Yes I can

I remember when I was teaching my now 15 year old niece to climb trees. It was late spring in the budding forest and we were crossing a thick patch of mud. The only way to get across without getting dirty was in the trees. So we went up. I saw the fear in her eyes as I encouraged her to go to the next tree. "I can't" she whined.

It was in that moment when I realize 'can't' is the only thing that could make her fall. 'Can't' was the only thing that got in the way of her making that confident swing from one tree to the next. I knew she could, but it was in the face of her knowing that she could not. I explained to her that when one takes risks such as climbing trees one has to believe in themselves otherwise gravity will win. When you reach your small hand over to grab that branch and you do it with trepidation, you will have a weak grasp and may lose it. You have to grab the branch and swing your foot over with confidence, trusting that it will land where you want it to and the next tree will hold you just as this tree has. If you second guess any of that, in the mud you will go. I showed her how I do it and encouraged her to follow. She made the leap and we made it home tracking little mud behind and a new word in our conversation. Can.

But 10 years later and I find myself forgetting that word. The bees have mites, they are being robbed and any attempt of feeding them seems to be causing more harm than good, the hive is not tight, the bees, pollen and nectar are in too many different areas. I go in to help them with treatments for mites and they sting like a colony of killer bees. I can't. I just can't do this. Beekeeping isn't meant for me. I am a woman...too sensitive, too weak. I think too much, I don't do enough, I anthropomorphize, I just cannot do this!

There is a rush that happens when I crack the propolis seal on the inner cover over the hive. The ladies come up and greet me. Sometimes calmly, often with a bit of 'what the hell?!' My hands shake and my body trembles. My heart beats in my head. I feel my insides being exposed as I expose hers. "Am I doing this right? Am I hurting them? Am I smart enough, good enough, sure enough?" They smell fear. They smell doubt. They insist with their piercing poisoned stings that I am not. "Go Away!" they insist.

And so I do. The belief of 'I can't' has permeated this hive. In beekeeping one has to make split second decisions and be confident in them. Like climbing trees or rocks. Angry bees are the gravity of the situation ready to take you down and swell you up if you do not move with stealth and care.

Consciousness of my body and their body, care for each movement and each split second decision is of utmost importance when working a hive. Last week I had to go into the hive and tighten it up. I took a lot of deep breaths and listened to their responses to my attitude. When They got worked up ('what the hell are you doing moving my home around?!') I breathed deeply and moved within the resistance. They were very calm when the hive was put back together minus one box. Love and vulnerability made the work possible. Can is a word that is being remembered again as I work with these amazing bugs!

Anise hyssop in the factory lot garden in boonton

An Update on The Factory Lot Garden

one of faith's girls
a nectary delight

over the garage

Anthropomorphizing

This marks my third summer working with the bees. I was thinking that 3 years sounds like a long time but it is nothing in helping me understand such a great mystery as the honeybee and the hive. Among beekeepers it is said that in order to be considered a beekeeper you need 5 years under your belt. Most people make it 3 at most. I understand why.

Last year, true to personal form, I thought I understood beekeeping pretty well. I worked with and studied under some great teachers and movers and shakers in the bee world. I went into a lot of hives and saw a lot of different bee realities. I knew what was going on most of the time and felt pretty comfortable in my work. That was until the cords were cut and I was out on my own. On my own and often too proud to ask for guidance…

Fear.

Fear is the biggest hurdle in this work. It is not the fear of being stung that gets me. It is more the fear of upsetting a volatile being. It is the fear of hurting someone who cannot afford any more hurt. It is the fear of my own power to foster life and manifest death. With thousands of stinging insects buzzing in my ears all of these fears come rushing to the surface, forcing my heart to beat faster and harder, causing my entire body to quiver uncontrollably as if I had just downed a gallon of coffee.

Fear.

With all of this fear I would forget to breathe.

Without breath it is likely I will make a fatal mistake. And I have.

