Warning lots of breathing noises in this attempt at recording myself talking and adding music before and after the narration.
Transcript:
(music introduction) So I am going to talk about all the things I learned about beekeeping this year. This year was our third year of beekeeping. Year one was a bust we only had one beehive and it did not overwinter. Year two was a bust because weather was terrible here in Pacific Northwest BC and this year was our first real beekeeping season in our third year.
So some of the things I learned are we harvest honey twice a year if everything is ok, once in May and once in August. I didn’t know that before. So next year if we have family plans we know we need to stay home instead of doing an overwhelming August family trip because our bees are at home absolutely teeming with honey and we need to stay home. It’s a great excuse.
We can make a fairly predictable calendar for our bee duties. In previous years I just kind of felt out when I was supposed to do for the bees by observing them, and opening them up and checking them out. This makes absolutely no sense because I’m not good enough or experienced enough or even read a book to know what I’m supposed to be doing. So yes there’s some intuition with beekeeping but not in the early years.
The third thing I learned is that bees are happy and easy going except when the wasps are robbing them at the end of August or if there is a problem so with that in mind you should never forego wearing the beekeeping suits. We learned this lesson so many times this year, so many times.
The fourth lesson is to always mark our queens so when I get a new queen I’m going to mark it next year immediately and marking for those of you who don’t know is just putting a little dab of paint on their back so that it helps to find the queen in the hive when it’s full of bees and you want to just make sure that your queen is healthy and happy. It’s a lot easier to find her if she has a little dab of paint on her back. We’re not good at finding the queens so I do need to mark them to help with this and more power to you if you don’t need that but I do need it. The last thing we learned is doing splits, or trying to make two hives out of one is a bit of a science and an art and it’s not something you can just bust in and start doing at the end of March. In fact, you should probably wait until June. June is much better as we learned the hard way this year. (ending music)
This sound good, especially the fade of music at the start. I didn’t notice any bad breathing noises at all, or whatever was there didn’t detract from the learning or enjoyment!
Beekeeping is something I’m really curious about, so I look forward to hearing more.
You’ve got a talent for producing something that sounds extemporaneous, even if you’ve scripted it. I find this a really hard thing to do, personally. I either sound like I’m reading, or I uhm and ah a lot.
One thing I learned at a workshop is if we position our digital recorder or microphone just to the left or just to the right of our chin (maybe 2-3 inches left or right, and maybe 1 inch beyond our mouth) we cut down on the breathiness and pops that come from our nostrils but our voices sound just as strong as when we speak head-on into the microphone. But really, I wouldn’t have noticed if you hadn’t pointed it out.
Super interested in learning more about bee keeping! Thank you!
Really nice delivery. Bees are so fascinating and this was a great insight into your learning so far.
I want a bee podcast, please make this podcast!
I am also an inveterate mic-breather and I find the magic distance for me is one hand-span between mouth and mic (I fully make like a Hang-10 sign and put my thumb to my mouth and my pinky to the mic to check distance).