What Equipment do I Need to Keep Bees?

Of all the activities around our household, I consider beekeeping the most rewarding. The encounter with this otherworldly species, the pollination services, the honey and wax are worth the occasional sting. But what do you need to get started? I’ve seen some outrageously priced starter kits, not to mention the Juicero of beekeeping, the Flow Hive. By putting together your own set of equipment you can save a lot of money. Here’s my basic starter kit:

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Bee suit
There’s no reason you need to get stung! Dadant has an integrated hat/veil jumpsuit that I’ve used for years. This suit is one piece, meaning that there’s no gap between your veil and suit for bees to climb up in and I like that it covers your whole body. Tuck the pant legs into boots and you’re good to go. Bees can still do a kind of half sting through the material, so I wear long sleeve shirts and long pants if I’m doing something where the bees could get angry, such as a removal job. Dadant sells more substantial and durable suits that which might be a good investment if you’re thinking of running a lot of hives or opening your own removal business. There are also more expensive ventilated suits for hot climates. But for hobbyists such as myself, the inexpensive Dadant suit is good enough. Get a size larger than your normal size. Too big is better than too small.

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Gloves
I’ve gone through a lot of gloves over time. I’ve used both rubber gloves and goat skin gloves. The rubber gloves come in handy where there’s the possibility of dripping honey such as when cutting bees out of a wall or doing a honey harvest. The goat skin gloves make for less finger fumbling. I suggest owning both.

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Smoker
Dadant’s basic smoker has not changed design in a hundred years. It’s one of those objects, like the safety bicycle or the fork, that reached its design apotheosis a long time ago and doesn’t need to be subject to the whims of fashion. I own the cheapest model and have found it perfectly adequate. The more expensive models have a kind of cage around them to prevent you from burning yourself but I’ve never found this feature necessary.

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Hive tool
This is a small and deliberately dull crowbar. Bees stick everything together with propolis, so you need the little crow bar to pry stuff apart. I own the economy model. The end of the tool is dull so you don’t damage your equipment.

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Bee brush
You use a bee brush for flicking the bees away so they don’t get crushed when you put the boxes back together. In addition to being polite, this prevents the bees from setting off their alarm pheromone and causing a stinging frenzy.

Bee housing
Like meany topics in beekeeping this is one that divides families and friends. I’m not going to wade into the controversy here but I’ll just say that you should go with whatever interests you: top bar, Langstroth, Warre etc. I buy medium, unassembled Langstroth boxes and frames (without foundation) from LA Honey. The unassembled boxes are much cheaper than getting a kit. I use only medium boxes so that all my equipment is interchangeable and to reduce the weight you have to heft (a full box of bees is surprisingly heavy). Since I live in a place that never freezes I don’t have to use inner covers or worry about insulating hives in the winter. I’m in the no-treatment, natural beekeeping camp so there’s a bunch of other things that I don’t use such as queen excluders, foundation and mite-related gadgets. For more details on this natural approach I’d suggest taking a look at Michael Bush’s extensive website (he also has tips for beekeeping in cold climates). Without wading into the natural beekeeping fight, let me just say going au natural (so to speak) keeps costs way down. You could get even cheaper by making your own top bar hives but I was taught on Langstroth equipment and I’ve just decided to stick with them out of habit.

Stand for the hives
After a bad experience with the wooden stands that I made myself, I bought some metal stands. But you could save a lot of money by just using cinder blocks. The important thing to note is that bee boxes should be off the ground to prevent flooding and to make it easier to lift the boxes. Your stand must be substantial enough to support several hundred pounds as a hive gets really heavy and you really don’t want it to fall over!

Swarm kit
I also keep a swarm kit containing some of the stuff above and a few other items in a tool box that is in the garage and ready to go at all times. You never know when someone is going to call with a bee situation and you don’t want to run about gathering tools at the last moment. My swarm kit contains:

  • smoker
  • burlap to burn in smoker
  • matches
  • spray bottle with syrup made with a 50/50 combo of water and white sugar
  • pruning sheers for cutting tree branches
  • a roll of caution tape
  • bee suit/gloves/boots (most, but not all swarms are docile)
  • nuc box
  • mesh bag to put the nuc box in (especially important if you don’t own a truck!)
  • knife (for cut-outs)
  • Benadryl for when you get stung!

I strongly suggest having all of the things in this post on hand before you think of getting bees.

So beekeepers, what did I forget to include? Leave a comment!