Thousands of bees can live or die at my hand. That is a huge responsibility for someone who shies away from such things. One wrong move and the whole thing could end. One thoughtless manipulation and the bees could have a few weeks of recovery from my lack of forethought, or thought of their needs over my own.

This is beekeeping. This is learning.

Add to all of this disease and mites and my sleep is lost at night. I see why folks quit after 3 years. The pain of losing hives, of seeing your sweet little ladies inundated with those little blood sucking parasites. To see her little legs trying futilely to remove the mite that is so perfectly positioned so that the bee cannot get her off. To see the babes with shriveled wings and shrunken bodies is heartbreaking. Small hive beetle, wax moths, wasps, mice, ants, you name it…we are all after what the bees got. How about witnessing a brutal war between a weak hive and a strong hive. The strong hive will come and destroy the weak hive and steal all of it’s honey. Peaceful my ass!

When times are good, times are good. Nectar is flowing, brood is being born, the hive grows, the honey is stored. Everyone is happy and full of love and light. But when the slim times come. Well, you know. It’s ugly.

Mainly though, what I am doing is projecting my inner process onto the bees. I imagine this is much of the medicine that they offer up to us; and have offered up to us for thousands of years. They are healers and I a humble servant. My fear is for all sacred mysteries and I pray that we will make it through these challenging times together. I pray that in 2 years I will have a big beekeeping initiation. We will all do a waggle dance together to celebrate the harvest of health and prosperity as well as human submission to the divine wisdom of nature.

Is anyone reading this? Is blogging as inane as I believe it to be?

Nature

Nature

When we talk of nature, we often exclude humans, ourselves. We speak of the innate knowing in nature. How amazing it is that nature knows how to do whatever it is she does. How the bees know how to create hexagons and honey and wax and queens. How the earth grows bramble to protect and cleanse the land. How salmon know how and where and when to go every fall to spawn. It is common to find someone standing in awe at the mystery of how the geese know how to fly in that pattern and which direction south is or how the killer whales know where to hang out every year to eat on their migratory journey south.

The human entity is just as miraculous as the rest of nature. The designs and intricacies of timing and function are astounding when observed. We take so much of human nature for granted and scoff at the destruction our societies have created. I have heard it said that it is easier to see what is outside of ourselves, but if we take some time to look inside, we might be in awe of what lies in our bodies, hearts and souls and learn to love human nature a bit more. When is the last time you heard anyone talking about how miraculous it was that for about 1/3 of our lives we are in hibernation? Our bodies just shut down shop and say good night when the sun goes down. Or what of the mystery of women shedding blood and tissue every 28 days in accordance to the moon? I stand in awe at our relationship to the sun and the ocean and the mysteries that conduct much of our behaviors.

But what of these relationships between humans and the rest of nature? If we gave ourselves as much forgiveness as we gave the rest of nature and viewed our place on this planet as essential, then maybe healing could take place. It is my belief that until we do that; until we recognize that we are an integral part of nature, we will not survive these trying times.

We look at the bees and see their eminent demise.

According to many, past and present, it is due to the industrialization of their life cycle.

Industrialization of life cycles is happening to all life on the planet, if we are to look at it in a broader sense. Humans included. Our natural inclinations are being suppressed and superseded as well as all other creatures on the planet. This has a dreadful effect on us, just as it does on the bees, on the salmon, on the whales, the birds, bats, cows, frogs, on the ecosystem in general. Sleep disorders, anxiety, heart disease, ADD, menstrual discomforts are just a few effects of industrialization on humans that pop into my mind as I write this.

As humans, we tend to take the blame for all the worlds woes (I do anyway, but I can also blame that on being raised Roman Catholic). We blame human nature for all the destruction in the world. I want to encourage a shift of thinking though. A way to recognize our wondrous and mysterious link in the sacred web of life. A way to honor ourselves and listen to our natural inclinations as opposed to following what is expected of us or demanded of us by the industrialized thinkers. Life is dynamic and with consciousness and care we are all welcome to walk into that mystery.

