""Hence there is a clear potential mechanism for these pesticides to damage the first line of defence that insects have against disease. Again it seems clear that insecticides are linked to sickness in bees and impairment to pollination services."" The possibility fits in with what has already been discovered about the harmful effects of neonicotinoids ��" in that bees treated with imidacloprid, which is Bayer's biggest-selling insecticide worth ã500m a year in sales to the company ��" are far more susceptible to disease, even at microscopic doses. This has been shown by two independent studies carried out in the past two years." See the link below: Here is a link that might be useful: very recent news article

Update: I finished building the the new hive Saturday morning, then put it in place with the escape cone and started clearing branches around the tree. I actually had to clear a couple just to set the hive up under the trunk. Between cutting branches I kept sealing off more spots where they were escaping aorund the cone. Eventually I realized that was a losing battle, and decided that since I was suited up to work bees anyway, I might as well try to locate the hollow they were in and move them. I took a small bit and a dowel to fit and probed around the trunk to find spots where I knew a hollow was near the surface. When I went to start the neighbors borrowed chainsaw, I realized it was out of gas and that I didn't have any premixed 2-stroke fuel handy either. Tried using a bow saw, but that was no fun. So, I put a crosscut blade in the circular saw and did plunge cuts to carve blocks, then a crowbar to break out chunks. The first hollow had dead wood but no bees, worked on another spot for a while and got nowhere as far as actually removing wood. Found another bulge over what was once an old knot near the entrance hole (the entrance cone was still working to steer hive traffic mainly thorugh it instead of around me) I pried back the square I'd cut and out flew a bee, and I saw a flash of comb behind it. So I topped off the smoker (having already realized that week-dead oak leaves were much better smoker fuel than the smoker fuel that came witht he borrowed smoker) and popped out the inital chunk, then decided to carve out a bit more. At this point I really began to appreciate the smoker. Turns out the comb was aligend edgewide to the direction of hte fall, it had a little new wax on the top edge, and was a little squised looking on the bottom edge, but was in remarkably good shape when I started, and they had a few peices of brand new comb on the new top of the hive. The first couple of peices of comb pretty much had to be torn out to make enough room to work, all honey, mostly old comb. The rest of the comb I had to cut in half to pull out and so it would fit on the bars I was tying it to. I started just using Buck skinning knife, but after the first peice, I got a bread knife to have soem reach to cut the combloose way back in the hollow. Each chunk was between 12-15" long and about 8" in height when tied to the bars. Of the peices, about 3-4 where a mix of uncapped honey and brood, which I put near the main entrance to the new hive, and around 10 were honey. I kept a few chunks of the honeycomb that were too small to tie on after making sure they were free of brood. On the brood comb, I even tied on the little peices. When I headed in for the night, long after dark, I think only one sliver of honey was left back in a hollw I couldn't fish it out of and I'd gotten all of the broodcomb in the main cavity. While I'd been working, many of the bees had clustered in the cone/passage. At one point I was afraid they were jammed so I expanded the opening, but it appears they were just clustering. I think most of the bees were still in the corners of the old hive. There may be another section of hollow yet towards the base of the trunk, and that sliver heading up of honeycomb that I'll need to try to get access to if the hive has not fully moved downstair by Monday. Since thier old home is now wide open and all the food and brood is a walk downstairs, I hope they will find their way down quickly. I didn't see the queen, but I was preoccupied transfering the comb and figured morning light would tell if they had decided to move on down, though by the time I was done, the new hive box had started getting pretty full of bees.

It's not just salt water they want. We have a fresh water pool and it's not so much the water, but the white pipe around the return from the pool filter. My husband made valves where the water returns to the pool with 2 different shut offs. Depending how you adjust them one pipe returns the water directly in the pool. One has a spray head that sprays the water into the air over the pool to keep the water cooler in the summer because it gets way too warm if not. We live in South Texas, enough said and with adjustment it also makes water run down the slide.. The honey bees congregate all around the center of that pipe and more and more keep coming. Last year it was the white stair rail going into the pool, however we've been blessed so far, they are not aggressive at all. When I hook up the pool vacuum, I have to have my face ,hands and arms right in the middle of them swarming around me to get it hooked up and they haven't even attempted to bother me, Thank God!! I was a little concerned at first, but so far so good. Anyway, just saying, it's not the salt.

Here's a simple empty floorplan that I did a while ago (I should double some of these measurements). A few notes about it -- porch is on the far left (east) side of the house. The top half (north) is the uninsulated portion that we'd try to "square up" that we currently have some storage shelves in and a bunch of shoes :) The bottom half of the porch (south) with the window is where the current 3/4 bath is. When the previous owners "finished" the bathroom, they put all the plumbing on the exterior east wall, with the shower, sink, and toilet all in a row on the east wall, top to bottom so to speak. The kitchen is the large room right off the porch. There are stairs directly to the west of the kitchen that can't be moved. So basically, we are constrained to the west of the kitchen by the stairs, and to the north is our driveway which we also can't move. We can tear out some of the south wall of the kitchen to open to the dining room, but we would not be willing to steal space for any kitchen components, just open up. We need at least a 1/2 bath somewhere in there, and no, we're not willing to put it in the foyer (it's been asked many times already). So realistically, the only option for improving the layout and growing the kitchen a bit is annexing some of the porch and slightly expanding the porch. Below, I'm going to post a draft of a layout inspired by a fellow Houzz user that made these suggestions. A few things aren't precise, but it's an idea (there's a bit of extra space added on to the east that could be skipped if we want). I'd definitely be interested in other ideas though, and may post again on the kitchen boards.