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What’s Your Everyday Carry?

edc2017 copyOne of the more fetishistic subcultures in the urban homesteading activity playpen is an obsession with “everyday carry,” abbreviated by hip insiders as “EDC.” EDCers peacock their carefully curated sets of survival tools in photos called “pocket dumps.” The internet’s Mecca of pocket dumps is everydaycarry.com. On that site you’ll see color and texture coordinated EDCs reminiscent of the leather and wood appointments of the luxury yachts of Russian oligarchs. I wouldn’t dare post my dingy EDC for fear of ridicule in the comments. That fear is why I’ll share my personal EDC on the much more friendly Root Simple website. Consider this blog post as an update of the pocket dump I posted in 2011. Since that time my EDC has changed, mostly via subtractions. Here’s my current EDC:

1. Leatherman Rebar
This is the central and, unquestionably, most useful cornerstone of my EDC. Not a day goes by when I don’t pull out the Rebar to fix something or slice off a piece of cheese with the dull (my fault) pocket knife. The Leatherman folks have tried to anticipate every possible lifestyle with a confusing array of Leatherman models. The model I own, the Rebar, was made for aging 90s hipsters who own 100 year old crumbling Los Angeles bungalows. It’s got wire cutters for questionable electrical repairs, a screwdriver, and a thin metal shaft that doubles as a tool for ejecting stuck Pearl Jam CDs and for drawing floral patterns in cappuccino foam. OK, I made that last bit up–it has a beer bottle opener–not, I’ll note, a corkscrew as does the Eurotrashy Swiss Army Knife. I like that the Rebar comes with a belt holster which allows me to carry the Rebar at all times, even on occasions when I’m in a suit and tie.

Women, who lack pockets and, often, belts might not be able to accommodate the bulky Rebar into their EDC. Leatherman sells a smaller multi-tool called the “Juice” (inadvertent OJ reference?) that Kelly used to carry. Kelly lost her Juice which confirms the advantage of the belt holster (and her rant about women’s pockets).

2. Keychain pill holder
In my pill holder I keep two Aleves for life’s aches and pains and a dose of Benadryl for bee stings (an inevitable hazard of the beekeeping hobbyist). Unfortunately, I’ve had trouble with the keychain pill holders coming unscrewed over time and spilling the contents. Somewhere in our great consumer horn of plenty there’s an ideal keychain pill holder that doesn’t come unscrewed. If you know of one please leave a comment.

3. iPhone
It’s hard to say if this thing helps or hinders. Its navigation and communication capabilities are miraculous, like something out of the fevered imagination Giordano Bruno. I expect a teleportation app soon. But the damn thing is as addictive as crack and it allows the NSA, TSA and FBI to tell when I’m eating too many tortilla chips. Note that really important Silicon Valley tech bros carry phones that only make and receive calls:

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Stuff I stopped carrying
In the nearly seven years since I last documented my EDC, I’ve eliminated a few items:

Fire starting tools
I used to carry a second pill container with a small match and a ball of wax soaked cotton as well as a magnesium fire starting tool. Unfortunately, part of the magnesium tool came unscrewed in my pocket and got lost (perhaps the fluid dynamicists in our audience can explain this common pocket phenomenon). But also, how often do I need to start a fire in Los Angeles? While arson is the only honest form of architectural criticism in a city full of Geoff Palmer atrocities, it’s not like I need to start a fire to stave off the cold. Maybe I’ll live to regret this decision, but there’s only so much I can carry on my keychain without ruining the tailoring of my Prada.

Mini flashlight
Thanks to the perpetual glow of LA’s streetlights I found the mini-flashlight I used to carry an unnecessary pocket lump. It also came unscrewed multiple times and the batteries kept spilling out. Plus the iPhone comes with a light to enable post-50 year olds, such as myself, to read the tiny prices on small plates menus.

Stuff I’m not sure I should carry
Then there’s one new item that I’m ambivalent about carrying:

lockpicksetLock pick set disguised as a suspicious credit card
Due to a few recent bad experiences locking myself out, I’ve been teaching myself the art of lock picking (I’ll need to do a more detailed post on this hobby at a later date). But I’m worried the Chinese credit card will get me in trouble with the NSA, TSA and FBI folks who are monitoring my snacking habits. So, for the time being, I not sure if I should include the lock pick set in my EDC.

But enough self indulgence, what’s in your EDC?

Saturday Tweets: Dumb Appliances, Chinatown Produce,

Why You Should Have a Cat Fountain

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I’ve read varying explanations for the reason why some cats seem to prefer running water. Most cat experts say they perceive it as fresher and more likely to be a safe source of water. Some cats, apparently, won’t drink anything but water flowing from a tap.

