Guard bees no match for Pepper Spray Cop
Wonder what time the pub opens tonight... there's a honey wheat on tap I really enjoy.
Lighten up, ma'am, what's a few dead bees when you've already lost your civil liberties?
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Bees + Beekeeping in Sweden
11 JulWhat I imagined in Sweden were Ikea-designed hives filled with winged mini-Vikings quaffing Absolut vodka. The reality, however, is much like beekeeping in the U.S…. plus styrofoam.
Last month, I lived in Gothenburg, Sweden where I encountered obscene amounts of daylight, smoked fish, and craggy green nature. Surprisingly, however, I saw very few honey bees. But that’s a different story.
Let me introduce you to the bees I was lucky enough to meet in Sweden and one special hive we took a peek inside.
Bronze Age Carvings & Bees
All watery green and granite, the Bohuslän coast north of Gothenburg is home to a series of Bronze Age rock carvings. It’s all part of a UNESCO world heritage site replete with hunting scenes and phallic might. On the road in between one ancient carving spot and another, we encountered this bright little apiary owned by the Johansson family.
 Bronze Age rock carvings in Tanum |
 The Johansson hives |
Team-Building Through Beekeeping at Sunset Magazine and Google
16 JunIt’s bee blogger exchange week! Yesterday, I highlighted 3 Albuquerque beekeepers on the Sunset website and today we have Margaret Sloan from Sunset’s “Team Bee” returning the favor. Margaret blogs about bees for Sunset Magazine’s One-Block Diet. When she’s not tending to Sunset’s 3 hives, she also is a production coordinator, fact checker, and map maker for the magazine.
Sunset Magazine’s One-Block Diet didn’t start out to build a better work team. It started as a project to help our readers learn to produce their own food in whatever space they have available. Like many of our readers, we had to learn from the ground up to do urban-homesteady things such as make cheese, brew beer, and, yes, raise bees.
As it so happened, the One-Block Diet’s beekeeping project did have a team-building effect. Communication flowed more freely between departments as Team Bee members buzzed around, talking bees, honey, and yes, Sunset Magazine.
I wanted to know whether other companies who keep bees were having the same team-building experience that we‘ve had at Sunset. And what company is more trendy and in the news for its apiary than Google and the Hiveplex?
Members of the Google beekeeping team
I called Rob Peterson, software engineering manager and one of the many beekeepers at Google in Mountain View, CA, only about 20 miles from us at Sunset. In their park like campus-by-the-bay, 120 employees have signed up to tend 4 beehives, sharing the duties of hive inspections, honey extraction, and general bee stuff. (more…)
Attila the Hun of the Honeycomb
17 MayWitness the “Bee Song” by Zach Sherwin aka MC Mr. Napkins at The Aspen Rooftop Comedy Festival 2010.
Bee Fanning Behavior: A honey-soaked evening
7 MayAt night, because the bees are fanning, my whole yard smells of honey.
It’s a monster hive, 6 deeps and 1 medium, and full of ripening honey. Despite our drought, my city bees have access to the well-watered trees of the neighborhood and the University of New Mexico and it’s clear they’re taking full advantage of their good fortune.
The monster hive at night
Why do bees fan?
Honey bees fan the hive for several reasons. Knowing what they’re up to depends on the location of their bums:
- Bums facing out with the tip exposed, the girls are typically sending a “homing signal” by revealing their Nasonov glands. This is done during swarming or orientation flights at a new hive. Here’s what Nasonov fanning looks like.
- Bums facing in or out with no tip exposed, the girls are fanning to:
- create ventilation inside a busy hive
- evaporate water from nectar until it contains less than 18% water and can be safely stored forever as honey
- both of the above
What does fanning behavior look like?
John Pluta from Georgia captures the stance of a fanning bee on video.
Day of the Dead Beekeepers
16 MarPhoto by Karl Arcuri
Karl from Austin is the coolest damn beekeeper I know. Not only does he examine his hives in a baby blue sweatband, but he paints his hives day-glo yellow.
And this, his latest inspired move, is beyond rad — a Day of the Dead beekeeper he commissioned from Austin artist, Cindy Raschke.
When Honey Bees Kiss
11 OctEach year, a giant pair of honey bee balloons at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta take off and kiss in the sky. At this year’s fiesta, the consequences became clear as a new purple baby bee ascended at dawn and floated up in triad over the Rio Grande.
And then there were three
Why the NY Times wants you to believe CCD is over for bees
9 OctThis week, the New York Times waved a triumphant flag in the struggle to solve colony collapse disorder.
“It has been one of the great murder mysteries of the garden: what is killing off the honeybees? Now, a unique partnership — of military scientists and entomologists — appears to have achieved a major breakthrough.”
So that was easy. While other countries like Germany and Italy have blamed (and subsequently banned) pesticides called neonicotinoids for colony collapse disorder, apparently the American “Dream Team” has come to a different and miraculous conclusion.
But wait. Not so fast.
Two days after the NYT article, CNN revealed something disturbing about the study.
What the lead scientist, Jerry Bromenshenk of the University of Montana, did not share is that he receives significant funding for his research from — yep, you guessed it — Bayer CropScience, the leading producer of those banned chemicals – neonicotinoids. Bayer, the exact company that benefits if its largest market, the U.S., believes CCD is solved and has nothing to do with pesticides.
“In recent years Bromenshenk has received a significant research grant from Bayer to study bee pollination. Indeed, before receiving the Bayer funding, Bromenshenk was lined up on the opposite side: He had signed on to serve as an expert witness for beekeepers who brought a class-action lawsuit against Bayer in 2003. He then dropped out and received the grant.”
And so the mystery continues… Or does it?
5 Min Ignite Talk on Bees + Beekeeping
22 SepComplete with a rather gratuitous and graphic demo of drone bee genitalia explosion at about 2:30. What was I thinking?
405 lbs, the Great Google Honey Harvest
21 SepHoney-harvesting Googlers
The Bee Team at Google (80 people strong) just harvested its first combs of honey last week.
Under the helpful guidance of Bill Tomaszewski of Marin Bee Company, Googlers took turns uncapping the honey (removing the protective wax that bees use to cover a cell once it’s filled with honey), hand-cranking the honey extraction machinery to spin the honey out of the honey comb and pouring the honey through filters to remove the bits of wax and other particles that came from the hive.
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