Looking inside can be difficult, as there is often pain lying there within the truth of our souls. In finding those imprisoned wild places within us we will be able to relate to the natural world with more clarity. It is in the relating and listening that we will know what we need to do to shift the course that we are on.

As Seen in Edible New Jersey

saving grace

The honeybee has a new hero. You.

by tammy toad ryan

For thousands of years, honeybees have been an important part of human lives. From magical rites in ancient Egypt to pollen on shelves in health food stores, bees have offered us a connection to the natural world that inspires a certain humility coupled with a notion of healing powers. So it’s no surprise that, when news came around a few years ago that our little ally was sick and dying, a rallying cry was heard across the continent: What is going on? What can we do?

It used to be that this Garden State was full of gardens and farms. Generally, each of these farms housed a few hives containing bees that would forage on the land, which held a diversity of plant species. The farm’s trees, weeds, shrubs and flowering plants offered nectar that the bees would use to make honey, and the pollen was used as a protein source to feed their young. In the bees’ quest for food, they moved pollen from one flower to the next, ensuring pollination and reproduction. With the help of these pollinators, the land provided abundant crops.

Monoculture, a system of farming that uses vast tracts of land to grow a single crop, changed this arrangement. With monculture, chemicals are often used excessively to eradicate weeds. Without diversity of flowers, the bees are not able to survive. On land with only one species of flower in bloom for a short period of time, bees must move on. And, since pollination is vital to the production of the food that we eat, farmers who practice monoculture must import bees at certain times. So beekeepers haul thousands of hives around on flatbed trailers every three weeks or so depending on how long the bloom is on the specific crop that needs pollinating. In some cases, bees are moved from state to state to pollinate.

“Bees pollinate 60 percent of the food that we eat,” says Jake Matthenius, former New Jersey State bee inspector. “From clover and alfalfa for animals to cranberries and blueberries, they help produce food.” After 42 years as state bee inspector and 65 years of beekeeping, Matthenius should know. Bees are said to be the backbone of
agriculture. Without them life on the planet as we know it would end. Melons, squashes, blueberries, apples, nuts, alfalfa, clover, cocoa, vanilla, mango, plums, apricots, cherries, avocado, canola, broccoli, cabbage, cucumbers, cotton, carrots, coffee and kiwi are just some of the crops that would not survive without the efforts of pollinators.

So how are the bees doing? “When I left the Department of Agriculture [in 1990] there were 40,000 hives in New Jersey; now there are 10,000,” says Matthenius. “You tell me how they are doing.”

Jean-Claude Tassot of Tassot Apiaries in Milford has been keeping bees most of his life. Six years ago he and his family decided to make a business of it. Over the years, Tassot has seen many changes in beekeeping. “It was more natural before; it is worse now because of chemicals. The bees are not healthy. If they were, there wouldn’t be problems like CCD [colony collapse disorder, the most recent assault on the weakened colonies]. They are not healthy because of chemicals.” Tassot disapproves of the use of insect-control products like Bayer Advanced, which is given to plants in food, water, or soil. The insecticide is actually taken into the plant. Rain and water cannot wash it off. Insects are killed when they come into contact with the product or when they attempt to eat the plant. “We need to ban the way we use chemicals now. We have
to realize this is not good for the bee and it isn’t good for humans.” Tassot’s hives are faring better than many. He uses essential oils, rather than chemical or acids, to treat his bees for the varroa mite, a honeybee parasite that can cause serious damage to a colony. Like many beekeepers, Tassot would like to see more farms and lawns “go organic.”

