Search Term Follies of 2015

The greatest folly is perhaps our persisting in this recent tradition of trying to find amusing or unusual search terms that led to our blog in the previous year. With Google nobly protecting the privacy of the searchers from those dastardly websites that have not signed up for Ad-Words, fully 74% of the searches are “Unknown Search Terms”. With only a quarter of the hits to a low traffic blog through which to search we again have rather poor sport. Nevertheless we begin with the usual top three search terms and general observations.

First place, with 16% of the searches, were queries about Dr. Meghan Milbrath, whose name we often drop. Her business has been rebranded as The Sandhill and will be offering nucs, queens, classes, mentoring, and other support for the local beekeeping community.

Second place goes to searches for “prospectofbees”, our very own blog, at 15% of the searches. Are we becoming famous? Admittedly there were some searches for things like “prospects of beekeeping” but we did not count those.

Third place goes to queries involving yellow jackets, which made up 8% of the searches.

While Boardman feeders have been entirely booted from the top three of search terms, the single most popular post of the year is again the one where we modify a follower board to fit such a feeder. Another reason to be suspicious of conclusions drawn from the redacted search terms.

Google text searches dominate the references to us with Google image searches a distant second. Even more distant is the crowd of Bing, Yahoo, and lesser-known search engines.

While our querents continue to demonstrate persistence in paging through many search engine results to find our blog, we are more often on the first page for some topics.

And now the paltry number of search terms that caught our notice.

adjustable legs wood hole wing nut – 2 views Someone remembered our first hive stand, designed by Keith Steller.

top bar hive spinning – 1 view Oh! Even Rumpelstiltskin would be hard pressed to spin a hive of any kind. Or was someone’s hive inexplicably dervishing?

drilling a 1inch hole in hive body good or bad – 1 view Sounds like a teaser for a special report on some desperate nightly news show. Hive tools! Specialized implements or jumped-up paint scrapers?

is honey from poison ivy safe – 1 view Yes. Our post regarding the wretched vine proved our third most popular of the year and makes us feel as if we have provided a genuine service to the worried beekeepers where this plant grows.

bees eat fungus – 1 view Not mildew or athlete’s foot, no, but they have been known to consume some kinds of mushroom mycelium. It is gratifying to see someone ask again.

bees in deer feeder – 1 view To our surprise this seems a not uncommon occurrence. While corn(maize) is naturally sweet, reports suggest it is the corn dust being foraged as a pollen substitute. Even more surprising to find that a hanging dispenser style of feeder, as opposed to a simple trough, can be speedily emptied by bees to leave a pile of kernels on the ground.

hive eek – 2 views No, no, do not fear the hive. Yes, it has come to this. We are trying to make jokes about typographical errors. The shame.

We had best stop here.