I Heart Bees

Stingless bees can mummify beetles in resin!

2010-01-09T05:55:00.000-08:00

Yet another reason why bees are awesome: They can mummify beetles. Of course, we're not talking about honeybees here, but I am inspired by ALL bees, no matter what kind.

So, apparently this happens in Australian stingless bees, a species called Trigona carbonaria. Scientists placed a bunch of small hive beetles outside a laboratory hive of stingless bees. If the beetles made it past the guard bees, a group of bees in the hive attacked the beetles and coated them with a mixture of resin, mud, and wax.

How long does the mummification take? Just about ten minutes--beat that, Egyptians. The only time researchers saw this method fail was when temperatures rose above 40 Celsius and the resin didn't set. But other than that? Fool proof.

Other bees use this method as well, but the coolest one ever mixes in acid to the resin, which eats away at the beetles' hard shell. Let's face it. Bees are the coolest.

Green Bees

2009-04-20T16:08:00.000-07:00

You must read this lovely article, "In the Key of Bee," by Erik Vance, featured in the online mag Bay Nature. In it, Vance writes about Gordon Frankie, a bee professor at UC Berkeley who specializes in native bees. I have to admit I'm a bit smitten with native bees myself lately, and am quite inspired by his work. Anyway, the article talks about several native bee varieties, such as the leaf cutting bee, who lines his hive with small, precision-cut leaf slices, and can be seen bobbing through the air with small bits of leaves. The article also talks about the work one man is doing to help preserve native bee populations, an admirable feat in and of itself. Click here for a link to the article, and for more great pics.

Photo by Rollin Coville.

I saw the White House Bees!

2009-04-20T16:04:00.000-07:00

I went on a weekend trip to Washington D.C., to visit a friend of mine. Anyway, one of the highlights of my weekend (besides the gorgeous weather) was walking past the White House and getting a glimpse of the White House Bees! I was so excited and inspired. I don't have a heck of a lot to say about it, except that it's so exciting that the Obamas are setting a precedent for organic farming and the importance of bees in our communities and urban landscapes. This picture was taken from the City Bees Blog. Click here to see more pictures of the White House Bees.

Bee hives at the White House!

2009-03-22T08:35:00.000-07:00

According to Bee Culture, a beekeeping magazine, and an article in the KansasCity.com, Michelle Obama has recently announced that not only will there be an organic garden at the White House, there will also be two bee hives! Apparently the bee hives belong to a White House employee who lives nearby and will tend the hives. The crops and will be used by the White House kitchen staff for the family and for official functions, while some will be donated to Miriam's Kitchen, a soup kitchen near the White House. Some of the produce will include lettuces, fennel, rhubarb, cucumbers, sweet and hot peppers, as well as berries and some herbs.

The 1,100 square foot garden will be the first of its kind since Eleanor Roosevelt planted a victory garden during World War II. Mrs. Obama broke ground on the first day of spring with a group of fifth graders from Bancroft Elementary School in Washington. The students will be brought back next month for the planting and will continue to be involved during harvesting as well. Mrs. Obama said that she thinks it will encourage her children to eat their vegetables, especially if they're involved in planting and growing them.

I just think we're so blessed to have a first family taking such bold steps towards a more ecological lifestyle, setting a good example for a key part of our lives that we have to change here in this country. A Brazilian friend of mine commented the other day, "I just don't get it, Americans are the richest people in the world, but their food is so terrible and the people are so fat!" Well, maybe it's time to change that, eh? Hopefully the inspiration that the Obama's have inspired can trickle down into these other, very important parts of our lives.

I heart bumblebees! Part Three: How we can help.

2009-03-21T07:25:00.000-07:00

I watched the documentary King Corn last night and LOVED it. It's about two men who decide to farm an acre of land in Iowa and grow corn to understand just how the crop gets into so much of our food (and bodies). It's poignant, interesting and thoughtful, and I couldn't help but think how similar the issues they're looking at are to the ones that have caused bee decline. Basically, we're both exploring the downward spiral of agriculture, and its effects on our environmental and bodily health. The King Corn website also offers some great ways to address our agricultural system on the "take action" tab in their website, which gave me some good ideas for this post.

So let's get on with it, shall we? How can we help out bumblebees (and bees in general)? First of all, it kind of depends on where you are. I'm going to tailor this to folks in the U.S., but I know there are similar resources in the UK as well. I'll start with the easiest, less complicated solutions and go from there.

