Stingless bees can mummify beetles in resin!

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.

Top Bar Hives in Kenya

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.

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

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

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!

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

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!

More love for Haagen Dazs

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

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!

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...

Keeping it Light

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.

The Bees won in Denver!

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.

Are bees still on the decline? YES.

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?

If you like photographing bees...

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!

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

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

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.

Kickin' off I Heart Bees

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.