Bees Are Back!

Here are just a couple of very cool things I’ve learned about bees so far-  They are complex communal and social insects and they choose to survive together as a community.   One way they communicate to each other is by “dancing”.  Through a kind of dance, or shimmy, foraging bees that have found an abundant nectar supply can share, with other members of the colony, information about the direction and distance to the nectar or pollen bounty!  

Small scale beekeeping, like any other animal husbandry, is a lot different than factory farm beekeeping, which goes hand in hand with monoculture. (Every year thousands of bee hives are lugged to California to pollinate the monoculture almond crop, for example.)  Large scale or industrial beekeeping also includes exploitation, stealing, culling, and manipulation.  Small scale farms can use small scale bees.  Though many beekeepers take the honey and replace it with sugar water, I would like to allow the bees to use all the honey they need and not have to make them work harder than they already do.   Honey bees will tap about two million flowers and fly 50,000 miles to make one pound of honey.   In general I would like to move more toward “natural beekeeping”, meaning minimal interference in their natural cycles.  There is so much to learn about beekeeping.
 
As I barely get to know bees, I am seeing them as one representation of the abundant beauty and complexity of life.   It feels good to bring new life to Hart’s Mill!