We are feverishly getting the word out about helping the bees! Corwin had another live interview with Boulder's Elephant Magazine. A great green living magazine and they do live interviews on various
This is a great article on the growing number of San Francisco urban beekeepers
S.F. Beekeepers Reap a Sweet Reward
"You wouldn't know that there are so many hives in the city, because beekeepers like to stay under the radar," said Bryon Waibel, as he maneuvered a wagon of hives around a cluster of homeless men sleeping on a South of Market sidewalk one recent morning.
Biologist Edward O. Wilson Warns of a Bleak World Without Bugs
By Adrian Higgins Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, June 30, 2007; Page C01
"It's a bad thing when any species is at risk," Wilson said of [colony collapse disorder]. "But in a sense it's the Katrina of entomology." It has brought a public awareness to the plight of pollinators, which Wilson calls "the heart of the biosphere."
At BackYardHive, we are committed to information and hive technologies that encourage and enable backyard beekeepers to be successful. Our primary focus is on improving bee ecology and beekeeping methods that respect the honeybee. Our hope is that by introducing new hobby beekeepers to the rewards of beekeeping that there will eventually be backyard beekeepers worldwide that will help bring back the feral bee population and improve the genetic diversity of the honeybees. This diversity is critically important to the survival of this most precious natural resource. Thank you for being a part of the
solution and being a part of the growing community of backyard
beekeepers we are helping to create at BackYardHive.com.
This is a video interview with Corwin Bell and other local Boulder beekeepers conducted by Gaiam (one of the largest resources for green living and fitness lifestyle products). Click to view the video: Gaiam Interview
This article is written by bee enthusiast, Philip Chandler. Philip has been beekeeping with the top bar hive for several years and has worked at the renowned Buckfast Abbey in the UK.
Article by Corwin Bell Look in the window and see how many bees look to be in the hive. We are looking for how the bees over-wintered and if they survived the cold temperatures. We are also looking for a new disturbing situation called "colony collapse disorder", (CCD, also know as bee die off, disappearing disease, spring dwindle, May disease, autumn collapse, and fall dwindle disease). There is a great deal of basic reporting on the situation on the web that you can search on at Google.com or wikipedia.org but the basics are that 34 states including Canada are finding empty hives or hives with just the queen, some brood and a small number of workers exists. It looks like most of the beekeepers are seeing that 60 to 75 percent of their hives have collapsed from this unknown symptom.
After a long winter and you start to hear the birds chirping and the first flowers are starting to peek out, spring is around the corner and it is time to start thinking about getting set for a season of beekeeping! If you are on the fence about whether or not to go for it this year, I would say take the plunge! Beekeeping is exceptionally fun and rewarding.
I'm not quite sure where my fascination with bees started. My grandfather kept bees on his farm in Kentucky to help pollinate his cucumbers, my mother tells me. But I would have been a tiny tot around that time, and the memory eludes me.
Kent Stiles, who champions the "Urban Apiculture Development Program" for the South Eastern Michigan Beekeepers Association (SEMBA) writes a thought provoking and frequently updated column on how his project is unfolding.
Mr Stiles is interested in exploring beekeeping in urban environments and finds the Top Bar Hive to be well suited for this kind of endeavor. While he clearly has a vision in mind that includes true urban landscapes (NYC? London?, could work) he plans to start first in suburban communities by forming small groups of local beekeepers to collaborate with. "My hope is to deal with the impact of practicing beekeeping in all types of local geographical environments, but with the focus on the impact of the trend toward increasing urbanization. However, for practical reasons, I will be focusing initially on "suburban" environments" says Mr. Stiles in his article.
We were quite pleased that Kent found us and found this website helpful. Here is what he has to say about BackYardHive.com:
"If you are not familiar with top-bar hives, the website that I found most useful for starting to learn about them is: www.backyardhive.com. Of course, they are selling top-bar hives and so their claims of the advantages of their hives need to be confirmed. However, as a gardener and a homeowner, I am tempted to purchase their more expensive hive for its attractiveness in the garden, and other non-utilitarian reasons, if only because it might even make it seem less threatening to my neighbors"
Thanks Kent, we think it's worth it too. But of course more frugal and industrious beekeeping zealots can use our free plans to build their own. Either way, it's all good for the bees.
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