Day #454 Honey Bee Sanctuary

I just saw a website for a honey bee sanctuary in Florida. It’s called Spikenard Farm, and the background picture on their home page makes me drool.  All that lush green and the gorgeous bee-friendly flowers !

I’m going to quote them directly from the Sanctuary tab on their site (I’m the one who bolded several of the phrases):

Spikenard Farm Honeybee Sanctuary was founded in the certainty that there can be a better future for the honeybees. Today the sanctuary has become more and more an oasis of beauty, peace and joy.

The Spikenard Honeybee Sanctuary is a place where the honeybees can live and thrive, safe from exploitation and mindless exploration into "whatever is possible, try it". The question "How much honey do you get from your bees?" urgently needs to be revised into "What do the honeybees need to become and stay strong enough to withstand the onslaught of our modern time with all the visible and invisible damaging agents?"

Their present loss in vitality and reduced capability of survival is not only caused by conventional agricultural practices with their monocultures and poisons, but also by our attempt of making beekeeping as profitable as possible which has driven and shaped our practices for over 100 years.

Here’s the site if you want to explore further:

http://www.spikenardfarm.org/honeybeesanctuary.html 

And here are some of the most amazing pictures from their gallery:

http://www.spikenardfarm.org/gallery.html 

I made a donation using PayPal on this page:

http://www.spikenardfarm.org/beeinvolved.html 

I hope you’ll consider doing the same.

BEEattitude for Day #454:

       Blessed are those who let bees be, for they shall hear our song and be comforted.

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The teeny details:

my books:  http://www.franstewart.com Please buy them from an independent bookstore or directly from my website.

my eBooks for Kindle:  http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=Fran+Stewart 

Day #218 Good Grief!

Good grief! I’ve spent hours trying to correct the mess I bought when I got that nuc from a company I will no longer name online. It’s not just my opinion. The experienced beekeeper who came to help me figure out what was going said that nuc of mine was the sorriest excuse of a nucleus hive he’d ever seen.

A nuc is supposed to have five almost full working frames. Mine had two and a half. And there was a container of roach bait in the bottom. For somebody who wants to do natural beekeeping, this was a setback.

I’m going to make this work, though. Tuesday afternoon I cut out the solid bottom of that nuc box. I’d already cleaned the box as thoroughly as I could, but I went ahead and sanded everything down, and then stapled a screen bottom on it. Whenever the weather’s good enough, I’m going to take whatever the bees have created out of the brown (short) box I’d transferred them into, and I’ll put them into this clean, screened-bottom box. Then I’ll have to pry the screening off the bottom of the brown box and add the brown box to the top of the white one, so I’ll finally have two layers, with the deeper one on the bottom.

This means that the white hive, which became the brown hive, will soon be the white and brown hive. I hope you can keep up with this, because I’m getting confused!

BEEattitude for Day # 218:

       Blessed are those who take things one step at a time (the way we bees do), for they shall ultimately succeed.

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The teeny details:

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my ebooks on Amazon for Kindle

my eBooks on Smashwords (for all other formats)

Day #165 A Gentle Approach to Beekeeping

I found yet another good beekeeping book and have been entranced with the philosophical attitude of the author. Ross Conrad wrote Natural Beekeeping: organic approaches to modern apiculture to put together in one book all the information it took him years to accumulate as he was mentored by various beekeepers.

That’s one great thing about beekeepers. There’s no such thing as too many bees, and every beekeeper I’ve spoken to has been delighted to share information with me.

Here’s a gem I found in the first chapter:

“The honey bee inspires me to work into my daily life this lesson: that we should take what we need to live in the world in such a way that we give something back and improve upon things, thus making the world a better place.”

                       --Ross Conrad

He said that when he went into the bee yard with no protective clothing on, he had to adjust his attitude to one of ease and grace so as not to alarm the bees. When he did that—when he was careful not to hurt them or frighten them—they responded gently to his presence. But when he went in there suited up as if he were afraid of an attack, he was less careful, ended up hurting bees through his inattention, and consequently was stung as the bees reacted to his carelessness.

That made me glad about my bee-clothing choices. I do think I’ll be more comfortable with a veil on at first. But with my long-sleeved white shirt and long white pants (the ones I bought at Good Will several months ago), I think I’ll be just fine. I haven’t bought any gloves, because when I had a chance to remove that frame from Rob Alexander’s hive a couple of weeks ago, I needed all the dexterity available—and that would not have been possible with gloves. I would have been accidentally squashing bees right and left, releasing those attack pheromones that indicate a threat to the hive. No wonder some beekeepers get stung a lot.

BEEattitude for Day # 165:

       Blessed are those who approach the hive as if they were on our side, for we shall respond to them gently.

One thing Fran is grateful for right now:

       The half-barrel I’m going to grow my morning glories in.  

And Cowan's Book Nook in East Ellijay, GA, where I'll be signing my books today. Stop by and say hello -- and buy some books (no matter who wrote them!) 

http://www.franstewart.com

Day #48 The Family History of Bees?

Bees don't need genealogy. When 80,000 bees in the hive are all sisters and have the same mother and won't be having children themselves, it seems a little silly to chart them.

I suppose serious bee breeders like to know where their queens come from. I'll be buying a particularly gentle breed of bees next Spring, and I suppose I'm glad the H&L Bee Farm people know what they're doing, but the bees themselves couldn't care less.

They know when a queen is failing -- not laying enough eggs -- and they get rid of her and create a new queen. Then the new one flies off and mates with whatever drones she finds in the drone-gathering place. Those drones have congregated from miles around -- no telling what their genetics are.

So, after a while, my H&L gentle bees will probably evolve into their own little family with traits that I might not have counted on when I got the original batch. That's life, folks. And it's a logical consequence of "natural beekeeping," letting the bees what they do naturally. Come to think of it, the new queen might mate with drones that are even gentler. Wouldn't that be great?

I've read in several bee books that if an undesirable trait (such as bloodthirstiness?) crops up, it's my job as a bee-keeper to isolate the queen and - - - gulp! - - - squoosh her. I don't know if I'd be able to do that. Hopefully I've never have to find out.

If I do -- you'll read about it here, and you'll just have to imagine the tearsdrops spotting the page.

For now, though, all is well on Frannie's back deck. Of course, there aren't any bees there yet.

BEEattitude for Day # 48:

       Blessed are those who let well enough alone, for they have have a much simpler life. 

One thing Fran is grateful for right now:

       My granddaughter who called me on Thanksgiving Day. Remembering our conversation lightens my heart. 

[All photos are from the public domain unless noted otherwise.]