The Honeybee Conservancy

Imagine that you are a commercial beekeeper. The rule of thumb is that you need 500 or more hives to justify keeping bees as a full time job. That is a lot of money tied up in equipment.
You have a bank note that you pay on annually for said equipment with proceeds from the honey crop. Uh oh. You see mites. You follow the advice of the experts that monitor the bee problems. They recommend you take action with some chemical or other intervention. Whew! You make your order and while you are waiting for it to arrive…
…You go to your monthly local bee club meeting. And the new guy is talking about natural beekeeping. He has found that you can stop placing chemicals and high fructose corn syrup in your hives.
“Geez”, you say, “but the HFCS is so much cheaper than honey. How can I compete with the commercially produced and imported honey that is sold at the local grocery store? You want me to let my bees eat honey all winter? How will I make my payments to the bank? You say I need to stop medicating? What if I lose all my bees? I have my whole life tied up in this operation. I can’t take that risk. If the government will compensate me for my losses, why should I take that risk?” Read the rest of this entry →

I walked to the back 40 this morning with my two teenage sons and our very excited family dog to pick blackberries. As I reached into the thorny bush to gently massage a clump of juicy ripe berries, I was struck with the thought of how quickly nature heals herself if we let her.
Several years ago, one of our neighbors had a bulldozer come in and make 3 large piles of logs and brush out of 6 acres of beautiful native forest. I grumbled about it to my wife on more than one occasion and was excited when they wanted to sell. We bought it, and forgot about it. I’m sure our other neighbors grumbled about us not brush hogging it like a responsible land owner does.
This year we have a bumper crop of wild blackberries covering the land. You can’t even see the ground, as the brush is so thick. Where there was once disturbed soil, there is now fertile and productive growth. The microbes and worms in the soil are recovering nicely and the erosion has stopped.
Unless we interfere, over time that area will once again be an old growth forest with tall majestic trees.
What does this have to do with honey bees?
Nature is quite consistent. She never gets discouraged and always recovers.
The honey bees are recovering from our ignorance and interference. There are beekeepers who are prospering. They are the ones who listen to the bees and respond with as little manipulation as possible.
But what about the beekeepers who have been taking the government handout/bailouts? I suspect that if we were to look closer we would find that those beekeepers aren’t working with nature but against her. The irony is… they are being rewarded for over managing or even mismanaging their hives.
At Beelanding were not offering bailouts but rather, information, ideas, workshops, hands-on experience, and a bee friendly bee hive. What we are doing here takes work and experimentation. I’ve been thinking what kind of handout I can offer. Hmmmmm….. seems like the best I can do is to offer you a cool glass of blackberry mead, when you pay us a visit.

What is it about that title?
Hmmmm…….. ED Erectile dysfunction, RLS restless leg syndrome, ADD Attention deficit disorder.
One thing I have noticed about human nature is that we need to identify, label and vilify the “disorder” so that we can blame someone else, create a patented wonder drug complete with research funding to solve the problem, and of course get bailout funding.
Take for example, the other day I’m in Wal-mart sitting on a bench waiting for my lovely wife. I can hear on the pre-recorded background noise coming from the pharmacy that “dry mouth is a treatable condition”. I was shocked to hear the announcer say that “it might be treatable by sipping water or using [their product].” Go figure! Read the rest of this entry →