Organic beekeeping is something that Earl Rowe, of Douglas Farm and Apiary in Gladstone, is very familiar with. Like Tassot, he too has been beekeeping much of his life. Rowe is a hobbyist and has about 25 healthy hives that he cares for organically. He believes that there are “too many toxic chemicals given to bees to make them ‘better.’
They are little creatures and they are really stressed out. When human beings overwork themselves, they get sick. It is the same with bees.” Earl and his son Brian teach a bee club for children at the Somerset County 4-H. They also do outreach at schools and clubs, showing people the gentleness of the bee as well as the magic of the hive. Through teaching about the bees, they encourage children and adults alike to be more intimate with their environment.

From a bee’s point of view, the environment is the surrounding area that provides food. The bees will travel up to three miles from their hive to collect nectar and make it into honey, which they store for later use. According to Tim Schuler, current New Jersey State bee inspector, “the biggest threat to honeybees is the lack of forage because of changes in land use and pesticides in our environment. The image of the perfect lawn needs to go.”

Earl Rowe agrees. If we are to help the honeybees we must be “willing to accept dandelion, daffodils and a bit of wild.” He suggests “throwing down a bit of wildflower seeds to provide nectar for bees. Each flower has different flowering times.” When a person keeps the bees in mind the whole of nature opens up to them. Flowers are no longer just pretty borders to the highway or pesky weeds, they are viewed as a source of food for our much-needed state insect.

Along with serving as the state apiarist, Tim Schuler is also the coinstructor of the beekeeping courses offered through Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station. Their course for novices, Bee-ginner’s Beekeeping, covers the basics of beekeeping such as bee biology, hive management and how to put a hive together. They also
offer a beyond-the-basics class for more experienced apiculturists. This class covers Integrated Pest Management (IPM) for honeybees, methods and equipment for moving and feeding bees, honey removal methods and small-scale queen and “nuc” production (a “nuc” is a small start-up nucleus colony of bees, brood [babies] and honey).
According to Schuler, “Of the 1,000 registered beekeepers in New Jersey, the vast majority has one or two hives in their backyard.” He believes wholeheartedly in IPM. “Some measure needs to be done [to treat for the varroa mite],” he says. “Use nonchemical means as much as possible but if that doesn’t work use harder chemicals.” It is better
to have a hive that is alive with chemicals in it than a dead hive.

The growing public awareness of bees and their mysterious disappearances with colony collapse disorder has generated a new momentum in beekeeping. A few short years ago, the average beekeeper was 60 years old and male. That is changing as more people are catching the backyard buzz. Along with the 4-H program and the Rutgers
classes, there are programs in southern New York State that promote organic and biodynamic beekeeping, emphasizing the importance of respecting the entirety of the web of life. Chris Harp of Honeybee Lives teaches regularly at his New Paltz Apiary and he also conducts classes with Ross Conrad, author of Natural Beekeeping: Organic Approaches to Modern Apiculture, at the Pfeiffer Center in Chestnut Ridge, New York. Harp and Conrad have established a following of
new beekeepers who are interested in the bees and helping the planet.

Stephanie Smith is one of the new breed of beekeepers. She keeps bees the old-fashioned way in a Kenyan top-bar hive. Top-bar hives allow bees to make their own comb in the shape that they would in nature. It is about trusting the instinct of the hive instead of forcing the bees into rectangular boxes with cells designed to get more honey
out of the bees. Smith started keeping bees in Frenchtown last year after taking courses at the Pfeiffer Center. “It is such an amazing experience, to witness such a cohesive social system. Their way of living provides for us a model of cooperation.” Beekeeping for her isn’t simply about honey or pollination, as it has been to many beekeepers in the past; to her and to many new beekeepers, it is about stewardship. “We need to shift our perspective of small creatures and start seeing them as partners, not our enemy.”

After starting to keep bees last year under the tutelage of a friend, Shaun Ananko, 26, is an inspired new beekeeper. This year will be his first with his own hive. When I asked him what motivated him and what the bees have to offer, he didn’t give the typical answer of pollination or honey. He said, “They have lessons to offer us, love and
inspiration. The bees help me find my place in the world and understand my purpose of giving back what I take and not harming the environment. They work together as one organism.” For someone who is just forming his relationship with the bees, he has a strong view as to the lessons we have learned from the bees’ ordeal with colony collapse disorder and mites over the past 20 years. The bees have offered us a way to find our connection with our environment, to take care of the small as well as the great. “Through commercial beekeeping we have put stress on the bees and it is our responsibility to bring the bee population back to its natural order,” Ananko says.

