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Beecoming a Bee Guardian
By Rita H. Clagett
North Fork Bureau Reporter PAONIA

Bee guardian and farm owner Caren Vongontard has hosted this workshop, offered by the Soil Academy in Paonia, for the past three springs, with bee charmer Corwin Bell and his team from Back Yard Hive in Boulder. The night before class, Bell gave an introduction to his pioneering philosophy of bee guardianship.

“A bee colony’s immune system is its ability to react and adapt to its bioregion, and to pass that knowing on,” he says, his gestures as graceful and expressive as a bee’s dance. Bell began collecting “feral” bee swarms on the Front Range fifteen years ago, and housing them in top bar hives of his own design. Through workshops, and selling both architecturalquality plans and hives, Bell has fostered honeybee colonies up and down the Front Range, in the North Fork, and in other communities across the state and around the world.

Bell points out that honeybees in their capacity as pollinators are critically important to the survival of the human species, and he believes that we can help them survive and thrive by offering them safe haven in our own back yards.

It’s easy to think of an aspen grove as a superorganism, because underground all the trunks are connected through the root system. Bell describes the superorganism of bees as something larger even than a single hive. Not only are the honeybees of a given hive connected by something intangible, but by periodically throwing off swarms, and moving to a new hive when they become honey-locked, bees of an entire region are linked by common knowledge and genetics in a single superorganism. By the end of the evening’s presentation I am completely enchanted with both honeybees and Corwin Bell.



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Sweet Spring Sting Symposium 2010

Corwin presentation Sweet Spring Sting Symposium Santa Fe 2010

Backyardhive recently went down to Santa Fe to present at the first annual Sweet Spring Sting Symposium event put on by Melanie and Mark of Zia Queen Bees in Northern NM (www.ziaqueenbees.com/).

 

Click here to read more

 
Organic Beekeeping Conference 2010

 Organic Beekeeping Conference 2010 Oracle AZ   Presentation at Organic Beekeeping Conference 2010 Oracle AZ

 

Backyard hive recently gave a presentation at the Organic Beekeeping Conference in Oracle Arizona about the backyardhive and beegurdianship model of working with the honeybees.

 

Click here to read more about the conference

 
Gaiam Interviews Corwin Bell
Gaiam Interviews Corwin Bell On Colony Collapse Disorder

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
 
Colony Collapse Disorder

Backyard Beekeeping: Low Maintenance Hives are the Key to Saving the Bees. via Will Dart

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Colony Collapse Disorder

—and how you and your backyard can stop it.

The bee: a small insect with a flair for architecture, a sweet harvest and a colossal influence on our lives. It turns out we’ve been taking them a bit for granted. They might not be among the disrespected members of the insect world (ants, cockroaches, weevils, mosquitoes anyone?), but—up until recently—few of us understood the role they play in the running of our planet’s biosphere.

That is about to change—if it hasn’t already. News of Colony Collapse Disorder (C.C.D.)—the mysterious affliction that has struck the colonies of commercial beekeepers everywhere, robbing entire hives of their navigational abilities and killing billions of bees—has hit the mainstream. We don’t yet know exactly what causes C.C.D.—but we do know that we can’t afford to lose those keystone workerbees. Edward O. Wilson, the renowned Harvard biologist and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, has referred to bees and other pollinators as the “heart of the biosphere.” What would happen without them? Not much, it turns out: crops not pollinated, reduced harvests, less forage for domestic and wild herbivores, no honey, fewer flowers, a ripple effect on the biosphere and the economy.


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