper.
Naturally, we want the bees to have an interesting winter hiatus. We will use the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It is thick, therefore, practical, with the added benefit of a full range of news.
I purused today’s paper with an eye toward what the bees might find interesting. Perhaps it is because it is a Holiday weekend, but it didn’t seem like the best news day.
Tiger Woods ran over a fire hydrant and cracked his car into a tree. Speculation abounds as to what really happened. Allegedly, his wife heard the accident, raced outside, and used a golf club to break the window of the car. She then pulled him out and called for help. Some suspicious minds believe that she actually used the golf club, in the spirit of Lizzie Borden, to whack him a few times. He fled, but didn’t get far. This seems implausible, and besides, I don’t think the bees care. Nor do I, though I wish him well.
There is a story about a gecko that needed to go the veteranarian for an enema. $500!
Apparently Madonna is dating a 22 year old stud muffin from Brazil. He is a model, and recently became a DJ, too. He has DJ’d two gigs, earning a whopping $15,000 for just one night’s work. Several column inches were taken up musing about whether his first name, Jesus, is pronounced, “Hay-soos” or “Gee-zus”. Whatever. The bees would find this tedious–though they do like to dance.
Of course, there is a lot of buzz about the interlopers who crashed the White House party. Now, incredibly, they are attempting to sell thier story for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yoo hoo, Weirdos: We already know your stupid story. Hay-soos!
Now that I think about it, maybe I’ll research what homosote is. . .
O apresentador, contratado desde 2000, prolongou seus compromissos com a emissora carioca até 2015.
Ele continuará a frente do “Altas Horas” nas madrugadas de sábado. Além do programa, Serginho comanda o educativo “Ação”, e um programa em que entrevista personalidades que relembram sua trajetória nos tempos de escola no canal Futura.
O apresentador chegou à Globo em 2000, para apresentar o projeto “Festival da Música Popular Brasileira”. Antes disso, teve passagens pela TV Cultura, onde apresentou o “Matéria Prima”, e pelo SBT, canal em que apresentou por quase dez anos o “Programa Livre”.
Com informações de Lauro Jardim, da Veja.