While cats are desert creatures they still need water. For our cat’s wild ancestors rodent blood (yum!) provided supplemental hydration. The ideal diet for a cat would be a mouse a day, but we’d get in trouble with the PETA folks if we started a mouse farm at the Root Simple compound. So we’ve got to get them to drink water. Our two cats drink happily from our cat fountain and from bowls of fresh water. We try to have both on hand to encourage them to drink. Our cats get wet food in the morning and dry food in the evening. The wet food provides some hydration and the dry food helps keep their teeth clean.

Encouraging them to drink water is where a cat fountain comes in handy. But, in the ultimate of “first world problems,” most cat fountains are ugly, resembling those plastic things you throw cigarette butts in:

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And we don’t want to encourage our cats to smoke:

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But I digress. Let’s get back to the cat fountain.

We found an attractive cat fountain several years ago made by ceramicists Keith Davitt and Jackie McKannay whose products are available on Etsy. I don’t think they still make the exact same model we have but they sell plenty of other handsome fountains. I clean out the pump twice a week and change the water frequently.

The pump uses a small amount of electricity and costs just $1.29 a year to run. You need to be careful when you remove the pump from the bowl so as not to rip off the suction cups that hold it to the bottom of the bowl. As a side benefit the fountain adds the sound of running water to our living room, thus giving the space the vibe of a yoga studio or West Coast chiropractor’s office. You have to throw on some new age mp3s for the full effect, but you get the idea.

Our vet has us supplement the water with Oxyfresh Pet Oral Hygiene Solution to help with their tobacco stained teeth (just kidding). One of our cats has tooth resorption so we have to stay on top of oral hygiene.

As component of feline environmental enrichment as well as yoga studio ambiance I wholeheartedly endorse the cat fountain concept. It’s also well loved by the new saluki puppy which I will let Kelly explain in an exclusive blog post to come . . .

Getting Online Hearing Aids

SilverDia2_CMYK_1024x1024I was born with crappy hearing. High frequencies such as high pitched bird calls and bleeping electronic devices run above my hearing range. Worse, I will often confuse “s” sounds with “t” sounds thus turning my perception of ordinary conversations into a never ending avant-garde poetry reading.

Good hearing is part of a good life. Friends and relatives get frustrated when they have to yell or repeat things. And there’s research indicating that hearing problems can contribute to dementia later in life.

Generally I’m not a fan of Silicon Valley’s “disruption” tactics, but if ever there was an industry that needed shaking up it was the hearing aid biz. Until just a few years ago hearing aids were expensive, costing thousands of dollars each for a device that’s far simpler than our much cheaper smart phones. For most people in the U.S., insurance won’t pay for hearing aids.

When I first got a hearing aid ten years ago from HearX, at $2,000 per ear, I could only afford one. It’s an outrageous price since, according to the New York Times, the device probably costs around $100 to manufacture. It’s just a microphone and speaker with a modest amount of signal processing. The computer on which I’m typing out this blog post also has a speaker, a microphone and much more sophisticated audio signal processing capabilities. It can also play cute cat videos and costs half as much as one hearing aid. And why, if I just went to my doctor for a hearing test, am I paying for someone at HearX to do the exact same test?

When it came time to replace the overpriced hearing aid which HearX would no longer service, I checked out Costco. Their hearing aids were half the price of HearX but they still made you go through another hearing test. A friend (annoyed with my bad hearing) sent me an article on new online hearing aid services and I discovered that they were half the price of Costco at around $500 to $600 an ear. I ended up going with Audicus and I’ve been pleased with the two hearing aids I purchased. I went to my doctor and got a hearing test (she also did an MRI to make sure that there was not something else going on). I sent the hearing aid test to Audicus and a week later they sent me a box with two hearing aids.

With my Audicus hearing aids the part that goes in the ear is a one-size-fits-all plug as opposed to the custom earmolds used by HearX. This cuts down on costs and means that you don’t have to go in for a fitting. I haven’t noticed any significant difference in terms of audio quality or comfort between my Audicus hearing aids and my HearX hearing aid. I’ve been using my Audicus hearing aids for two years with no problems.

I have a few important tips if you’re considering a hearing aid:

  • When I first got hearing aids a friend who is an audiologist told me to wear them all day everyday even if I was alone. This is because they take awhile to get used to. For me I was hearing sounds I had never heard before some of which were unpleasant.
  • Even when you get past the early phase you should still wear them as much as possible. I’ve been bad about this lately. It’s important to remember how important communication is for ourselves and for our relationships.
  • And don’t worry about aesthetics. Hardly anyone will notice that you are wearing them. People don’t look at your ears when they are talking to you they look at your eyes. I went with the silver colored mode above rather than a flesh colored hearing aid.