We Made the Drudge Report!

Well, sort of.

Here is the headline:

NPR Shows Off New Facility: Wellness center, café, beehives on roof... a gong?

Those are the beehives we installed for them a few weeks back and are managing.  We will take what we can get.

Here is the article.

Making Pallets

With the bee delivery season behind us we are making splits and introducing queens to increase the number of colonies we have to 40 at our off-site apiary.  These 40 will make the trek to FLA in September or October to feast on the Brazilian Pepper nectar flow, build up in size, and then be ready for the almonds in February.

Pollinator Week!

Pollinator Week is back! Designated by the United States Department of Agriculture, National Pollinator Week will run from Monday, June 17 through Sunday, June 23. Events will run throughout the week in an effort to educate people about pollinators and their essential role in maintaining a healthy ecosystem. 

DC Events

Monday, June 17, 7-9 p.m.

Vanishing of the Bees Film Screening

921 Pennsylvania Ave., SE

Thursday, June 20, 6:30-9 p.m.

Cirque D'Insectes

City Blossoms Garden at corner of 11th and Harvard NW              

Friday, June 21, 10-2 p.m.

USDA People's Garden Pollinator Festival

2th and Independence, SW

June 12 - 26

Pollinators Depicted in American Indian Art

U.S. Dept. of the Interior: 1849 C St., NW

This celebration will recognize the importance of birds, butterflies, bats, beetles, and, of course, bees! Honeybees are specifically designed to carry pollen, which they consume as a source of protein. In flying from flower to flower, bees drink nectar and collect pollen grains they store in pollen-baskets on their hind legs known as scopa. In doing so, honeybees help to transfer pollen from the male anthers of a flower to the female stigma, initiating fertilization.

Pollinator Partnership has a full list of events.

Article On Bee Shortages In the Almonds This Past Spring

 My buddy Jerry from, Rock Hill Bee Farms, sent me the following article.  You may remember that Jerry has helped us supply bees to the DC area, and has graciously allowed me to partner with him as we expand our apiary for pollination.  I am posting it as a link as it is rather large:

http://www.ilsba.com/uploads/1/0/6/4/10649295/what_happened_to_the_bees_this_spring2013_opt.pdf

The article is especially interesting for us hobbyist as it details the commercial beeks' issues with varroa last year, which translated into significant losses coming out of this past prolonged winter.  Sound familiar?

It also tries to put into perspective the science behind the threat of neonics.

Jeff.

Our Third and Season Finale Trip to Don the Not-So-Fat FatBeeMan - VIDEO

We had our final visit to Don this season, to bathe in his knowledge and pick up 35 more packages.  Most of these packages will go into nucs in our nuc-ery and be used to expand our pollination prospects.

Vandal Hits Church of the Pilgrims' Hives

One of our intern's Kallisa went out to tend these hives this past weekend and was greeted with all the boxes upended and on the ground.  She put them all back together, and we assumed it was an isolated incident.

It wasn't.  I received a call from the church's caretaker on Tuesday saying that he had seen a homeless man screwing with the hives again the night before, swatting away bees.  He must have come back after the caretaker went to bed, because the hives were in bad shape Wednesday.  We came out to witness the carnage.


The bees were in good shape, huddled in the deep supers.  We did not look for a queen, but rather just put the hive bodies back in place and hoped for the best.

We are going to ratchet strap these hives down to deter another event, although a determined vandal can get through those.  We will see.

More Bees Coming

We are getting more package bees in from Don the FatBeeMan on May 30.  Please visit our store to order them.

I know it seems late in the season to install a package, but with regular feeding through the summer the bees should get a satisfactory start before heading into winter.  We are building up our own apiary with these friendly bees.

Note that these bees have been raised on small cell foundation (4.9mm), and these small cell bees are reputed to be more resistant to varroa mites then standard cell size (5.4mm) bees.  So consider raising these on small cell foundation, although standard will also work.

