Showing posts with label beekeeping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beekeeping. Show all posts

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Weekly Green Tip

Pollinator Week this year is June 22-28th, and www.pollinator.org is already keeping us up-to-date with events as different states announce them!


(image courtesy of www.pollinator.org - to get your own, click here!)


http://www.pollinator.org/pollinator_week_2009.htm

Is your state listed as participating?

If not, BEE sure to write to your governor!
The link above provides all the information you will need to get in touch with your governor and even includes a sample letter.

Let's bring some awareness to our local pollinators! If your state has no events listed, how about getting the wheels turning to organize one? Last year, Whole Foods grocery stores participated in several areas. If you've got stores that sell local products, especially local honey, most likely they'd be willing to run some sort of promotion that week. Even if you just print out some information about local pollinators, and drop it off for the store to display during pollinator week, it's creating a lot of awareness that otherwise wouldn't be out there!

You can contact local beekeepers and see if they are doing anything to celebrate pollinator week. Maybe you can coordinate something fun with them.

You can put together a local craft show, and rent spaces for a fee, then donate part of the proceeds to a pollinator charity such as www.pollinator.org.

There are lots of things you can do, and I know June seems soooo far away- but organization takes time (contacting people, doing research, staying in touch, coordination) and it would be great to start now!

http://www.pollinator.org/pollinator_week_2009.htm
This same link also has a plethora of information you can use in organizing your own Pollinator week event.

If the idea of organizing an event seems intimidating, that's okay! If you start putting out feelers to others in your community (beekeepers, gardeners, crafters, organic food markets, farmers markets, etc.) who might be interested in doing something, chances are you'll get other ideas and offers from people to help and before you know it, you'll be up and running!

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Monday, October 6, 2008

Robbing the Bees: A Biography of Honey




I just received this book in the mail last week and have been trying to read a little bit each night before I go to bed. So far, I'm fascinated by it. The author, Holley Bishop, wants to study bees and beekeeping and becomes an apprentice to a beekeeper (Donald Smiley) in the Florida panhandle. I'm just a little into the first chapter so far. The author has spent a day with Mr. Smiley, the beekeeper, checking on his bees and now the chapter is going into a little bit of a history lesson :)

http://www.robbingthebees.com/photo_gallery.htm (pictures!)

I wish I had more time to read, as I'm really excited about the book! Hopefully after I move next week, I can spend a little more time with it.

If any other team members are interested in reading the book with me, I'm sure if you pick up a copy soon, we can coordinate and read it together- just let me know! Leave a comment here on this blog post! :)
I got mine for pretty cheap, used, from Amazon.com. Also there's always the library!!

-Samantha

Friday, June 13, 2008

A Charming Bee Story

OneHoney here,

Since I have news feeds through our Chicago Honey Co-op google and Pageflakes pages, I came across this story from the NPR show, "Living On Earth"
http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=08-P13-00024&segmentID=6

Not all the news about honey bees is bad right now. I want to let everyone know that there are beekeeping operations that are specializing in breeding queens and providing new bee colonies to beekeepers. We get our bees from a producer in Texas who has worked very hard over the last 6 years to select queen bees that show resistance to 2 of the most troublesome bee parasites, varroa and tracheal mites. It will be operations like this one ( BeeWeaver ), that enable beekeepers to overcome the various parasites and diseases that affect honeybees. Without chemicals and antbiotics that the beekeeping "Industry" is so reliant on.