HOME MADE BEE EQUIPMENT – 2022
Beekeeping is ‘Fun’ for lots of different reasons. I won’t name them all, you know what they are. But, I will name one of them . . . making stuff for our ‘bees’. Honey Bees are simply looking for a cavity with a minimum volume in order to live, raise babies, grow their population and swarm to spread their genetics around in this survival of the fittest Darwinian competition in the environment. I have seen them living in mailboxes, the trunk of old abandoned cars, walls of buildings, attics and you name it. So, other than this minimum cavity space we can add a lot to the standard hive we provide for them to make them safer and more efficient. Honey Bees are super forgiving to us beekeepers as we have fun trying to help them by making homemade equipment for their Hive and for us. Be thinking about the 2022 Bee Culture Calendar competition as we want you to share what you have made in your garage, shed or official shop for your honey bee colonies. It could be anything – hive bodies, supers, frames, bottom boards, escape boards, lids, nucs, SHB Traps, entrances to reduce robbing and many, many other things we have all made at one time or another. If you have photos of what you have made, diagrams to go along with them and how they fit and work on a honey bee colony please forward them to us. We want to see them and so do the thousands of beekeepers and others who will get the 2022 Bee Culture calendar.
Look at the shape of the photo on each page. Not quite square, certainly not vertical. We lose excellent vertical photos every year because we simply can’t use them. Think of what your photo will look like when framing it with your camera. Then turn your camera 90 degrees and look again. You can take 100 photos to get one good one. Take 100.
Have your shot in either full sun, or full shade, but not both. Your camera won’t like what it sees and won’t do a good job of lighting.
Horizontal shots will do OK but keep the width:height ratio somewhat in mind. If the subject is too wide, then to get it all in back ground – but maybe that’s ok this time. Have the subject close enough that we can see the details. So take 100 photos. What the heck?
Take a lot of shots. Lots and lots. Slightly different angles both left and right and up and down. Fuzz down your flash with tissue or partially block it so the light isn’t crisp. If you can, reduce the intensity of the flash, too. Try a hundred ways, and look to see which one worked best. That’s the one we want.
THIS IS IMPORTANT.
Submit your photos as a single jpg file, attached to an email, not embedded in the email. Send one photo per email, and include WITH EACH EMAIL YOUR NAME, MAILING ADDRESS AND PHONE NUMBER. We got hundreds of photos this year and keeping them all straight when they are not identified gets to be a real difficult task – and there aren’t many of us here to do that. If it isn’t identified, it won’t get looked at, so please label each.
If you send a CD with photos, write ON THE CD (NOT ON THE ENVELOPE OR BOX) YOUR NAME, ADDRESS AND PHONE NUMBER AND EMAIL. The same rules apply – no information, it won’t get looked at. We’re sorry, but we just don’t have the time or people to organize a lot of photos and try and keep them all straight if they are not identified. Make it easy for us and you stand a much better chance of getting your shot in the calendar.
Deadline for submissions for Bee Culture’s 2022 calendar is October 1, 2021 in our office and on my computer. So mark your calendars now (OH, look! It’s already marked on your 2020 Calendar a month earlier!) and get going. Once entered, photos can be used by Bee Culture magazine.
As usual, send your photos as jpgs to me at Jerry@BeeCulture.com, with 2022 Calendar in the subject line. FOR EVERY PHOTO (1 PER EMAIL) include your name, email, phone and address. If you don’t we can’t use the photo. And good luck!