Make a bee garden. Fun fact: Bees don't see red, but do see blue, yellow, and ultraviolet. So, most of the flowers bees pollinate are yellow, and some are blue (and some are other colors too!). Check out this cool website for some tips on how to make your garden bee-friendly. Here's a bee plant list for those of you that want to get right on it.
Save some wild space. If you have some land (or even just a back yard), create wild/untamed spaces for bumblebee habitat. They love long grasses, abandoned animal burrows, etc. So if you can leave some wild spaces in your yards, you'll increase wildlife diversity in general, and attract all kinds of pollinators and birds as well.
Buy local. Support small, local farms through farmer's markets and community supported agriculture (CSAs). Small farmers farm more diverse crops than large scale agriculture and usually are much more bee friendly.
Buy Organic. Because of the expensive labeling process, not all farmers can afford to be organic, but actually are. That's why shopping at the farmer's markets is so helpful because you can actually talk to the farmers and find out about their farming practices. But buying organic at the store is huge too. Why? Because, to be blunt, pesticides kill bees! So, the more we support systems that don't use pesticides, the more bees will flourish.
Learn about the Farm Bill. Creating innovative new farming methods is one of the most important things we can do, which means we have to get involved in our politics. We have to educate ourselves. In the EU, for example, farmers are incentivized by the government (through subsidies) to leave sections of their land for hedgerows and wildflowers to attract pollinators. Got that? Farmers are PAID to leave portions of their land for bees. More bees and pollinators=higher crop yields. Farmers are also moving away from intensive pesticide use and towards organic agriculture. The challenge we face in the U.S. is that crops like corn--which are part of this huge industrial farming complex that eats up all the land--don't need bees, so there have to be other ways to incentivize farmers to keep some of their land fallow. You can get involved and write to your local senators and congress folk and get encourage them to help shape the bill.
Join a local preservation group. A popular one in the U.K. is the Bumblebee Conservation Society. Some in the U.S. are:

The Xerces Society--an international nonprofit that protects invertebrates
The North American Pollinator Protection Campaign (NAPPC) which specifically works to protect pollinators.

Support honeybee and bumblebee research. One easy way to donate is through Haagan Dazs but the above preservation groups certainly need help as well.
Tell your friends!

I heart bumblebees! Part Two: Why the bumblebee is in decline.

2009-03-14T09:57:00.000-07:00

So, why have the bumblebees been in decline? Many of the articles I found concerned the U.K., which doesn't mean that the decline isn't happening in the U.S., it's just that the U.K. has been a hotbed of recent bee research. An article titled "Decline of Bumblebees (Bombus) in the North American Midwest" states: "The nature and extent of bumble bee decline in North America is poorly understood due mainly to a lack of baseline and long term data." Clearly, there are reports of bee decline in the U.S. as well, and I think that the two phenomenons are closely related.

So let's return to David Goulson's analysis. In the last blog, I wrote about bumblebee's unique characteristics, but let's point out some of the main ones that are contributing to their decline.

Bumblebees tend to specialize more than honeybees, and some only feed off of one plant species, like legumes (Fabaceae) for example.
Bumblebees make their homes in abandoned animal burrows (rodents, typically) and in grassy tussocks, which are usually only available in unmanaged grass and pasture lands.

Let's just think for a moment about the track our agriculture has been on. Farm lands that were once interspersed with wild flowers and grazing meadows for horses are now mono-cropped and farmed for every inch of possible land. In Iowa, for example, my boyfriend has told me how farmers will cut down sections of riparian corridor (the plants that you find along the sides of river beds) to farm corn there. ACK! That's the trouble with subsidized farm products. When the government pays more for a certain crop (think: ethanol), you get all the farmers replacing their more diverse food crops for cash crops that will yield the greatest amount of, well, cash.

But I digress. Sort of. Previously, bumblebees and honeybees would feed off of some food crops (like raspberries, strawberries, apples, and legumes) and especially off of the wild flowers that grew in the adjacent meadows and fallow pastures. Bumblebees in particular would also make their homes in the unplowed sections of farms in those abandoned rodent burrows and in hedgerows, the sections between cultivated farm lands where bushes and wild plants grow.

One of the interesting things the article about bumblebees in the Midwest pointed out was that bumblebee diversity took a sharp decline in Illinois during 1940 and 1960, which "coincided with large-scale agricultural intensification in Illinois" during that time period.

This same process has been occurring in the U.K. as well. Goulson writes that the U.K. has lost 98% of its unimproved grassland since World War II. He then goes on to say that "increased use of herbicides and improved seed cleaning mean that arable crops are now virtual monocultures, whereas once they were rich in flowering seeds."

Basically, as a result of this agricultural intensification, there has been a significant loss in wildflower diversity. When bumblebees need certain habitats and those habitats get plowed over, and when bees depend on certain flowers and those flowers aren't cultivated any more...well, you do the math. The bees go extinct.

References

Goulson, D. (2006, December). Demise of the bumblebee in Britain. Biologist. Volume 53, Number 6, 294-299. Retrieved March 04, 2009.

Grixti, J., Wong, L., Cameron, S., & Favret, C. (2009, January). Decline of bumble bees (Bombus) in the North American Midwest. Biological Conservation, 142(1), 75-84. Retrieved March 14, 2009, doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2008.09.02

I heart bumblebees! Part One: Cool facts about Bumblebees.

2009-03-10T19:40:00.000-07:00

So, I was speaking with a colleague the other day who just happens to have a family history in beekeeping. Her father (if I'm correct) is a third generation beekeeper and also an etymologist. Anyway, we were talking about her family's bee business when she mentioned that over 5 species of bumblebees had disappeared in the U.K. recently. 5 species? That surprised me, so of course--since I teach research writing and I'm into bees--I had to go and research the fact.