Indeed, it is our responsibility to foster these relationships with the natural world around us. For us to really help the bees and to change the course that we are on, we must be more conscious of the chemicals we use and the impacts we have on the whole of the environment. Everything is connected and what hurts one being will have a
ripple effect throughout the ecosystem. Planting flowers to feed our pollinators will help offset some of the environmental degradation that has occurred in the past century. Let us remember what our ancestors knew thousands of years ago. The bees are our messengers and our symbol of the deep interconnection of all that exists. We
must sit still and pay attention so that their message can be heard.

HERE’S WHAT YOU CAN DO:

Become a beekeeper. Even keeping one hive makes a difference, and you don’t need an expansive farm or field to be a beekeeper. Hives can be set up in a small backyard or even on a building rooftop.To take a course, or to simply learn more, visit one of these websites:

• HoneyBee Lives with Chris Harp, Beekeeper/Bee Doctor honeybeelives.org
• Dancing Bee Gardens: Caring for Bees Organically dancingbeegardens.com
• Pfeiffer Center. pfieffercenter.org
• Rutgers University’s New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Center. Information on their many courses, including their Bee-ginner’s Beekeeping workshops, is available.cpe.rutgers.edu .

Get involved. The New Jersey Beekeepers Association offers a variety of events, products and promotions designed to increase the public’s understanding and appreciation of bees. Join your local branch. njbeekeepers.org

Get the kids involved. The 4-H Beekeeping Club of Bridgewater allows kids to start keeping bees at the age of nine. Their website offers a variety of kid-friendly information for teachers as well as participants. freewebs.com/4hbeekeeping

Create a bee-friendly landscape. Instead of focusing solely on evergreens, choose shrubs and trees that bloom, such as maple, blackberry and hollyberry, along with perennial flowers. And don’t forget: clover, thistle, dandelions and milkweed are bee-favorite sources of nectar.

What is going on with the bees?

“What is going on with the bees?”

“How are the honeybees doing?”

These are a couple of the questions that I frequently get asked when I let people know that I am a bee keeper. The answer changes constantly depending on the mood I am in, but as with all answers that come from my lips, the onus comes down to me and it comes down to you.

By now we have all read at least one news report on the bees. Chances are that everyone has a slight understanding of the life of a hive and how the little ladies are mysteriously disappearing. We have been hearing new reports for years about pathogens being spread on the farms. From e.coli in the spinach to avian flu in the chickens. Buffalos butchered for fear of mad cow disease, whole flocks of chickens being murdered for fear of avian flu. Industrialized farming is in a grisly time. When the only answer to a problem is to kill or clone, it seems to me, we have reached the conclusion. The bees are a species that we cannot live without and now we are growing more aware of the intricacies of the web of life. Industrialized farming has no way of humbling itself to its defeat.

Industry

When man started creating from a mechanical point of view it was much to the relief of many of our forefathers and mothers. Life was a bit more predictable and they were a bit farther away from the chaos of the natural world. Shearing a sheep, carding the wool, spinning the hairs and knitting your blanket sure takes a lot of effort that can be much more easily dealt with by a machine. So many tasks are happily given over to the predictability and ease of a machine.

But when we started to view life as a machine is when it started to go downhill. How many times have I heard someone refer to my body like a car, or my brain like a computer? Life is dynamic, it flows and has many variations that escape human understanding and logic. Life does not come in 90 degree angles nor should we expect it to. But we have been taught as such and continue down that road to collapse.

Colony collapse disorder

Right, the bees, that is what I was here to write about wasn’t it?

