Complete with a rather gratuitous and graphic demo of drone bee genitalia explosion at about 2:30. What was I thinking?
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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.
Welcome Albuquerque Journal readers!
16 Sep
Thanks for reading this week’s beekeeping story in the Albuquerque Journal. Wowza, the girls we manage for City Open Space are now officially cover girls!
Sweet Deal
by Dan McKay, Thursday, September 16, 2010
Honey harvesting tastes even better than it sounds.
A few spilled drops are easily scooped up with a finger, and no one’s going to object if you chew on a discarded row of honeycomb.
But a small crew of city employees and volunteers is hoping to fill more than just bellies with the honey being collected. As part of a new project, the city will sell it to help generate a little cash — and perhaps educate people on the benefits of domesticated European honey bees, an important part of the ecosystem.
Where to buy Open Space honey:
- Check out the Urban Farm Fest this Saturday at the Open Space Visitor’s Center
Interested in Albuquerque beekeeping?
- Check out our community forum for local beekeepers
- New to beekeeping? Read the Seasonal Guide to Beekeeping in Albuquerque
- How to report a swarm of bees
Photos of Dan McKay?
Or, if you’re just looking for a few photos of journalist Dan McKay getting all sticky with honey, I’m happy to help out.
 Journalist McKay on the job |
 Honey harvesting tie not optional |
 Maintaining journalistic distance |
 The "coffee urn" honey extractor |
(photos by Kent Swanson)
Photos from 2010 NM Beekeepers Summer Seminar with Randy Oliver
2 SepI never thought I’d see a grown man spraying silicone on a statue of Ganesh at a church in Santa Fe but then again, it IS Santa Fe. And these WERE your usual bunch of iconoclastic beekeepers.
The Ganesh-sprayer in question was Steve Walls of Buckin’ Bee, demonstrating how he makes his own wax candle molds for beeswax candles that ahem… sell well in Santa Fe, the epicenter of alternative thought. Steve may have been the day’s comic relief but the headliner was scientific beekeeper Randy Oliver, flown in from CA for our New Mexico seminar.
Here are just a few photos of the rodeo.
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Randy Oliver “Scientific Beekeeper” is coming to NM!
23 Aug
It’s time for the annual summer gathering of New Mexico beekeepers — this weekend in Santa Fe.
- WHO: Randy Oliver from scientificbeekeeping.com
- WHERE: The Church of Christ in Santa Fe (map) NOTE: This is not a church-affiliated event but they’re generous enough to share the space with us.
- WHEN: Saturday Aug 28 from 10am-5pm
- COST: $20 for NMBKA members | $30 otherwise
In addition to Randy Oliver, we’ll have presentations and video from local beekeepers as well as Q&A.
See you there!
5 things I learned from Jürgen Tautz’s “Buzz About Bees”
18 Aug
It’s a book that will change your perspective about honeybees.
Though the American title, “Buzz About Bees” seems flippantly trendy, Jürgen Tautz’s book is loaded with data-backed analysis of bee behavior and insight into the latest genetic research. It’ll make you think differently too about the aggregate behavior of another social species, Homo sapiens.
Buzz About Bees: The Biology of a Super Organism
5 Things I Learned
The hardcover book is lushly illustrated and packed with mind-blowing information to fuel a beekeeper’s endless thirst for understanding. Here are just a few of my favorite revelations.
1. Bees don’t form hexagonal comb.
Wax, like glass, is a liquid. Once the bees build comb, they melt it slightly and that’s how it naturally forms hexagons much like adjoining soap bubbles do.
2. Bees turn off color vision on the way back home.
Bees use color vision selectively, turning it off to conserve energy when it’s superfluous. Who needs color on the way home, for example? Though they view objects in color when flying out to forage, they switch to B&W for the rote journey home.
3. Bees can sting each other without dying.
Apparently, it’s mammalian skin that thwarts the honeybee stinger. Honeybees die after stinging a human because their barbed stinger can’t be extracted easily but honeybees can sting each other as well as other insects without such dire consequences.
4. The honeybee waggle dance is NOT about visuals.
It’s about vibration. When honeybees dance, they’re actually sending vibrational communication through the medium of the comb. In fact, the front face of honeycomb is thickened slightly to enhance the network’s transmission capacity.
5. “Mass-orienting” flights are really practice mating flights.
Those gorgeous afternoon displays are not actually bumbling baby bees learning how to fly. Rather, they are apparently an ongoing drill of the workers that would accompany a virgin queen on her mating flight. Interestingly, these mass-orientations only occur in hives with a queen.
Check it out for yourself: Buzz About Bees: The Biology of a Superorganism
Welcome Local iQ readers!
5 Aug
Thanks for reading the beekeeping article in this week’s Local iQ. Welcome to my personal beekeeping website.
Interested in Albuquerque beekeeping? Here are some resources:
- Our community forum for local beekeepers
- New to beekeeping? Read the Seasonal Guide to Beekeeping in Albuquerque
- How to report a swarm
Or, if you’re just looking for a website, here’s my consulting firm.
My glamour girls featured in Local iQ
5 Aug
Photo by Joy Godfrey
Oh my! Me and the 40,000 vixens that call my backyard home are bashfully giddy about our feature in this week’s Local iQ. If it looks like we (me and the bees) are in love with each other, it’s because we are! Over the past 3 years, beekeeping has become one of the simple joys in my otherwise high-tech life.
“Bees are a reminder of our interdependence on one another,” Foster said in a recent interview. She elaborated that having bees in her life has changed the way she looks at nature. “I notice the rhythms now.”
Read the full article at Local iQ
Thanks to writer Kay Vinson and photographer Joy Godfrey for checking out my girls and learning more about Albuquerque’s amazing community of local beekeepers.
Everything Guide to Urban Honey
13 JulLocal chef and co-owner of Jennifer James 101 (they use our honey at the restaurant!) dropped off this sumptuous article on urban beekeeping yesterday: The Everything Guide to Urban Honey.
Informative and artistic, it’s a convincing testimony that urban beekeeping is back and here to stay.
From the series:
Are bees dangerous to Albuquerque?
7 JulPsst… got bees swarming on your property? Report a bee swarm in Albuquerque.
"Bee dog" photo by Erik Abderhalden | Find more adorable dogs in bee costumes at www.beedogs.com
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Asking whether bees are dangerous is like asking whether dogs are dangerous when the reality is this: Dogs bite.
In fact, in the U.S. 1000 people every day seek emergency treatment for dog bites. And the cost of managing canines is a significant burden on a community.
Even in Albuquerque, one of the top 3 calls to the City’s 311 line relates to reporting, complaining, or otherwise managing our urban dog population. (I used to manage the City website, that’s how I know 
) The unfortunate truth is our furry best friends can be a big fat headache. But we love them, and some might argue need them.
So too with honeybees, another species long domesticated by humans and one we’ve come to depend upon. The benefits of bees to a community, a recent article in the NY Times (via Sweet Hive Chicago) discusses, far outweigh the risks. Here’s why:
- Free pollination by bees supports our entire agricultural system (In NM, you can’t even ask the state question “Red or Green?” without the help of a honeybee.)
- Local honey may help with allergies
- Urban honey has less chemicals than rural honey
- Bees act as an indicator of overall health (Did you know they use bees to test air quality at German airports?)
So hug a honeybee, compadres. And if you’re allergic, stay away from wasps which tend to be responsible for most “bee attacks” in the populated areas we call home, sweet, home.
Thanks for stopping by
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