I found two articles that talked about this phenomenon. One was titled "To Be or Not to Bee..." by Marianna H. Horn and Peter G. Kevan and another (not so subtly named) was called "The Demise of the Bumblebee in Britain," by David Goulson. Both articles had some enlightening things to say about bumblebees--not just why they are disappearing (which may give some clues as to why honeybees are disappearing as well), but also just some wonderful info about the lovely bumblebee in general. So, let's start there.

Some neat facts about the bumblebee from their articles:

Bumblebees belong to the genus Bombus that includes many rare species with highly diverse ecologies. Honeybees belong to the genus Apis.
Bumblebees are the larger, hairier variety of bee, often colorful as well. Honeybees, by contrast, are described by Goulson as "smaller, slender, drab, and relatively hairless." (Guess who is a little biased towards the bumblebee? I'd say Goulson, but he's starting to win me over too.)
Bumblebees, like honeybees, feed solely on flower nectar and pollen for their energy and protein.
There are only 240 species of bumblebees worldwide (contrasted with thousands of bee species in general), and they are found mostly in the Northern Hemisphere from the Arctic to the tropics.
Bumblebees are endotherms, which means that they can warm themselves by contracting and releasing their flight muscles, also known as "shivering," which allows them to endure cooler temperatures than most bees.
Bumblebees are social creatures--like honeybees. But instead of living in a hive, they live in abandoned animal burrows, or (and I LOVE this phrase) in grassy tussocks. (Basically a section of grass that grows a bit higher and more thickly than the rest.)
The colonies that the bumblebees live in consist of about 400 worker bees (all female) with one queen. To contrast, a typical cultivated hive of honeybees has about 60,000 bees.
Bumblebees can be much more specialized than their honeybee cousins in terms of what they pollinate. One species of bumblebee, for example, only pollinates plants in the pea family. This is what makes them more susceptible to extinction though because if that species dies off or isn't planted, then the bee is likely to die with it.
Bumblebees aren't very aerodynamic, so flying demands a lot of energy. Goulson gives this great analogy. Apparently, it's been calculated that a running man consumes a Mars bar worth of energy in about 30 minutes. By contrast, a honeybee would use that same amount of energy (in bee portions) in about 30 seconds of flight. Thus, he concludes, a nest of about 400 bees would need a lot of food.
Bumblebees do have stingers, but they're not barbed like a honeybee's. They can sting multiple times if necessary.

Finally--and this is from my personal experience, you can pet bumblebees! I don't recommend, it, but I remember spending time with my good friend Leaf in college, and he saw a bumblebee and leaned over and pet her as she sat on a flower. It was the sweetest thing. He said that she didn't have a stinger, which was wrong, they do, but they don't tend to sting unless their nest is threatened.

Anyway, I have a huge crush on bumblebees now. Next up--why they're dying and what we can do to save them!

(And then I swear we're going back to top bar hives! I just got so enamored all of a sudden and couldn't resist!)

Lastly--isn't this photo of a bumblebee the cutest friggin' photo you've ever seen? She's waving at us. I almost cried.

References:

Goulson, D. (2006, December). Demise of the bumblebee in Britain. Biologist. Volume 53, Number 6, 294-299. Retrieved March 04, 2009.

Horn, M., Kevan, P. (Date unknown.) To Bee or Not to Bee. Journal Unknown. Retrieved March 04, 2009.

Top Bar Hives in Kenya

2009-03-09T08:45:00.000-07:00

So, when I took beekeeping classes last year, I studied what's known as the top bar hive, not the traditional Langstroth hive (see the colorful bee boxes in the post below). Top bar hives are much easier to build than the Langstroth hive, which makes it perfect for using in developing countries. Some would even argue that it's more ecological for the bees since they build their own comb entirely, without the wax mold that comes with the Langstroth.

We'll save that discussion for another post. For now, check out this fantastic video to learn more about the top bar hive!

Next on I Heart Bees--we'll look at Top Bar Hives in more depth, for those interested in this alternative method of beekeeping. I'll talk about why they're considered more ecological and include a video about how to build a hive. See you soon!

CCD or not CCD? That is the question.

2009-03-06T17:45:00.000-08:00

So...got some news. Not sure what to think about it. Basically it states that scientists have not been able to come up with any hard facts about why so many friggin' bees are dying, all the same way.

Apparently, according to an article in the BBC news, "many experts now believe that the term [CCD] is misleading and there is no single, new ailment killing the bees." So--that means, according to the article--that CCD may not actually exist.

Here's a little chunk out of the article:

Conducting experiments at an isolated almond orchard in the Central Valley area of California, Frank Eischen, of the US Department of Agriculture, said it was "probably true" that there was no new single disease. "We've seen these kinds of symptoms before, during the seventies, during the nineties, and now," he added.
"It's probably not a unique event in beekeeping to have large numbers of colonies die."

Basically, the growing idea is that CCD is really a conglomeration of several different causes, like varroa mites, a lack of nutrition because of the urbanization of their pastures, and...and this is the biggie...pesticides. (Please go to the last blog and help protest unmitigated use of IMD!)

Another big concern was the intensity of the agricultural system, which has beekeepers carting bees all over the state feeding them on a few single crops year round, instead of the natural diversity of pollen and nectar that they'd find flying to diverse pastures.

