Home, Home At Last (Part One)

Today, I begin the tale of an epic journey taken by a colony of bees - from the wilds of Middleton, WI to the urban jungle of Madison - a long, arduous trip of ten whole miles.

On a sunny, Sunday afternoon, I headed to the west side of town, past the little airport and into an area that is somwhere between suburban and slightly rural. There are lots of spots like that around here - farmland that was sold off to developers and turned into communities with names like Golden Prairie Estates. The land still has a country feel to it but the horizon is filled with houses that all look vaguely similar and every yard is cluttered with Fisher Price toys.

The veteran beekeeper who so graciously agreed to sell me some of her bees lives in one of the older communities in this area. Not converted farmland but a long, winding street where every unique house is on about an acre of land. Her lot, in particular, was extremely impressive - with a massive garden, well-chosen trees and plantings, a pond with a duck, a few chickens, and (of course) beehives. The place felt a little bit like paradise and, as much as I wanted to, I felt like it was an intrusion to ask to take pictures.

Most swarms head into a tree.

There are two ways to buy bees - by the pound, in a shoebox sized screen box with a queen in her own, seperate queen box, or already established frames of bees. I was getting the already established kind. Here's how this happens: when a beehive gets "full" of bees, the bees will naturally split themselves into two groups. The queen will leave the hive, taking about 1/2 the workers and the drones with her. This is called a swarm.

The bees that remain, create a new queen and continue on. However, a conscientious beekeeper can intentionally split their hive before the hive swarms on it's own, creating what's called a "nucleus" or "nuc" for short. The beekeeper will then sell the nuc to late-comers like myself. It's a great way for the hobby to pay for itself.

The nuc comes in a "nuc box", which is just temporary housing until you get them into their hive. I called it the condo. My supplier uses cardboard nuc boxes that each hold five, established frames of comb. I was given four frames of "brood comb", which is where the queen lays eggs and the workers feed the babies, and one frame of honey comb so the bees had something to eat.

The bee condo (aka: nuc box)

My new mentor (we became fast friends, bonding over bees, knitting, quilting, and upholstery!) taped the top of the box down and I loaded them into the back of the car. After fumbling around with some twine in an effort to secure the box so it wouldn't bounce around on the way home, I bid goodbye to my new friend and headed home.

I had already prepped the area where the bees would live - in the space that used to be occupied by the rain barrel - so it was just a matter of carrying the box to the spot, setting it down, and opening up their entrance hole.

My dogs were fascinated. I think they could smell the honey and the sound was driving them nuts. The first casualty was my dog Caesar who, in his intense curiousity, ended up stepping on a bee and getting stung on the foot. It gave him the perfect opportunity to limp around acting like it was the end of the world for the remainder of the day.

Caesar was the first casualty.

Lilly was less impressed but felt the need to get involved.

Air vent for the condo

The condo was great - sturdy and perfect for transporting the frames I was given. But, as we all know, cardboard doesn't hold up to rain and we had a couple of doozy thunderstorms over the week that they were in it. After the first rain I realized that I had to cover the condo somehow so I bought a tarp and some twine and went home to fashion an awning over their area. I didn't take any pictures of the finished product because, frankly, it looked like a crazy person's tent but at least it did the trick! (Just to give you a visual, It was staked with a variety of implements including three of those tall, curly tomato stakes, a black plastic fencing stake, and a random assortment of tiki torches.) During the worst thunderstorms, the condo stayed dry and the bees stayed safe. Thank goodness!

In part two of Home, Home At Last, we'll look at the move from the condo to the permenant home - a beautiful western red cedar hive from Legacy Apiaries in Indiana.

- Alex

"I'm Covered in Beeeeees!"

Here's a little something to start your week off right:



And, believe it or not, there's actually a reason for this small bit of comedy...


My first time in an official beekeeping suit!

This was me on Saturday!  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I finally donned a bee suit and took a beekeeping class. I know that I've talked about getting bees for a couple of years (post #1 and post #2) but this weekend I took the steps necessary to make it happen this year.

The class was awesome. It was taught by Nathan Clarke of Mad Urban Bees - a unique beekeeping operation in Madison, WI. Nathan has been keeping bees for seven years and moved from hobbiest to entreprenuer last year. He partners with Madisonians to house his hives in backyards around the city. He cares for the bees and harvests the honey and the host families get free honey in exchange for the use of their yards. The also get the benefit of having pollinators living with them... Any gardener knows the value of that alone.

Nathan Clarke - awesome teacher, beekeeper, and entreprenuer.

