Dave’s WW of EU: Farther vs Further

Farther and further are two words that seem very much alike and are commonly misused. While each has roughly the same meaning, they have very distinct usages.

Farther is used when you are discussing an actual distance. “I ran 100 yards farther than you.”

Further is used when you are trying to say “to a greater extent” or “more.” “He continued his lecture by further expanding his thesis.”

That’s it. Simple right? Well, when you can think about it, yes. When you use it on the spur of the moment, you just have to train yourself. I find it helpful to remember that farther = far and further does everything else. It is also helpful to remember that if you can replace the word with “more,” you should use further.

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Dave’s WW of EU: Cannot vs Can Not

This is one that I’m seeing more and more.

For the longest time, I did not know there was a distinction between these two terms. In fact, I thought that can not was simply incorrect. Truth is, they are both correct in certain contexts and have distinct meanings.

• Cannot—Cannot is used for inabilities as in “I cannot go.”
• Can Not—Can not is used to describe a choice. For example, “I can not go,” does not describe the inability to go, but rather the option of not going. Instead of the “not” modifying “can” (as happens in “cannot”), “not” modifies the following word, in this case “go.”

One of the key differences is in the inflection you put on the word. In Cannot, the “not” portion of the term is not inflected. In Can Not, “not” is highly inflected. If you think of it another way, “can not” is almost asking a question or making a suggestion and is inflected that way.

What it means to me

The biggest thing is that you’ll start to notice the difference, and the difference is important. Unfortunately, you’ll start to notice that some people incorrectly make the distinction, especially in the written word. Fortunately, the difference between the two terms is so unique and specialized that you can probably figure it out just from context. That specialization is probably why so few people even know the distinction exists. I sometimes wonder if the two terms will eventually become one term with two meanings.

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Hive Inspection–June 23, 2012

And a bit of a harvest!

And before you die of shock, yes, I finally got out to take some pictures and Courtney took several others, but only after I got propolis on her camera. Sigh… I did try my darndest.

It was actually a very busy bee day, which I feel good about. Beekeeping has become such a recharging experience for me, especially when I can go with friends. Today, a long-time friend, Lee, joined Mackay and I at the hives. Lee and I have worked together on numerous projects before, especially teaching a financial literacy class. Someday, we hope to go into business together, although we’re still trying to figure out the hows of it all. It’d be fun.

On to the inspection…

Hive 1

Most of the pictures come from Hive 1. I had it in my mind to take a lot of pictures of Hive 1 and then put the camera away. Such is life.

Mackay and Lee sporting their gear and getting ready to go into 1. You can see how well the two old hives (2 and 4) are doing compared to 1, 3, and 5.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what happens when you don’t super fast enough. Hive 5 did the same thing. When we were in there two weeks ago, these hives still had plenty of room. Obviously they found a happy source of nectar and had nowhere to put it all, hence the build up on the inner cover.

View down into Hive 1 while smoking.

Any thoughts on smoking? I prefer a single puff. Mackay is heavier. I personally do NOT buy into the idea that it makes the bees think there is a fire and that they get ready to abandon the hive by gorging. That just doesn’t make sense to me. However, I do buy into the line of thought that it masks pheromones. In the end, I guess it doesn’t matter except to say that it works.

For the record, I use the cedar chips that we throw down in the bee yard to help absorb heat.

Hive 1 was full, thick, and very calm. A perfect start to beekeeping for Lee, which is why disaster happened at…

Hive 5

Because Hive 1 went well, Hive 5, our next target was bound to be not so well. For Lee that is. Yes, Lee became only the third person to be stung at my hives. Congratulations! I think it was on the very first frame we had him lift as well. This was, of course, immediately after both Mackay and I reassured him that Hive 5 was the gentlest of the hives. Such lies we tell.

My preferred position: Supervising!

Mackay mentioned today that this is a great hobby for him because it’s FREE! Right…. Free for him I guess. Fortunately I’m more than happy to share, especially the work load. Today was almost 100 degrees (if it wasn’t over).