Unfortunately for the bee loving community, there was also this kicker: "Some critics of the bee industry have called the whole concept of CCD a hoax, a public relations stunt designed to attract public sympathy."

Wow--a public relations stunt? There are literally unprecedented levels of bees dying around the world--the number of bumble bees in the UK has halved in the last 60 years alone--and it's a hoax designed to manipulate people? I don't agree with this sentiment.

I mean, check out those bee boxes above. Are bees supposed to live in condos? I don't think so. I'm inclined to think that there's something serious going on here that we need to continue to examine, and that this issue has brought some much needed attention to what's looking to be a broken piece of an already very broken agricultural system.

Help Protect Honey Bees from a Toxic Pesticide

2009-03-06T17:33:00.000-08:00

Hey all!

Sorry I've been a little lax in blogging. I've been teaching more than full-time, and working to finish my novel. Anyway, here's a great opportunity to help save the bees. One of the more nefarious pesticides for honey bees is one called imidacloprid (IMD), a toxin created by Bayer Corp. What IMD reportedly does is make the bees drunk, essentially, and inhibit their navigational systems so they can't find their way home.

This letter encourages the EPA to reexamine the research on IMD, and make sure to ban its use when it has proven harmful to honey bees. Please click here and send a letter to the Office of Pesticides Programs at the EPA and spread the word!

Thanks! Here's the link.

An article I published recently on Bees

2009-02-16T08:13:00.000-08:00

Well, this seems like the appropriate place to link to the article I wrote. So...check it out!

Is the Honeymoon Over?

I'm Back!

2009-02-16T08:09:00.000-08:00

Hey there all of you wonderful people that have been visiting this blog! Sorry about the lack of posts lately. Besides being a bee enthusiast, I'm also a teacher and writer. I just started teaching way too many classes in January, and have also been working to complete my novel as well. So...now I should get back on track.

One other strange thing...I also couldn't write a blog post for the past week and a half because every time I tried to write my blog, it converted all the words into question marks. So frustrating! (Which would have looked like: ?? ????????????)

Anyway, I fixed that problem...just a little issue with my transliteration settings. You know how that goes. Happens everyday. ;)

My Vision

2008-12-14T14:58:00.001-08:00

Back in March or April, I received an email stating that I'd won a scholarship to travel to New York and attend a leadership conference. I'd been chosen out of 3200 applicants along with 80 other amazing female participants. The White House Project and O Magazine, the two main sponsors, had asked us what we wanted to do to help make the world a better place. And my answer was: Save the Bees.

At the time, I'd created a plan to teach beekeeping to women in Africa and then write a book about it. While I still love this idea, what came up for me during the conference was that I wasn't as excited about the women in Africa (sorry, African women) as I was about saving the bees in general. So, I decided that what I really want is to raise money for bee research to figure out what's going on with the bee decline and get as many people beekeeping as possible.

Well--now that I've clarified my vision, I'm working on a website to do just that. I don't want to say too much about it just yet, but my goal is to get as many people beekeeping out there as possible: men, women, kids, people in cities, suburbia, and the countryside. I think that the more bees we have (as well the more bee gardens we have), the better chance we have of saving our bees.

My hope is that I'll soon have a website that can direct you to exactly what you're looking for in the bee department: You need bee equipment? Check. You need to get connected to your local beekeeping community? Check. You want the latest info on bee research and CCD? Check. Tips on beekeeping? Check. Wonder why the heck people are so wacky for bees? Check, check.

So...send me an email if you have an idea, or you want to tell me what would help you become a beekeeper or how you'd like to help in general. I'm hoping to have a one stop shop soon, so keep your eyes peeled!

Yupbees: Young, Urban, Beekeeping Professionals

2008-12-14T12:38:00.000-08:00

Maybe I'll be the first to coin it, because I'm all about this new movement. That's right: Yupbees. (The fact that this isn't coming up as a misspelled word in my spell check only confirms that this word will join the many greats in our lexicon.)

So, there's a great article about urban beekeeping in Germany. The country, like many others, is experiencing a severe loss in its bee population. While most people typically associate bees with beautiful hillsides of lavender and apple trees, bees need to be a part of every landscape, including our urban jungles.

What's interesting is that older beekeepers are trying to make beekeeping exciting and accessible to young beekeepers in the cities. They're offering classes and mentorships to help raise awareness and interest for young beekeepers, from school children to working professionals.

Currently, hundreds of thousands of bees are flying through the neighborhoods of Hamburg, Frankfurt, and Munich. Apparently, the densely populated Ruhr region now houses more bees than the surrounding countryside.

A lot of people ask if they can keep bees in the city. I have a friend who actually gets better honey yields when he keeps his bees in urban bee yards. People in the city tend to grow plants and water them year-round (or at least during the growing season), which provides more bee nectar and pollen than a field of wild flowers that might die mid-summer without water. The cities are also warmer than the countryside and bees can stay active and gather food longer than they might in a rural environment.

People are keeping bees on their balconies, rooftops, and even hotel roofs. They're also in London and even Manhattan, and now--thanks to a new Denver law--they're in Denver too.

