A lighthearted  seasons greeting to all.

Put me down as a skeptic on TF Black Box beekeeping but upon reflection I realize that I have been practicing TF Black Box birdkeeping for a long time. I keep Mountain Blue Birds, Violet-green Swallows, Chickadees, Nuthatches, and House Wrens.  My involvement consists of cobbling together some humble nest boxes from scrap lumber and mounting them on fence posts around the orchard and garden. The wife cleans out the spent nests in the autumn. That pretty well takes care of it. We get pleasure seeing them arrive each spring, gather nesting material and start a family. A particular joy is watching the young ones on their first days of flight school. Then they head south and we HOPE that they will return next year. They almost always have. I don't interrupt their gut biome with antibiotics. I don't poison them with artificial feed. I don't force unreasonable labor from them, although I am grateful for any help controlling insect pests around the place. I HOPE that they are happy. I also keep a family of Pewees. They are not as much work since they build their own mud nest on a shelf in the barn. I have been HOPING to develop hygienic behavior in them so I wont have to clean the poop that they throw over the side but so far success has eluded me. The cat also helps in our birdkeeping although she mostly works as a look-out. Often after  some busy HOPING the cat and I will lie down under the trees for a nap. I don't know about her but I keep hard at it, HOPING even in my dreams. 

So we have made another spin around the sun. It was fun, let's do it again next year. 

Paul Hosticka
Dayton WA      

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html