If my blog had a sound track, the Jaws theme would be appropriate about now. This is only moments before Lee joined the STING club. I also renewed my membership today with a very shallow sting on my right pointer finger. The stinger was not embedded, which makes me wonder if I moved that fast OR if it were a wasp. There were plenty of wasps out today, so it wouldn’t surprise me. For me this might be the most mild reaction yet, which I’m thrilled for. I have to assume the ten stings from April is doing me good now. Lee didn’t seem to have much of a reaction.

Hive 5 had heavy build up on the inner cover like Hive 1. Everything else seemed well. We didn’t spot a single queen today, but we saw plenty of eggs in each hive. Like 1, we added the first honey super to hive 5.

Hive 2

Hive 2 has been our best hive by far. It is already fully supered, and I predicted that we would potentially harvest off this hive last time. That proved pre-mature (kind of). I think this hive is in that valley that comes from making their own queen. Plenty of bees, but very little progress on the honey. If I’m thinking back, this is just about the right time for the new queen’s brood to start foraging heavily. We split the hive around the 20th of April (I don’t remember the exact date off the top of my head), so 16 days for the new queen, 7 days or so to get mated, 21 days for the first workers to hatch, and then another two or three weeks for those to grow, mature, and start foraging. By my count, that puts us pretty close to the end of June for those first bees to really come into their own.

This is a frame out of Hive 2 showing a near perfect crescent. You could put that in a text book! Honey across the top and sides, a narrow ribbon of pollen, and then brood cells (most uncapped at this point). It really is gorgeous, so zoom in. Great shot, Courtney, by the way.

This hive is renowned or their hygienics, so I’m not worried about the brood pattern. That’s pretty typical for this hive and Hive 4 (the mom of Hive 2).

Now for the harvesting bit…. While pulling a frame out of Hive 2, the frame came apart. That is my single biggest complaint about wooden frames. Instead of trying to repair the frame, I decided to pull it because it was full of honey on one side and nothing on the other. Here’s a photo of the nothing side:

If you look at that bottom left corner, you can see where the frame came apart. While this side has some bees, the other side was loaded, and it was just too difficult to try and repair the frame. Plus, I don’t really have the tools for it. This is why I made the decision to go to solid plastic frames. I’m still not sure what I think about it, but the bees take to those as readily as the wood. My biggest complaint of the plastic is that the edges where they touch the other frames are hollow. Each time I pull a plastic frame, I find a bee or two that crawled in there and died when I put the frames back together and trapped it in the open space. I hate that.

Here’s the other side of that frame loaded with honey. The bottom I originally thought was brood given the number of bees on it, but they were just adding to the honey stores. Oh happy day!

Hive 3

Hive 3 is probably our third strongest hive, but only slightly more than 1 and 5. I didn’t do so well taking pictures here, or rather Courtney didn’t, because Carolyn was starting to be a stinker, as evidenced here:

She’s a very chubby 4-month old. Still bald as an ice cube, but cute.

Hive 3 was pretty normal. We found a frame with eggs on the first pick, so we closed it back up almost immediately. It was getting really hot by then. Oh, my only real complaint on Hive 3 is that this hive is still laying eggs in the honey super. I’m going to have to have a talk with this queen. We also supered hive 3 up to a full two honey supers. Interestingly enough, we forgot to super this hive until we were all done, so I supered it sans any gear at all! Pretty fun to tell the truth, but only because the bees were pretty calm today.

Hive 4

Ah Hive 4, my original queen. Do you other beekeepers get that way about your long-lived queens? I just love Hive 4, and I feel a special affinity for this hive. Go figure.

Here’s a frame from Hive 4 that I pulled. You can see that awful brood pattern if you zoom in. But I’ll take that brood pattern to get those results. This hive is just shy of ridiculous in their production and health.

This hive is fully supered, has caught up to Hive 2 after the split, and probably even surpassed Hive 2. I do think I’ll get a double-harvest off this hive, though we’ll wait and see.

Our valiant heroes chatting it up afterwards, with me inspecting my sting.

I’m still not sure what beekeeping has in store for me long-term (downsizing, growing bigger, staying the same, switching to Top Bar Hives…), but I do love doing it. I just find it enjoyable.

Especially when you get to…

Harvest!