And if you're wondering about honey, here's what one beekeeper had to say about the urban gold: "City honey has an outstanding aroma," said Benedikt Polaczek, a bee researcher at the Free University of Berlin. "And besides, it's very clean, because they don't spray pesticides as much in the city." In Manhattan, "Sheriff Beekeeper" David Graves sells his Rooftop Magic Honey at a premium price.

Join the Yupbee revolution. I'm a Yupbee and proud.

More love for Haagen Dazs

2008-12-14T11:42:00.000-08:00

Let's give it up a bit more for Haagen Dazs. They have this kickin' cool website where you can make your own bee that looks like you. (Yes, that's what I look like. Seriously.)

Anyway, you can email a bee image to a friend and then it takes you to their website where you can get education on the bee decline and the role bees play in our ecosystem. It's fun. It's free. It's educational.

Now go eat some ice-cream.

Haagen Daaz: Saving the Bees One Flower at a Time

2008-12-14T10:41:00.000-08:00

Haagen Dazs rocks. Not only do they have this crazy cute website (complete with chirping birds and flying bees!) designed to help educate about bee decline and fund raise for bee research, they also have just announced a $125,000 donation to the University of Davis' department of Entomology to launch a nation-wide contest to design a half-acre bee garden for our beloved pollinators.

I'm not sure how to express how excited I am about this without a bevy of exclamation points. But, since I can't contain myself, here I go: WOOHOO!! GO HAAGEN DAZS and UC DAVIS!!!!!!!!

Phew. I feel so much better now that I got that out. I'm kind of against the use of frequent exclamation points, but sometimes it must be done.

(Haagen Dazs, by the way, also proves that you can become an extremely popular business with a name that no one knows how to spell or pronounce. In fact, I had to check the spelling on this company about five times while writing this post. Nice work, Haagan Dazs.)

Anyway, this genius idea will encourage landscape designers everywhere to submit a plan for a half-acre bee garden at UC Davis, to provide a haven for the honeybees used for research there. In case you didn't know, UC Davis is one of the bee research hot spots in the U.S. The garden will provide a seasonal variety of plants and flowers so the plants will have nectar and pollen year-round. The garden will also educate visitors on how they can make bee gardens of their own. The garden is expected to be the first of many pollinator gardens at UC Davis.

I can't help it--I must say it again: GO UC DAVIS!!!

As Eric Mussen, a Cooperative Extension apiculturist in the UC Davis Department of Entomology, said: "The garden will be extremely helpful in demonstrating that bees are not a nuisance in the backyard, but instead are obtaining food and water essential for their survival,"

That's right--bees are not a nuisance. They are responsible for about 1/3 of the food on your plate. In a time where there are a million different environmental causes that are--in many ways--so intangible, here's a cause that you can do something about directly, and it benefits the food on your plate. And...honey is yummy. Let's face it.

To see the original article with info about designing a bee garden, click here.
Or, to check out the Haagen Dazs website, go here: www.helpthehoneybees.com

Last, but not least, I left out a few of these: !!!!!!!!!!! It might be the caffeine I just drank (chai green tea with honey). God knows caffeine in my sensitive body is a bit like crack. But I think I'm just darn excited.

The Simpsons do Bees!

2008-12-09T19:30:00.000-08:00

It's official. Bees are now part of pop culture. Even Lisa Simpson has her eye on the disappearing bee population. The episode is wittily titled: "The Burns and the Bees," and--though I won't vouch for the bee science in the show--it's nice to see the bee awareness spreading into pop media. The plot? Basically, Mr. Burns decides to build a sports complex in the one place where the declining bee population is thriving, and ends up getting stung financially as a result. It's cute--not The Simpsons that I knew and loved years ago, but still worth seeing. I'm glad a more mainstream audience will be exposed--even if only in a small way--to this very important issue.

You can watch the full episode of The Simpsons here. As a vegetarian (though not so strict anymore) and a frequent advocate of the environment and the oppressed (I say this a bit tongue in cheek) I have often resonated with the bleeding heart, slightly naive, Lisa Simpson. Now I do even more! If I could only get a chunky pearl necklace and that cool hairdo...

Smokers of the World, Unite!

2008-11-30T09:05:00.000-08:00

No--I'm not talking about cigarette smokers; I'm talking about bee smokers. You can see me with a smoker in my profile picture--it looks like a tea kettle with a mini-accordion on the back, and is used to blow smoke into the bee hive to calm bees.

But what I really wanted to talk about is a protest in Britain a few weeks ago. Apparently 300 beekeepers joined together with their smokers in full effect, dressed in their Sunday best (starch-white bee suits) to protest the dramatic loss of bee hives in the U.K. We're talking 2 million bees in ONE year. Wow.

The beekeepers are angry that the government hasn't put enough money towards bee research. It's understandable why they haven't: Beekeepers don't have the same kind of sway that energy and science lobbyists do, for example...we face the same problem here in the U.S. In the U.K., about 2.4 million is being spent on bee research and to conduct hive checks, but the beekeepers would like to up that amount to 12.6 million.

Why the urgency? Check this out. According to an article about the event in UPI.com: "The beekeeper group said if the current state of deterioration continues across Britain, English honey supplies could be gone before the end of the year."