And so what can we, you or I, do?

Recognize that industry is feeding you.

You are relying on a very fragile food system that is quickly collapsing and getting more violent and invasive every day (yes, the cattle men are starting to talk about cloning cows so that they produce less methane in their poo…then they can market their product as having a smaller carbon footprint!).

If you can’t grow your own food, support someone who can.

Local food may be more expensive in the short term, but you are building a food secure tomorrow by investing in the small strong farmers today.

What is killing the bees is industry and the only way to save the bees as well as ourselves is to step away from the hands that are feeding us and take the power into our own hands. The next decisive steps we are to take will not be easy, but they will be satisfying if made with the intricate, mysterious web of life in mind.

It seems to me that all year long every periodical I picked up had a troubling story about the state of affairs in regards to our sacred pollinators, the bees. Being an apiarist and lover of the honeybees, I was struck with who was concerned about the problems facing the bees and the constant question of “what can we do?” It is such a big question and one I have pondered every day of my adult life.

My answers are idealist as well as practical. I believe that we must change the state of bee keeping practices. We have to demand for a better way of life for farmers and the things they farm. The bees are an indicator species and what they are indicating is that we are all connected, that there is no separation in the sacred web of life. The fear I see in peoples eyes is alarming and comforting at the same time. It is denial that has gotten us to this point and if the possible loss of our pollinators is our alarm clock then I say come on out and let’s get moving!

There is a quote from Rudolf Steiner regarding artificially rearing of queen bees (a common practice today) “…we’ll have to wait and see how things will look after fifty to eighty years. Certain forces that have operated organically in the beehive until now will become mechanized; will in themselves be mechanically carried out. It won’t be possible to establish the intimate relationship between a queen bee you have purchased and the worker bees the way it would arise all by itself in nature. But at the beginning, the effects of this are not apparent” In 1923 most of the men hearing this lecture could not fathom what he was speaking of. Hindsight is always the clearest, but in the understanding of treating nature as a machine, we as a society find it very difficult to switch out of the economy of efficiency.

Nature does not work like a machine, and in that truth we are beginning to see that in treating it as such we have minimized the integrity and health of life on the planet. We suppress the growth of the Hive and control their natural inclinations. We feed them corn syrup, white sugar and genetically modified soy and move them around 100’s of miles bi weekly. And then we wonder why their immune systems are weak! They are stressed and malnourished. It is pretty simple. A few years ago it was encouraged practice (it may still be) to let your hive die or to kill it every winter as it was more profitable to take their honey ($300-$400) and buy a new artificially reared hive in the spring ($100-$200). This makes sense in the capitalistic mind. Profit is to be made here. We all got to make a buck don’t we? And it falls in line with so many immoral and unsustainable farming practices. It is the state of industrialized farming. Getting as much out of whatever I am farming for the highest profit. It is wrong and it is sending us all to our demise.

So what can you do? View your money as a tool. So many people I know donate money to charitable environmental organizations and then nickel and dime at the Safeway. So much of our environmental degradation comes from our vast acres of farmland. Use your time as a tool. Take the time to shop at the farmers market and feed your family local, organic food. Try to support small local farmers whenever you can. Learn to read labels. You could also plant flowers that attract bees such as fennel, calendula, daisy, Echinacea, dandelion, sunflower, borage, lavender, bee balm. You can encourage native mason bees to your home to help pollinate that trees in your yard. There are also opportunities to have a local bee keeper come to your home and help you set up a honey bee hive and you can raise your own bees or have the bee keeper come and do it for you. If you have any questions or comments feel free to contact me at HYPERLINK "mailto:tammytoad@gmail.com" tammytoad@gmail.com

Tammy Toad Ryan spent the decade of her twenties traveling North America studying an array of farming and healing techniques. She landed in Vancouver via Salt Spring Island over 2 years ago to encourage more agriculture in the city. The honeybees are a fine urban companion for her due to their wild nature and loving spirit.