Do you sell honey?

honey comb from Morristown

Do you sell honey?

It is a question I am often asked when someone realizes I am a beekeeper. The answer thus far has been no.

What I have been doing for the past 3 years in working with the bees is trying to wade my way through the teachings of experienced beekeepers.

You see, for some time now beekeeping has been about stealing honey and pollination. Otherwise, (the other, all to common question) "what use are the bees?"

We live in a society that places high value on things (a.k.a living, sentient beings) that reap profit. If these things do not reap profit, we disregard them or manipulate them to make them into profit.

The other day I got into a discussion about wasps. The person I was speaking with was struggling with wasps continuously building nests on their deck. "What are they good for, what use are they? I am just going to kill them."

Rewind a week and I have Bob, the farmer telling me that before the wasps came to his place he struggled with worms in his cabbage crop. "No more worms for this place, the wasps have eaten them all!"

I digress. Or do I? There is a point to this. All creatures on this planet are here for their own reasons. I will not pretend to know what the reasons are. Not even sure what the human purpose is, but I am sure it isn't to exploit every other species and I am pretty sure that every other species' point isn't to serve humans. I could be wrong though.

So the bees...most books and teachers come from a background of years of exploiting bees for profit. Few have taken the time or have had the inclination to understand 'beeness'.

some top bar hive bees a few days after being given this bar

Bees have their own nature as do humans. We hurt each other when we view our relationships merely as a give and take; when we view 'other' as an object to exploit or take advantage of. As a culture, it is important for us to learn to listen. Yes, time is money and listening takes time, but aren't relationships the mainstays of our existence? Isn't it time we put more value on our relationships (our friends, family, animals, bugs, land, food...)?

beautiful bees and burr comb in Vancouver

So no, I do not sell the wonderful honey that the bees make from their hard work of harvesting nectar from the numerous dandelions, clover, linden, sweet william, salvias and numerous other wild and cultivated flowers that grow within their reach. I am too busy working on a relationship with a species whose nature I have barely begun to understand. After 3 years with them I am realizing I barely understand my own human nature.

I do know that it is in my nature to love sweetness and the bees graciously offer that to me and for this I am thankful. I am also thankful for all the beekeepers who love and care for their bees while taking the extra honey they make to sell to us folks who have a love of all things sweet. I am thankful for the bees for making extra! I am thankful for the land for producing so much sweet bounty for all creatures. I am thankful for all creatures! I am thankful that you are reading my words.

40th anniversary of earth day...what are YOU thankful for?

MMMMM! Spring Salad!

Just add radishes, garlic mustard, dandelion greens and spring onions. Salt and pepper and I am one happy lady!

The Japanes Hornfaced Bee

The Honeybee Alliance's newest member:

The Japanese Hornfaced Bee

For a few days a couple weeks ago I found my apartment a buzz with bees. I was confused as they would come as early as 6:30 am (much to the chagrin of my gf) and honeybees are late risers. Who were these bees poking in every hole in my apartment?

I watched as each morning between 6:30 and 11 am anywhere from 1 to 5 bees would come into my little apartment and check out all the holes. These bees sound and look like honeybees but they have their mandibles open, where honeybees rarely do. Hence the horn face, I suppose?

I watched as two bees took to an end each of my pilates cord which hangs from my curtain rod. Over the corse of a week these pods were growing inside the cord.

I watched as the mother bee would bring in pollen, sometimes even dropping it on my floor. I was so excited to have a hive IN my apartment, a little nest of solitary bees growing right before my eyes as I went about my days.

The pollen was sweet when I tasted it off my floor.