And when honey supplies are gone, we're talking about a bee decline that's so dramatic that it'll trickle down (and already has!) to farmers everywhere.

Check out the article where I found the picture, and see some other great pics here and here.

Keeping it Light

2008-11-29T14:02:00.000-08:00

I love this comic by Lela Dowling about CCD that I found on The Daily Green's bee blog. It's wonderful! Click on this link here to see it in all its glory.

Jumping the Gun on CCD

2008-11-29T11:19:00.000-08:00

I just emailed Kim Flottum, editor of Bee Culture magazine and a wonderful blog on beekeeping in The Daily Green. I asked him about a book that came out this spring about Colony Collapse Disorder, titled A Spring Without Bees, by Michael Schacker. I found this book quite illuminating, especially because it pointed to a specific cause of CCD: An insecticide called Imadacloprid (IMD) produced by Bayer Industries. In the book, Schacker makes the argument that IMD is responsible for CCD, and argues that we need to remove the pesticide from our agricultural production.

Now, I'm an organic fan all the way, but I also wondered how Schacker was able to be so confident about his conclusion when I hadn't really come across anyone else as confident in my research. So, this led to my email to the esteemed Mr. Flottum, and he had an interesting comment to make. He said that he felt Schacker jumped the gun, essentially, about IMD as the cause of CCD (could I get anymore acronyms here?). He felt that there was a lot of evidence supporting CCD being caused by a pathogen, not a chemical.

However, Mr. Flottum went on to say that he did feel that those pesticides and chemicals were contributing to the worst of the honey bee issues they were facing, and that some recent research has pointed to IMD as one of the major honeybee threats as well.

Well, I have to say that I was a little bummed to hear him downplay a definitive answer, but I think his hesitation is important. I really and truly believe that we have to change our agricultural system all together, that it's unsustainable, and that it should begin with pesticides. However, I also think it's important to fully investigate the situation before making hasty conclusions. To me, that is bad science and bad environmental management. But--more than anything, I think it just represents the fear we have that this is a huge dilemma and that we have to do something to act quickly, before we suffer a loss that might be too crippling for the honeybee industry to bear.

(P.S. You can see me jump the gun in an earlier blog here. Feeling sheepish. :)

The Bees won in Denver!

2008-11-26T20:17:00.000-08:00

Want to know what I'm thankful for? I'm grateful for the Denver City Council passing legislation that allows Denver residents to keep bees in their backyards. This was the result of a recent snafu with a local resident who had a couple hives in her yard and was slapped with a $950 fine if she didn't remove her hives. (See previous post about it here.)

Although the proposal passed 10 to 2 in the council, there were still two councilwomen who opposed it, Marcia Johnson and Jeanne Faatz. The women expressed concern that beekeepers don't have to notify or get permission from their neighbors, and were concerned about people with fatal bee allergies. This is an understandable concern, but my hope is that most beekeepers will give a heads-up to neighbors, and encourage them to come check out their hives. This is also a great way to get neighbors excited about bees, and perhaps even provide an opportunity for education and inspiration. If beekeepers do find a neighbor with a fatal bee allergy, then I think they should consider moving the hive somewhere else.

The city will now allow up to two hives per city lot, and the ordinance also removed honeybees from the definition of wild or dangerous animal in the city's municipal code. (Wild or dangerous animals? Come on! If we're going to talk wild and dangerous, I'd like to ban my neighbor's dog who frequently attacks another neighbor's chihuahua, and any other small dogs she sees on her daily walks. You should see this beast of a Great Dane. She's as big as my bike and could probably swallow me whole.)

Check out the full Rocky Mountain News article here. (Warning: The article appears next to a kind of creepy picture of a girl that died in jail from bleeding to death...sad!)

Finally, I dare you to count how many cheesy bee metaphors the writer used during the article. It starts with: "Bee enthusiasts were buzzing with joy Monday after the City Council approved a proposal that allows Denver residents to keep honeybees in their backyards" and goes from there.

I counted four.

How is aspirin related to honeybee decline?

2008-11-09T14:28:00.000-08:00

There's a lot of speculation out there about what's causing the bee decline, specifically CCD. Until there's a definite answer, unfortunately, it's especially difficult to rally a movement to stop CCD as well. What do we do? People ask. Buy organic? Support local beekeepers? Keep bees in our yards? How can we help?

To answer the above: yes, yes, and yes. But...that's still not enough, as the bees being affected by CCD the most are typically commercially raised bees. So--something has to be wrong with the agricultural ecology that supports the bees. And once you bring large scale farming industries into play (commercial beekeepers typically partner with large commercial farming industries like almonds to get paid for pollination services), things get a whole lot more tricky.

If you are seriously interested in CCD and bee decline, you must check out Michael Schacker's A Spring Without Bees. He discusses CCD causes in length, largely by looking at research done in France on the use of a pesticide called Imidacloprid, trade name Gaucho. Imidacloprid (IMD), a neonicotinoid, is an insecticide manufactured by Bayer Cropscience. (Yeah, the same Bayer that makes Bayer aspirin.) Sunflower seeds, for example, are coated in this insecticide, and it remains in low levels in the flower when it finally blooms. Bees then consume the insecticide in micro-amounts through the nectar.