Nathan sells his honey at a few local, specialty markets as well as through a honey CSA (community supported agriculture). He teaches classes because he believes that everyone should keep bees and help rebuild the bee population. He is building a cool, unique business while being an incredible steward for the earth. I was very honored to be able to learn from him and to have him as a resource.

I learned so much in this class - and I thought I'd done all the reading I needed! As Nathan says, "Ask 10 beekeepers a question and you'll get 13 different answers". As it turns out, beekeeping is a very personal pursuit and everyone has their favorite ways of doing things. However, one of the best things I learned was about how to mitigate mites organically. I was afraid, after all my reading, that I'd end up having to use chemicals to deal with these awful, pesticide-resistent parasites that destroy entire bee colonies. But, as it turns out, there are a number of chemical-free things you can do to help keep them at bay.

The last thing I did this weekend was join the local beekeeping association. Yea! I'm on the path to being a backyard beekeeper for realz!

While it's late in the season for getting bees, I'm still hopeful that I'll be able to get my hands on some to start my hive in 2013. I need to get them established in the next four weeks so the heat is on (so to speak).

Here are some photos from my class. Enjoy!

- Alex the (soon to be) Beekeeper

How the hive is assembled

How the queen is shipped.

My class, suited up and READY!

Opening the brood box to check out the bees.



How to feed the brood.




Drumroll, please....

And we have a winner!

Congratulations to pinkundine - the winner of Mighty Distractible's very first give-away. She will be receiving a lovely skein of Brooklyn Tweed's Shelter yarn in the colorway Woodsmoke.

Thank you to everyone who participated. We really enjoy trying out new products and hope to do more reviews and giveaways in the very near future. As a matter of fact, if you have anything in particular you'd like us to try out - a book, a fabric, a yarn, a notion of some sort, etc - please let us know!  Just email us or leave a comment in our comment section.

=========================== Today's post:

In keeping with the review theme, I'd like to tell you all about a movie I saw yesterday. Queen of the Sun is a documentary about bees - specifically, about the bee crises that we're facing in the US and Europe. It was fascinating and I'd really like to encourage everyone to see it.

Bees are suffering from something called "colony collapse disorder." This is a phenomena where an entire colony of bees will abruptly disappear for no apparent reason. In the US alone, we've lost over 5 million colonies in recent years which accounts for nearly half of the country's the bee population. Interestingly, Australia and New Zealand have not experienced colony collapse, as yet.

Scientists are scrambling to discover why this is happening - and for good reason. Bees are critical to our ecosystem and, if we don't have them to pollinate our fields, we will, quite literally, have no crops. Imagine if your only food was oats and potatoes... no fruit, no vegetables, no tree nuts, etc. And, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The domino effect that would happen if the bees died out is really complex and frightening.

For years people have speculated that colony collapse is a result of pesticides, genetic engineering of crops, the widespread use of hormones and antibiotics in farming, and various other reasons. This movie posits that the real culprit is mono-culture farming - ie: 600 acres of nothing but soy. Or corn. Or almonds. Or whatever. When you farm a single crop over such a huge expanse, the bees can't live on that land year-round. They need things that bloom throughout a long season so they can build up their stores for winter hibernation. If they can only pollinate for one month (or less) they die out, or move somewhere else.

Perhaps the most disturbing image in the movie was the scene of tractor-trailers trucking thousands of hives across country in order to pollinate the almond crop in California. It was the most unnatural thing you could imagine - they feed the bees corn syrup laced with antibiotics in order to "wake them up" so they can pollinate 600 acres of trees and then get shipped back to their home state - sometimes as far away as New England. Many bees die along the way and the mix of bees from different regions of the country means that they're passing mites and diseases back and forth and then trucking those illnesses back to their home states. It's just wrong on a lot of levels.

He brushes his bees with his mustache

Now that I've totally bummed you out, I promise that the movie is hopeful and lovely and sweet. Biodynamic and organic beekeepers from all over the world are interviewed for this film and they are a amazingly dedicated and quirky bunch of folks. The gorgeous shots of bees and flowers are interspersed with fun, animated sections used to illustrate some of the stories.

Those who know me know that I've been talking about having a backyard hive for a couple of years. Last fall, I cleared it with my next-door neighbor (just to be sure no one was going to totally freak out) and I picked out the hive I want to buy (a very small, low-honey-producing one.) So, now I just need to get everything ordered and join the local bee-keeping society because I'm pretty sure I'm going to need some help with this new hobby.

Please read about hive collapse or see the movie. There are a lot of threats to our ecology today but this one is fixable if we act now.

- Alex