Bob Seaman of Parkindale, NB, is looking for used deep supers.

If you’ve got any deep supers you’d like to sell, give him a call at (506) 756-2796, email gsdluv (at) nb.sympatico.ca or just leave a message in the comments for this post.

It takes a person who is really comfortable with bees to do the old “Beard of Bees” trick! Here, 61-year-old commercial beekeeper Harold Pease, of Litchfield Park, Arizona, shows how it’s done.

Tying the queen in her cage (a prescription medicine bottle with holes punched in it) around his neck, Pease smeared a few drops of sugar water on his face and neck. Pease’s friend, Ed Taylor, then shook the box the bees had been transported in, and they flew in every direction, settling on his chest, neck, ears and face.

“They’re whispering sweet nothings in my ear,” he said with a chuckle.

Pease performed the stunt for The Arizona Republic newspaper as a way of publicizing his bee-removal services.

Interestingly, he says that he’s the only beekeeper in his area of Arizona who does not exterminate the swarms they remove from people’s home and properties — rather surprising, in a time when honeybees are in such short supply.

See the full story: Valley man wears beard made of bees by Annemarie Moody (photo by Nick Oza); The Arizona Republic, 12 June 2007.

A greenhouse operator near Saginaw, Michigan, has an idea that he thinks may help the stressed-out honeybees — a “honey trail” of high-nectar crops.

If the bees have an ample supply of forage throughout the season, as John Dusek sees it, the colonies will be stronger and better able to deal with pests, disease, pollution, disturbance, and all the other stresses of modern hive life.

“The concept of a honey trail is to map out an area of what’s flowering during specific times,” Dusek said.

“If you know what’s in bloom when, you also know when the gaps are, and that’s the times when we want to take the high nectar producing plants and plant them closer to the hives.”

Dusek hopes to get started planting a honey trail in his area this summer, with the help of a troop of Girl Scouts and the support of Terry M. Klein, owner of T.M. Klein & Sons Honey Farms, the vice-president of the Michigan Beekeepers Association.

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