Research conducted in France showed that IMD caused "deranged" behavior in bees--specifically that bees become "intoxicated" and were unable to navigate their way back to the hive. Germany has banned the use of IMD, and France has had an ongoing battle between Bayer and their beekeepers. In the meantime, hives numbers have dropped tremendously, from 1.45 million in 1996, to one million in 2003.

Here's an excerpt from the Sun Journal (read their full article here) about some research done in France:

In 2003, a French television documentary team filmed honeybee activity after exposure to imidacloprid. Clumsy and uncoordinated, their legs trembling, the bees looked like drunks unable to find the key to the front door of their hive. Others had trouble leaving the hive, seemed disoriented, and when they were eventually able to make their way out, soon disappeared, never to return.

This is important, as the main symptom of CCD is that the bees completely leave the hive, deserting their honey, the queen, and their larvae, all of which they are highly programmed to protect.

There's too much to say for this short blog, but in short, there is increasing evidence that it isn't cell phones causing CCD, it isn't mites, and it isn't some kind of weird virus. I think it's pesticides. Now we just have to wait for the definitive research to prove it.

Are bees still on the decline? YES.

2008-11-06T15:17:00.000-08:00

My uncle asked me this question a few days ago, and I found it disappointing. Not on his part, of course--I was glad he knew about the situation and cared to see where it was at. Instead, my frustration was aimed at the media and the general public and their lack of knowledge on this topic. Why isn't there more news on this?

According to an article on CBS news, 36.1 percent of the nation's commercially managed hives lost their populations last year, compared to 32 percent last year. Apparently, the die-off is not quite enough to show a trend, and also isn't quite enough to deserve any real alarm--or so it seems.

But I'll be frank here, I think our recent economic meltdown has shown that most people are quite happy to turn the other way and deny impending disaster if it doesn't serve their immediate situation...and as we are seeing right now, this doesn't always leave us in the best place. We are bargaining our environmental capital--bees and other pollinators--on larger agricultural yields and a flawed food system. This situation is indicative of a general trend in Western development, especially regarding environmental management. We push and push our ecosystem until it has nothing left to give, hoping we'll have the ingenuity to pick up the pieces later.

Dennis vanEnglesdorp (great name!), a bee expert with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture made a great comment on the 36.1 percent loss. "That's an astonishing number," he said. "Imagine if one out of every three cows, or one out of every three chickens, were dying. That would raise a lot of alarm."

Good point, I think. So why isn't it alarming anyone...or at least enough of us to take action?

Beekeepers for Obama!!

2008-11-04T14:58:00.000-08:00

Okay, it's 4pm...just a few hours before the landslide. Yeah, I'm predicting a landslide win, and I have to tell you it makes me weep every time I think about it. I LOVE Obama. I really respect him too, and I think the environment AND the economy are going to be in much more competent hands than the past eight years.

Thank you, Americans, for coming together, learning, listening, and putting your time into making this campaign happen. You are the reason for this awesome change, and I can't tell you how proud I am of you.

If you like photographing bees...

2008-11-04T14:53:00.000-08:00

Then you'll love this blog that David Tejada, my fabulous photographer, did of our photo shoot. It has some footage and some lovely pictures. I think David is a great and talented photographer, and would recommend him for any of your photography needs.

You can see his blog here.

Councilwoman Peggy Lehman to the rescue!

2008-11-04T14:06:00.000-08:00

In one of my previous blogs, I wrote about a local beekeeper who was fined by Denver for illegally beekeeping in the city. Well...some interesting things have happened as a result of Marygael Meister's decision to not simply back down and let Denver win the fight. You can read the whole article here, but here's the synopsis.

Angry about the fine, especially given the current honeybee decline, Meister resisted the fine and bee hive removal. Trying not to provoke a big fight, the city encouraged Meister to get a special permit for her hives from the board of adjustment. (Sounds like the principle's office, if you ask me. Do they whack you with a paddle for bad behavior?) Anyway, Meister didn't want to do this because she felt it would leave other Denver beekeepers vulnerable to the same ridiculous laws. Yeah, that's right, I said ridiculous.

Anyway, so Meister decided to make this big. She sought out help from Haagen-Dazs (sorry...no umluats in Blogger!) and Smuckers (the first of the two has been donating marketing and money to the bee research cause) to let them know about her plight and to encourage them to throw their weight behind her.

She wasn't super crazy about their response (nada), but she eventually found the support of Denver council woman Peggy Lehman (cue chorus of singing angels). Anyway, wonderful Ms. Lehman (that's right, this in my blog and I get to have a bias) has been receiving all kinds of calls from other aggrieved beekeepers and is now working to craft legislation that will allow
Denver beekeepers to have a maximum of two hives per lot, with some other rules involved. This would be fabulous!

There are still some obstacles to this. One Denver resident was stung fifteen times when a beekeeper agitated their hive, and doesn't think it's right that a bunch of amateur beekeepers should keep bees where they can sting others. Point taken. I wonder if there's a way to get a permit that might require the signatures of your neighbors (in case anyone has a bee allergy)? This is a tricky issue, but I hope that people will find ways to find compromises to these challenges, rather than avoid them altogether.

