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!

Top Ten Bee Facts Video

Well, the video won't let me embed it into my blog, but I will include the link here on the top ten facts about bees.

Here's the list (but still check out the video!)

1. Bees visit over 2 million flowers to make 1/2 kilo of honey (1.10 lbs).
2. For one jar of honey, bees will fly over 90,000 kilometers--55,923 miles.
3. A honey bee flies over 8km per hour (4.97).
4. The average worker bee will only make 1/2 a teaspoon of honey in her entire lifetime.
5. It would only take two tablespoons of honey to fuel a bee's flight around the world. (I hear this statistic a lot, but the fact is, a bee's wings wouldn't likely last long enough to fly around the world...but hey, it puts things in perspective.)
6. One honey bee will visit between 50 and 100 flowers on one collection trip.
7. Bees have been producing honey from flowering plants for between 10 and 20 million years.
8. Honeybees did not exist in North America. The Native Americans called the honeybee the "white man's fly." They were brought to North America by the colonists.
9. There are over 60,000 bees in the average bee colony.
10. A honeybee has four wings, while a fly has two.

There ya have it--with metric conversions even! But check out that link!

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!