I know it’s technically not the best way to harvest, but I’m a crush and strain man myself. Yes, you can preserve the wax for next season if you spin it, but I like to harvest the wax as well, which I’ll show in a minute. Plus, I like the non-labor intensive nature of crush and strain. Another reason I like it is because I’m less convinced that preserving the wax actually helps the bees. Sure the bees have to consume some honey to produce the wax, but I’m just not sure it’s all that beneficial to the overall production. Certainly it helps, and I won’t argue that, but I don’t know that it helps enough to worry about it. I’m more convinced that population is the key to a healthy hive, and rolling the wax over yearly would certainly keep less of the junk you don’t want from building up in the wax. That makes sense to me.

But as the old adage goes… Ask five beekeepers a question, and you’ll get six answers.

And there’s the good stuff…

After about six hours of straining, which coincidentally matches exactly how long I’m willing to wait before giving up, I got four 1/2 pint jars of honey. This is very strong honey, like that first bite from last year, and I’m pretty sure it is dandelion honey. Tasty, but nothing you would ever consider using in any quantity more than just a slight drop.

For his heroism and bravery, Lee will find himself the proud owner of one of those jars. Mackay will get another for himself, and I’ll put the other two downstairs in my storage. It’s honestly too strong to consider selling. I just don’t know that people would like it that much. Maybe I’ll mix those two jars in with the fall harvest to see if that doesn’t lighten the flavor. We’ll see.

Wax

After collecting wax for nigh on 18 months now, I finally got around to processing it. This is the wet filtering for now. Later I’ll do the “dry” filtering.

Here’s the process I followed:

1. Pan of water about a quarter full of acidified water. We used two teaspoons of Lemon Juice for that. Why acid? No clue. That’s what the instructions said.
2. Break the wax up into small chunks (the instructions said grape sized was about right).
3. Throw the wax in the water and heat SLOWLY until just shy of boiling. Light, small bubbles is all you would ever want. Oh, and stir it frequently and do NOT boil for more than a few minutes and NEVER boil it vigorously. Wax is extremely flammable, and you should NEVER leave the stove unattended.
4. Let it cool over however long it takes.

The end result is a layer of water on the bottom with all the soluble things from the wax, a sludge layer in the middle full of the non-soluble things that separated from the wax, and a top layer that should be pretty much beeswax ready for the dry filter.

For dry filtering, you heat the wax (and only the wax) slowly. Most sites I’ve seen recommend a double-boiler to avoid direct contact with a heat source. Sounds wise to me. After the wax is welted, pour it through a filter into whatever mold you are planning on using. That’s it. I will probably make my first attempt by pouring it through a few layers of cheese cloth.

Here are my wax chunks floating in the water. Most of this wax comes from cappings and bridge comb I’ve harvested. Some of it comes from some old candles and the drippings. That wax isn’t very clean because of the candles, but that’s why I’m filtering it, right? Plus, this is all just a grand experiment right now. There was quite a bit of honey in this comb (relatively speaking), so our whole house smelled like heaven all afternoon long. I took about an hour to get it up to just shy of boiling.

Mostly melted at this stage, but not quite liquid either. Love the color.

And that’s fully melted and just after I removed it from the heat. There were all these solids throughout the wax, which I simply don’t know what they are. I did my best to pull impurities as I stirred, but I’m definitely going to dry filter. Any ideas on what those solids could be?

And that’s it. I’ve been doing something bee related all day now, I’m tired, it’s boiling hot outside, multiple forest fires are burning in the valley, and life is good. When the wax is hard and filtered, I’m looking forward to expanded on the magic that are bees by doing lip balm, soaps, salves, and so forth. I could really get into this.

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Dave’s WW of EU: Ghoti

Ghoti is one of those linguistic things that is just kind of fun. Unless you’ve seen it before, you are probably pronouncing that word “g-ah-ti.” The real pronunciation is “fish” as in “all the fish in the deep blue sea.” I’ll show you how in a minute, but first let’s talk about why this term even came into existence.