One council woman, Jeanne Faatz, does not support the measure because she was stung once by a bee and, while she recognizes that bees are facing a decline, she doesn't thing it's up to Denver to solve the bee problem.

On the contrary, Ms. Faatz, I disagree. It is up to Denver to solve the problem, as it is up to every city and every person to solve this problem. We're talking about saving our food supply here, and for that kind of change, every little bee hive counts.

Dream Photoshoot

2008-11-02T10:43:00.000-08:00

So yesterday I did a photo shoot for a magazine article I wrote about bees. (This was my second professional photo shoot of the year, both about bees. Crazy!)

The photographer wanted to take pictures of me with bees, but my colony didn't survive this year, so I wanted to find a better setting. After a bit of research and some calls, we located a place in Boulder where Backyard Bees, owned by Laura Tyler and her husband, have a small apiary. Laura made an incredible documentary titled Sister Bee, and I saw her speak at a showing of the film earlier this year. It was wonderful to meet her in person and talk about bees and getting their story out into the media.

Anyway, the setting was just gorgeous. The late-afternoon light was pure gold, the countryside thick with fall colors, and the bees buzzed amicably, lighting on our clothes and hair. It was so fun to be in their presence, and share their beauty with the photographer, as well as whoever gets to read the article. Man, oh man, I love bees so much. They intoxicate me.

Thank to the Tylers and our amazing photographer, David Tejada, for making the wonderful experience possible.

Denver Officials Threaten to Jail Backyard Beekeeper

2008-11-01T12:45:00.000-07:00

Here I am, innocently--yet illegally--working in my urban beehive in Denver.

Apparently, I'm not alone among the ignorant. Another Denver woman, Marygael Meister, took a beekeeping class at the local botanic gardens and decided to try her hand at beekeeping as well. She invested about $1,500 in hives and bees and established three bee colonies in her backyard rose garden.

Sounds great, right? Especially since bees are facing a mysterious, historic decline all over the world, one that may be mitigated by small-scale local beekeeping efforts. Good for Marygael!

And yet, not so good. I read in a recent article that a local neighbor complained to the city about the bees, and the city promptly slapped her a fine of $999 and a possible YEAR IN JAIL if she didn't remove her boxes by June 25th. A year in jail. That is where our tax dollars are going.

This is disturbing news for two big reasons:

First of all...laws against urban beekeeping? Hello? Government policy makers need to craft legislation that allows beekeeping in cities so we can have as many small beekeeping operations as possible. We NEED to allow beekeeping because we need to allow beekeeping everywhere.

Reason number two...This so could have been me. I also had a bee colony in Denver, but unfortunately it died in the summer for various reasons. I hope I would have had the cojones that Marygael had when she refused to cooperate with the city and decided to seek outside help. More on that in the next blog. But seriously--a $1000 fine for keeping these fantastic insects. I was this close.

Woah, my project's also in the local paper!

2008-11-01T12:27:00.000-07:00

This whole Oprah Magazine thing is pretty crazy. Here's a link to a newspaper article on the Women Rule weekend that ran here in Denver. Man, I have GOT to get crackin' on this. I don't think I realized it would be such a big deal!

During the course of the incredible weekend, I had a chance to talk to many women about my project. One thing that the participants kept reflecting to me during the weekend was that I seemed most excited about bees and writing, and less excited about teaching women beekeeping in Africa.

I started to really wonder, what is it that most excites me about bees? What am I most committed to? The answer that came back loud and clear was that I'm most interested saving the bees from whatever is causing Colony Collapse Disorder. Obviously this isn't something I can do alone :) but, it doesn't mean I need to fly off to Africa and teach beekeeping, when I may need to address causes here in the US (like pesticides, for example.)

One of the things I learned most during the Oprah Magazine and The White House project weekend was the power of focus. I know I need to hone in on what exactly I want to do, but for now I'm moving slowly, researching and writing in general about the subject. My first commitment is to finish my novel next spring, but I'm hoping to get involved in some bee education projects in California when we move back there in January.

I'm not sure what it will all look like in the end, but I'm sure interested to see where this wild ride ends up.

Kickin' off I Heart Bees

2008-11-01T12:17:00.000-07:00

My bee infatuation started in 2007 when I stayed at a bee farm in the Philippines, and has taken on a life of its own ever since. Sometime in the spring, I applied for a leadership scholarship through O, The Oprah Magazine, by submitting a plan to teach beekeeping to women in Africa (probably through the Peace Corps) and then write a book about the experience.

I got the scholarship and was flown in June to New York (I got a travel scholarship as well), to join 80 other amazing world-changing women with their own ideas for how to make the world a better place. The event was called Women Rule and is featured in the November issue of O Magazine, and also online on Oprah's website here.

Anyway, I haven't done a whole lot to move forward with the project, as I'm trying to finish a novel I'm working on. However, I have an article forthcoming in Saint Mary's Magazine, that I'll post when it's available. For now, however, this blog is just dedicated to lovin' on bees.