A year or two before we moved into our current place, the landlord ripped out the lawn and xeriscaped with local native flowers and herbs. The bees love it, it takes nearly no water, and maintenance is way less labor than a lawn. Also looks better, especially with water restrictions in place: the native plants stay looking nice through the drought conditions while the lawns around us go brown (although now folks are painting their lawns green… which is just weird to me.)
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How is that weird? Didn’t you watch The Lorax?
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I bought my first house 8-9 months ago, and I’m just about done with the extensive repairs required before my fiance, daughter and I can move in. One of our plans is to plant some gardens and encourage the horticulture 
Oh, and my Grandfather used to be a bee keeper (up in WV) during my youth - it’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but my fiance (you know, I don’t know how she would take it if I called her my GF…) is allergic… so there went that plan lol 
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Just open that pass through a little more and you can laser cut stairs…
I eat local honey everyday to help with my allergies and it works wonders. Although lately it’s been harder to find local honey since two of the places I used to get it have now closed
Once the bandsaw is finished, I’ll still have some time before the Glowforge comes. I plan on doing a Kenyan top bar hive. That’s why I want to do a 4x8’ CNC, to crank out these hives from a sheet of plywood. We’d all be healthier if we were just able to be caretakers of a few bee hives or chicken coops.
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Looks interesting, unfortunately my landlord is allergic to bees. I’d make sure the plywood is formaldehyde free to keep the bees healthy
There are more pollinators than just honey bees. There are over a thousand different types of bees. Also, butterflies and bats are pollinators too. Whatever helps honeybees, helps all of them.
One thing we can all do is plant flowering native plants. No need to have a beehive to help pollinators. Oh, and avoid use of pesticides too.
For those allergic to honey bee stings, how about making solitary bee houses? Most bees don’t sting… This would be a great way to pass the time this spring while waiting for a Glowforge.
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Yep, lots of different beneficial critters around. I have bats living in one wall of my shop, never get chewed up by mosquitos. It is fun to watch them fly about at twilight.
Had to cut down the Butterfly bushes as they were destroying the eaves of the cottage. I won’t be able to do new plantings until next year when the landlord finishes rebuilding the roof.
I have some bee tubes I plan to put in a few areas. (Most of the tubes will be turned into spindles for yarn though.) The only thing I really have issues with are yellow jackets, they just get so mean & aggressive when they are on a pear drunk 
Of course we have to have a pear tree in the yard.
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Oooh, bats are cool.
Did you guys know of allllll the mammal species on Earth, a QUARTER of them are bats?
The things I’ve learned in these having-a-little-kid days, I’m telling you.
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Very nice work there!
Stained glass has always been a draw for me. I have seen inspiring work where the artist had the ability to produce his own faceted pieces, and other custom shapes and thickneses all ground, beveled and polished.
At some point I will Ave to indulge myself!
Its very addicting, but can be very frustrating if you have a touch of OCD! Some of my very skinny curved pieces can literally take hours to shape to fit correctly. I am hoping I can use the GF to score and maybe cut some of those… experimentation will be interesting!
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I hope you get some unexpected results. But what I have seen so far with glass is that you get thermal bursts through the thickness below the laser line. So the resulting break is far from even.
But… those are all working at very high power. So maybe if you go low power things can work better. Or some other precaution I haven’t thought of trying in my VERY limited attempts so far.
Mostly just making sure you don’t expect it to work as easily as cutting cardboard and get discouraged from attempting wild ideas. The easy approach doesn’t work. So start being creative in your plans on what to try.
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I’ve been trying to get wife approval on becoming a bee keeper, but with two kids under 5yo it hasn’t gone well.
Hopefully the Fort Worth apiculture conference in June will help. That or she’ll let me resume my crazy aquaponics fad.
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Well, if don’t have your heart pegged on honey bees, you can always make homes for other types of bees. Mason bee boxes are pretty cool (and basically no maintenance once built). 300 mason bees can do the same amount of pollination work as a honey bee hive of 60,000 bees (whoa).
Aquaponics? Very cool! I looked into that, but the process seemed a bit too involved for me. I struggle with my simple hydroponics system by zipgrow.
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Interestingly Bees use a modified form of this behaviour to defend the Hive against Hornets. If a scouting Hornet enters the hive the Bees surround it and vibrate. This raises the temp around the Hornet and kills it (Bees can tolerate temps slightly higher than Hornets can). They do only get one chance though. If the scout escapes it returns with all its mates and raids the Hive (not pretty).
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Interesting!
Hornets - Vikings of the insect world.
Thanks!
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Blame him indoors, he’s into all that.
Trained in Ecology, works in wildlife and habitat management.
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What a great vocation!
The damage we have done in out technological adolescence has/is taking it’s toll on the biosphere.
imperative that we study and understand all of the pieces to solve the puzzle.
Probably not news to him indoors, but this is one of the best science documentaries I have seen. All about what our fleet of earth observing satellites have revealed about our home.
Almost 2 hours long.
There are cycles of millions of years that we would have known about no other way.
Unknowable without a space program to fling these sensors into orbit, and computer technology to sift and compile the amount of data gathered when you scan the entire surface of the earth in several frequencies on a weekly basis.
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