Leading a Honeybee Life!

I think of myself as a honeybee. I flit from project to project, from book to book, from household task to household task like a little bee collecting nectar. Sometimes I start cleaning intending to do an entire floor and switch to something new after finishing one room. Often a distraction becomes the next project. Hey, that door is absolutely grimy; get out the soap and water and give it a good cleaning. And then there are the minor disasters like opening the refrigerator and having a jar of soup water fall out and shatter like last night while I was fixing dinner. (I don't waste anything including the water left from steaming vegetables or cooking potatoes. They make great soup stock.) Clean that up and move on to something else or just pick up the glass, cover the mess with towels and clean it up after dinner which is what I did.

On the Joy of Being a Beekeeper, a Chicken Mama, and a Grandmother

honeybees behind the insulation

 What a week! Joy and challenges galore. 

We've been dealing with a honeybee hive that set up home in the ceiling of our garage. We thought they left when we turned on the air conditioner, but they were coming and going again a day later. The air conditioner servicemen came to look at the unit, but wouldn't go near it with the bees flying around. (Can't say I blamed them.) One thought they were yellow jackets. Those yellow demons are among the nastiest hornets ,so his trepidation was reasonable, even though he was wrong and busy honeybees tend to ignore people. 

In the meantime, our daughter was scheduled to have her baby induced and the other four children (and four dogs) arrived to take up residence. And so began the swimming, biking, gaming days with lots of mealtime conversation and rosary decades for mom and baby. [See how long it takes you to figure out Max's riddle. "What is stronger than God, more evil than the demons, the poor have it, the rich need it, and you will die if you eat it?" I'm embarrassed to admit how long it took me to figure it out.]

A Honey of a Story

What are you thinking about right now? I'm thinking about harvesting honey. We didn't think we'd get any this year, but it looks like we will after all. What fun! Check it out and see one of the busy little workers in my garden. I commented to our mentor today that I can't imagine a beekeeper not believing in God. The design and plan of the honeybee colony sure affirm my wonderment at His divine providence! 

And our back yard is flowing with honey. This is the way the hive looked in June, but the population has exploded since then and we have girls flying everywhere. They must be downtown girls, because we see them flying toward Woodstock when they leave the hive. Right now nothing in the yard seems to appeal to their taste. They liked the lavender, but it's finished. I thought they'd go for the butterfly bush and the white clover, but they must like something else better because I haven't seen a single bee on any of those flowers.

Now Why Isn't the EPA Screaming About This?

Birds are in danger; honeybees are disappearing, and Monsanto and other companies poisoning our food supply with neonicotinoids go their merry way with government protection. Well, you can't blame the EPA for ignoring the threat. After all, their investigators are just swamped fighting global warming. 

Russia Warns Obama: Monsanto

Bee Collapse....Can We Thank Monsanto?

Colony Collapse Disorder is a growing problem. Is it possible that as the use of genetically modified plants loaded with systemic pesticide and herbicide chemicals is part of the reason?

Soaring Bee Deaths in 2012

It's no joke. While honeybees are not the only pollinators, some crops depend almost entirely upon the busy little honeybees, the almond crop in California, for example. They generally import more than a million beehives every year. Here's a bit from the article:

A coalition of beekeepers and environmental and consumer groups sued the E.P.A. last week, saying it exceeded its authority by conditionally approving some neonicotinoids. The agency has begun an accelerated review of their impact on bees and other wildlife. 

The European Union has proposed to ban their use on crops frequented by bees. Some researchers have concluded that neonicotinoids caused extensive die-offs in Germany and France. 

Neonicotinoids are hardly the beekeepers’ only concern. Herbicide use has grown as farmers have adopted crop varieties, from corn to sunflowers, that are genetically modified to survive spraying with weedkillers. Experts say some fungicides have been laced with regulators that keep insects from maturing, a problem some beekeepers have reported. 

Eric Mussen, an apiculturist at the University of California, Davis, said analysts had documented about 150 chemical residues in pollen and wax gathered from beehives.
“Where do you start?” Dr. Mussen said. “When you have all these chemicals at a sublethal level, how do they react with each other? What are the consequences?”
Experts say nobody knows. But Mr. Adee, who said he had long scorned environmentalists’ hand-wringing about such issues, said he was starting to wonder whether they had a point.