Spelling in the English Language is just as screwed up as our word history. One of the great beauties and power of the English language is that it is really a mess of dozens of language influences. Those influences didn’t affect just our speech, but they affected our spelling as well. Many languages have one sound and one sound only corresponding to a letter or letter combination. For example, the Spanish “a” when seen alone is always pretty much the exact same sound. There are also few if any silent letters. English, on the other hand, makes all sorts of sounds with each letter and has silent letters all over the place. As an example, the term “ghoti” was created to showcase just how crazy our language is.

As I’ve already mentioned, ghoti is really pronounced “fish.” Here’s how:

The “gh” is the same “gh” sound you find in words like “enough, tough, trough.”

The “o” is the same “o” sound you find in the word “women.”

The “ti” is the same “ti” sound you find in words like “information, destination, and reflection.”

And there you have it. When the sounds are all thrown together, they read “fish,” not “g-ah-ti.”

By the way, our unusual history of linguistic development is one of the biggest reasons our spelling is so difficult. Numerous attempts to simplify our spelling have all failed, but I doubt they will cease anytime in the near future. On another note, our linguistic history is another reason that English is such a fantastic language at describing and discussing terms. We have so many words that are so similar to each other that we have a wide-reaching scope of possibilities.

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Dave’s WW of EU: Articles

There are exactly three articles: A, AN, and THE.

The only difference between the three are whether they are Definite (the) or Indefinite (a, an) articles. To know which one to use, you just need to determine whether or not the object is a definite thing or not.

For example, if you are talking about a specific fence, you would use “the.” If you are talking about any fence, you would use “a.”

It’s that easy. Most of the time, you can easily tell which to use and have no problem with them. If there is trouble, it is choosing between A and An. Just remember, use A before non-vowel sounds and An before vowel sounds.

On an interesting note, there are many words that changed because of their article. For example, the word “nickname” used to be pronounced “ickname” (probably from the German “Ich” meaning “I” and “name”). Anyway, you used to say “an ickname,” but that quickly changed to “a nickname.” Cool, huh?

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Eight classic–but forgotten–family movies

Movie night is great, but I tend to watch the same things again and again.

I posted an article on familynews.com today listing eight great, but often forgotten, family movies. Go here to check it out.

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Hive Inspection–June 8, 2012

Here’s the details of our hive inspection from last Friday.

Hive 1—Doing well. I did not find the queen, but I did find plenty of eggs. One thing I’ve noticed is that they are not really drawing out the bottom of the bottom brood box. I have to wonder if that is a ventilation issue with the new screened bottom boards. I just don’t know. I have debated adding a slatted board to the hives to see what that would do. This is something I’m noticing across all of the hives.

I have not yet felt the need to start staggering the hive boxes to provide additional ventilation at the top of the hive though. I do like the reduced number of entrances.

Hive 2—This hive is doing ridiculous.

The hive is already fully supered, and I expect to do an early harvest in two weeks. I really do. They are just that full. I was worried about them having a honey dome, but they do not. The new queen (I still haven’t found her) is laying quite heavily throughout the top and bottom brood boxes as well. I’m immensely pleased with how this split has gone.

Hive 3—I need to find this queen and slap her. She laid eggs in the honey super!!! The turkey.

Sigh….

The good news is that she laid eggs in only one frame (so far), but still… I’ve never used queen excluders, and I don’t want to start, but eggs in the honey super? I’m hopeful that when those eggs hatch, the bees will quickly fill the cells with nectar and drive the brood box back down. If not, I’ll end up pulling that frame out and replacing it with a new frame.

This hive is also doing quite well, and I put the second honey super on it.

Hive 4—Another strong hive. I found frame after frame of eggs and only eggs. I’m not sure why there are so many eggs, but another three weeks, and we’re going to see an ocean of bees coming out of that hive.

This hive is also fully supered now, which is exciting. This is far earlier than last year for being fully supered. To recap, hives 2, 3, and 4 are fully supered. One and 5 are still going strong with just one honey super.

