Permsteading.com

Awesome attitude Guy! Have you considered placing an ad on craigslist for free bee removal? Some guys are successful doing that.

I recently installed a webcam so you or anyone else that would like can have a peek at my hive? I dont have DNS configured, so the IP address is likely to change so the link below wont be permanant.

Currently, i see two dead pupae that were hauled out. I recently had to replace the bottom support boards, so i had to take all the deeps off, one by one. I also removed some goofy burr comb hanging off the side of another comb/frame. Doing that along with a bout of cold weather probably did a couple of them in.

Try tuning into: http://72.240.84.81:81 use the username: guest and password: beez. <-- notice the z on the end

Firefox is easier but if youre running internet explorer, youll need to insall an ocx file. Either way, be sure to click on the drop-down at the bottom (written in Chinese) and select english first.

Dude, webcam on your hive? That's friggin awesome!!

It worked great for me. Fun that I have the option of doing it in Chinese too.

I was able to get it to work for me using internet ex. Nice.

That is great Drew! Looks like your bees have been busy today.

Im happy to see that everyone can tune in to see my bugs.

I found something neat that i will share if youre a technical goober...

Before i posted the link, the video was very slow. I have a linksys router in my house, and buffalo router in my shed about 50 feet away. These have been loaded with the tomato firmware and i have them configured in a wireless bridge configuration. I do have about 6 or so walls that the wireless signal must penetrate or get around for the two routers to communicate.

I found by running the tomato firmware, i was able to actually turn up the transmit power on each router. I tweaked up the power from 42mW to 60mW. I was also able to telnet to each router and overclock the cpu by changing the operatinal frequency. These features are otherwise unavailable with the factory firmware.

After overclocking and turning up the power, the frames now refresh every 1-2 seconds instead of 5-6 seconds. Yippie!
Like i mentioned above, i did this before posting the link for everyone so you wont notice a difference but i thought someone might find this useful.

Drew

Oh yeah man, I am seriously interested. That's awesome, I wondered why it was such a fast feed from what I assumed was a home connection/consumer web cam set up. Sweet. I'm going to pick your brain one of these days as I would love to get some more coverage here.

As you all know my bees have been struggling to survive. They had American Foul Brood that kills the larva in the first 5 days of their lives. I had been treating them with antibiotics which seemed to help some for awhile. I am saddened to report that they decided on their own to find a new home, the one I provided was apparently not to their liking. They abandoned the hive sometime last week. When I went to check them Saturday there was not a bee in the hive, none. No live bees, no dead bees simply no bees at all. That makes the decision to burn the hive to destroy the spores a bit easier. While there were still bees in the hive there was still hope that some how they might make it. Now conventional wisdom tells me that burning everything and starting fresh is the only way to go. The spores of American foul brood can stay active in the hive for up to 40 years. So starting fresh is the best way to go. It turns out that new bees are available for purchase, and so are the boxes. It was one of those learning experiences I guess.

Dang it Guy, I'm sorry to hear that. I was really pulling for you.

What a bummer, and such a valiant effort!

I'm so sorry to hear that, Guy. I think you're making the right decision by burning the hive. Try your next setup in a different location. Also the state bee keeper that I'm working with is a big fan of ventilation. She uses lots of little spacers between all the boxes and the lids. Keep all the moisture you can out of there to prevent these kinds of issues. Knocking on wood for my own hive.....