Going to China...

The Good Villager, Something to Chew On, and Bees Alive! are going to China on Thursday. Hunan province. We are excited and are hoping to encounter good, local organic gardening, farming and beekeeping/bee stewardship initiatives. Hopefully something we can become involved with using basic Mandarin :)

Stay tuned!

Some Announcements

Okay, now for some serious flogging - I have two announcements. First, I have finally started my bee information, education and action site Bees Alive!. Currently, there is a home page with a list of things to come. This will change rapidly as I am devoting much of my awake time to giving this dream wings.

Secondly, I am announcing my friend, Richard Roth's blog, I've Been Wrong Before. Richard is a long-time farmer and community rabble rouser, and I had the pleasure of working with him and his non-profit organization, cChaos, for several months setting up farmers' markets.

Enjoy!

Where the bees are...

I was out walking today through downtown Oshawa. It is not the most encouraging of downtowns, but I will say that it is easy to nip off the down-and-out main streets onto lush pathways and follow the water. I was cutting through the library parking lot and over to one of these pathways and contemplating my not-employed state. I don't even have a volunteer project going on right now. Speaking to myself, I said, "I need to be spending more time with...," and before I could fill in the blank, my head turned to my left, and in the tiny purple flowers was a beautiful, solitary bumblebee. The pollen sacs on her legs were full to bursting with golden powder. I bent to admire and commune as she went about her important work of pollinating. We then went on our separate ways.

My camera was stolen a few months ago, and I miss being able to snap the wonders of the last two years of my nature adventure and learning experience. I have a camera coming to me soon thanks to some soon-to-expire Air Canada air miles, and I will be up and running again. The photo above is a memory from Chico, California. I'd visited the University of California farm and was helping out washing and sorting melons, and I took a few moments to try to capture the activities of a busy honeybee. I was rewarded with a bee bum.

City or country, our bees are still hard at work. Let's respect them by keeping their/our environment clean, and give them thanks and space when we see them.

IKEA furniture for bees!

What does a beekeeper do in the winter - well, in a place where cold, nasty winter exists? She prepares for spring, of course. And one of the many spring preparation tasks a beekeeper can take on is building frames to replace broken and unusable ones and to allow expansion of the number of existing hives. And for me, the beginning of 2010 marked open season for building frames - 2,700 of them.

Does one need any previous knowledge or experience to engage in a task like this? Well, a view of the big picture helps, as 2,700 frames is plenty of work given the steps involved in producing a ready-to-go frame. Also, experience putting together a piece or two of the infamous IKEA furniture is a bonus, at least for the initial hammer and nail assembly part of frame-building. You see, if you buy pre-cut frame pieces, you'll find yourself in an IKEAesque dreamworld of cheap wood product that splits before the nail even makes contact with its surface and a puzzling end product where 90 degree angles are not allowed to come in pairs. Luckily, unlike with a IKEA chest of drawers, my frames will fit into the bee box despite trapezoidal tendencies.

One thing I've noticed in the process here is the usage of fine motor skills and small muscle strength - that of the hands, wrists and forearms. One of the steps in frame-building is stringing thin wire back and forth across the length of the frames. Extensive use of pliers is needed to manipulate the wire and keep it taut. Even with careful attention to muscle usage and regular break-taking, I'm finding a great deal of aggravation of my existing repetitive strain injury. I'm trying to work on some techniques that will minimize the strain on my hands. Another chapter in the efficiency/long-term physical health balance.

The Buzzzzzzzzz

And the months go by...

I have remained in this lovely area of Ontario (Lindsay/Bowmanville, etc) in order to further explore agricultural learning. Through my work with Lunar Rhythm Gardens, I met the knowledgeable master beekeeper, Ian Critchell (http://www.beeman.ca), and I have moved on to work with him in what will hopefully develop into an informal apprenticeship. I have much to learn, but I am fascinated already not only by the important and complex nature of bees' work, but also by their under-acknowledged and under-appreciated role in keeping us humans fed.

Getting a dialogue going with people about bees is also complex. Most people like, if not love, honey and related products, but they don't like bees. Most people also don't understand the delicate balance between bees, plant life and the poisons we put into our environment unthinkingly. Bees keep us alive, and we need to respect them. Preaching never works unless you have the charisma of a cult leader. Providing good role models for potential beekeepers and customers and letting people see your passion for the work can open a crack in the communication doorway.

Talk to your local beekeeper today to hear the buzz.