NPR Story On Recent Bee Losses

The bees we helped colonize on NPR's new green roof are featured in the audio.

Queen Rearing Essentials, Dr. Larry Connor, Day One -VIDEO

This weekend we had the pleasure of spending three days in the mountains of Virginia, in a town called Syria, to take a queen-rearing class with the noteworthy Dr. Larry Connor.

What a pleasure is was to spend a weekend with such a wise beekeeping rock stare.  And to drive him around in the convertible was a blast.  Dr. Connor has been a prolific author of books about beekeeping.

European Commission Plans for Neonicotinoid Moratorium

A two-year moratorium on the systemic insecticides known as neonicotinoids is slated to kick in no later than Dec. 1 throughout the European Union. The decision was left up to the European Commission after member states failed to come to a qualified majority -- again -- on whether to initiate the two-year ban.

The measure would apply to the application of imidacloprid, thiamethoxam, and clothianidin on corn, oil seed rape (canola), apples, carrots, strawberries and other flowering crops. 

The UK, along with seven other member states, voted against the ban. Before the vote, the UK's Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Mark Walport publicly opposed the proposal in a Financial Times editorial, painting an apocalyptic outcome of "a resurgence of crop diseases, reduced crop yeilds and economic damage to struggling European economies." As a science adviser, Walport made a few of his own questionable hypotheses that probably wouldn't hold up to a seventh-grade scientific method run-through. On the one hand he stressed the need for "rich ecosystems," but then also noted the need to target our "foe" insects with pesticides, while making sure to spare our "friends." Last I checked, an ecosystem was an equal opportunity employer, running on a vast interconnected network of friends and foes -- sort of like an earthy round of Kumbaya 'round the fire...right?

A Spring Visit to Paris Barns

Willie (with the requisite bedhead)  and I got up early this Sunday to head out to Paris Barns in rural Virginia (Paris, Va) to spend some time with their rescue animals and check on their bees.  One of the pleasures of the DC area is that you don't have to travel very far to find working farms and a completely different lifestyle from the stresses of city life or the comfortable vehicular life of the suburbs.

NPR - Rough Winter

Had a rough winter this past season, with large numbers of bees dying?

Check out this NPR story on the suspected sources of the problem.

Making Soap....

Although it was a beautiful day outside, and having performed a couple of installations, Will and I had to switch gears and do a little chemistry making soap.  This soap is our hot process version.  We prefer the hot process because the chemical reaction takes place during the cooking, eliminating a multi-week curing process.  And because of the addition of heat it makes it easier to use fats that are hard at room temperature, specifically beeswax.

Walker Jones Adds Five New Hives

Over the last 12 months we have been training teachers from three DC schools to tend to hives and begin Junior Beekeepers clubs at each.  To kick it off, Walker Jones School, which already has three hives on their property at their urban farm, installed five hives on their green roof of the school building.

Nixing Neonics

You've probably heard about them -- the ubiquitous insecticide that lurks within the plant and isn't sprayed on like traditional pesticides. Neonicotinoids, as the name suggests, are similar in composition to nicotine and cause certain neurological receptors to be over-stimulated in insects. As a result, bugs that feast on plant tissue that has absorbed the chemical soon incur neurological damage, which can cause paralysis and death. This systemic type of pesticide, which includes imidacloprid, thiamethoxam, and clothianidin, is applied to seeds and absorbed into the plant as it grows, creating an life-long resistance to mostly corn- and soybean-hungry insects. Throughout the European Union, they're also applied to sunflowers, oil seed rape (canola) and sugar beets.

While honeybees aren't exactly known for their green-leaf appetites, several studies have delved into the affects of neonics in plant nectar and pollen, as well as "dust dispersal" of the chemical when planting treated seeds. In fact, some studies have drawn the link between this type of systemic pesticide and Colony Collapse Disorder. The entire issue has been a point of contention for the European Union. More recently, several farmers in the U.S. have also banded together and filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency, calling for stricter regulations on the use of these insecticides.