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.

My aching back!

And it's not just backs. All joints and muscles are susceptible to injury and strain when you are farming and gardening. Often it is the repetitive movements required that give us grief at the end of the day and that build up over time to create long-term problems. But what we don't often think about is the development of physically correct ways of doing things as preventative measures for injury and strain.

Ergonomics. The science of fitting the workplace and related equipment to the worker. A long-standing interest of mine. I became a volunteer ergonomic assessor when I worked for the Government of British Columbia back in the day, and although always on my mind, my proactivity lessened once I left government and my volunteer position. And my focus had been on office ergonomics. But my passion for designing sensible and healthy workplaces has flared up again since I started farming.

Farming and gardening can be brutal on the body, and with the former, at least, I have found that taking the time to assess a task and do it in a physically sensible way can be seen as a waste of time, overthinking, and let's face it, downright wimpy by hardcore farmers. It seemed to me that while lip service was paid to "listening to your body", what was truly valued were speed and strength. But how long does pure brute strength last, if you ever have it at all? Age, sex, body build, and physical health are all factors that affect strength. Does that mean that only the strong should farm and garden? Not at all. Strength means nothing if you bust your back moving the wrong way while carrying too much. And taking longer to carry out a task in order to save your body means you can save yourself pain and suffering and continue rewarding physical work later in life.

I am a proponent of inclusiveness and accessibility when it comes to participating in food systems work. And with very few exceptions, I believe that everyone can and should be involved in food systems work regardless of whether you live in the city or country, regardless of age, sex and physical limitations.

Stay tuned. Once bee season starts again in Ontario, I plan on making ergonomic forays into Canada's rigid beekeeping practices...