Hive 5—Mackay learned three, maybe four valuable lessons on this hive. In no particular order:

1. Bees sometimes build bridge comb. Sometimes bridge comb is sturdy enough to lift a frame from a lower box out when you lift the upper box.
2. When a frame is hanging from another frame and held only by the bridge comb, it’s pretty hard to set the box down and fix the problem.
3. When you try to set it down and don’t know about the bridge comb, sometimes you knock the frame full of bees free.
4. The appropriate phrase to say when you are in that situation is not, “Dave HELP!!!” It’s “AAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!”

When Mackay first called for help, I had my hands full of another frame and couldn’t get there fast enough. He ended up dropped two full frames of nectar, bees, and brood on the ground. We both immediately set everything down and walked away for a few minutes. When we came back, we poured on the smoke and got to work on cleaning up.

The bees were remarkably calm considering what we’d just put them through. No stings for either of us, which really surprised me. The two dropped frames were intact still, but the ground was littered with lost nurse bees and soaked in lost nectar (sad…). We ended up going through every single frame in Hive 5 to find the queen just in case she had been dropped (she hadn’t).

I hate seeing a frame dropped, and I think we set Hive 5 back a full week or two due to nectar losses and the nurse bees that were lost. We did our best to scoop them up off the ground and bring them home, but I’m sure we still lost at least several hundred bees. I don’t blame Mackay, of course. It’s not exactly something you would expect to happen. I do, however, blame those all plastic frames. For some reason, these frames seem to attract that bridge comb. And since there is very little propolis with these new hives, the bridge comb is enough to lift the frame. It’s unfortunate really, but there you have it.

Aside from that, Hive 5 was doing well.

All in all it was a pleasant Friday with the bees. They were very calm (ridiculously calm). One of those visits were I could have been tempted to go without protective gear. Not even a veil. I’m not quite that fool hardy just yet, but they were that calm.

As I explore more and more what I like and don’t like about beekeeping, the more I realize I’m going to need to change when Mackay finally moves in two years or so. At the very least, I’ll have to find a new assistant.

Oh, and I’m still impressed that Mackay hasn’t been stung, especially after dropping two frames of bees. It is now my primary goal to get him stung at least once this season.

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Parenting and Rewards, Part 2

Parenting is hard stuff. But it is completely worth it.

Today, I posted the second article in my Parenting and Rewards series over on familynews.com. Go here to check it out.

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Dave’s WW of EU: Gerunds

I don’t know why, but I’ve always been fond of gerunds.

Gerunds are simple to identify and use. A gerund is a verb ending in –ing that is used as a noun. That’s it. You use them all the time. For example:

• Jogging is an excellent way to exercise.
• I love watching the news.
• I went dancing with my friends.

NOTE: Just because you have an –ing ending verb, does NOT mean you have a gerund. The key to gerunds are that they have both the –ing ending AND they function as a noun.

Because a gerund functions as a noun, it can be the subject of the sentence, a direct object, a subject complement, or even the object of a preposition.

Examples:

• Subject: Running from the police is not smart.
• Direct Object: The police do not appreciate people running from them.
• Subject complement: Someone who is running from the police can expect to be chased.
• Object of a Preposition: That guy was arrested for running from the police.

Punctuating gerunds is easy… don’t do it. Gerunds rarely require any special punctuation.

For practice, underline the gerunds in the following sentences. If you’re already an expert, identify the gerund phrase and how the gerund is functioning in the sentence. You can see the answers by scrolling down the page.

1. Swimming keeps me in shape.
2. Swimming in your pool is always fun.
3. Telling your father was a mistake.
4. The college recommends sending applications early.
5. He won the game by scoring during the overtime period.
6. Her most important achievement was winning the national championship.
7. Going to work today took all my energy.
8. Fighting for a losing cause made them depressed.

 

 

 

Answer Key

1. Swimming keeps me in shape. [subject]
2. Swimming in your pool is always fun. [subject]
3. Telling your father was a mistake. [subject]
4. The college recommends sending applications early. [direct object]
5. He won the game by scoring during the overtime period. [object of preposition]
6. Her most important achievement was winning the national championship. [subject complement]
7. Going to work today took all my energy. [subject]
8. Fighting for a losing cause made them depressed. [subject]

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Using Reward Systems to Influence a Child’s Behavior

I published an article on the familynews.com site today. Head over there to check it out!

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