I learned that the Japanese Hornfaced bee is actually one of the best pollinators in the world! I read on sufficientself.com that, "In an apple orchard, an Eastern honey bee on an average day will pollinate around 50 flowers. The Japanese Hornfaced Bee (Osmia cornifrons), which falls into the classification of mason bee (genus Osmia), can visit 15 flowers a minute, pollinating as many as 2,450 apples a day. It's a solitary bee commonly used for commercial apple pollination in Japan and is at least 50 times more effective than the honey bee when it comes to pollinating apples (as well as most other tree fruits.) "

After a long day at work and a long drive to NY state I came home and went to look in the tubes to see a bee face looking out at me...but this time, there was no bee, but a seal of pollen/mud? I guess this is it until October? More bees are coming around looking for holes and I am in the process of making a home for them with Japanese knotweed (a noxious weed in the area that is full of hollow tubes just the right size for these little pollinating delights)

Ode to a Blade of Grass in April

-Gunther Hauk

New and new, and ever new

On dry souls like freshening dew

You glisten and shine

With emerald green

Bold blade reaching for the blue

Drinking light and

Fettering fleeting sylphs

Into bondage of substance.

You, trodden 'neath harsh cleats on fields of play,

Unappreciated when growth is abundant

And mower-charges soar high,

When pollen fills field - and watery eyes;

You, who quicken the heart's beat

When dandelions wink with golden eyes

At resentful suburbanites.

Yes, you! Image of life

Resurrected from dead of winter,

You feed beasts with bloating udder

So fat milk flows,

Feeding us all.

You bowed your head

Under the graceful, etheric step

Of the Great Gardener.

You emerald banner of life,

Let me tread lovingly on you

Who vowed to green with us,

Year after year -

Till the end of days.

"I spend all of my time shopping for food"

A brief commentary on this quote I hear way too often:

Yes, we spend our time going from one store to another to get the best deal and the right product. TJs has the best deals but they don't have organic. WF has organic but jeese they are expensive. HS is great with local foods, but they are often out of what I need. What is a lady to do? Shop around is what we tend to do...

But if you spend A LOT of your time driving from store to store to get food (which, in my humble opinion sucks for you and for your loved ones {who don't get to see you because you are driving around} and the planet {driving around...buying crap from all over...}, maybe you should consider a garden this year!

Makes sense right? Instead of miserably driving around with the rest of the rat racers...pull out a shovel and some seeds and plant your dinners for the summer. Now is the time. Get moving!

If you want to stop feeding the pockets of cooperate greed, this is the soul (intended) solution.

Blessings to your wet spring and fruitful summer!

For those of you who want to keep bees

and are afraid of your neighbors :)

What is the definition of a farmer?

pic from civileats.com

How about we just redefine the word farmer?

I for one am tired of calling a middle aged business man a farmer. A guy who buys produce from the produce auction in Vineland NJ and slaps his name over it isn't the guy who farmed the food. The same guy who manages a bunch of seasonal migrant workers to do the labor while he does the pricing and marketing is not a farmer either. According to the dictionary on my computer, a farmer is a person who owns or manages a farm.

I want to know how owning 30 acres in one of the wealthiest counties in NJ makes you a farmer? It doesn't. And the notion of what a farmer is has got to be changed if we are to see food growing in our county. Most of us know that agribusiness has been a big contributor to the environmental destruction on this continent, but we do not consider the notion of small monoculture being a detrimental thing. Why blueberries and cranberries are wonderful economic boosts for our department of agriculture here in the garden state! Why question that?

Farming on a small scale with diverse crops is a fading art that is wanting to be brought back to life by the youth that is waking up from the sleep of the past couple generations. Greenhorns abound but here in Northern New Jersey they are often pushed out by the politics of the day. Mainly the business men who have been around much longer and the market managers who aren't quite educated about the politics of food or what a farmer is.

What if the definition of a farmer was anyone who grows food? "Then every housewife gardener would be at the farmer's market selling her bumper crop, how ridiculous is that?" Comments one well established poultry farmer who has just entered the business of market garden management. Yes, and if everybody was at the market competing prices would go down, friends would be made, and community gatherings would ensue. Maybe people would agree to get together and take that bumper crop of tomatoes and make a bunch of sauce and give it to the local food pantry instead of just throwing it on the compost heap at the end of the day.

Maybe if we broadened our view of what farming was we wouldn't be so attached to neat rows of the same crop that require fertilizers and pesticides. Maybe the notion of bigger is better is wrong and maybe a small dose of diversity is the medicine of the day. Maybe? Maybe not?

What do you think?

Next, we redefine farm...

baseball field turned into organic farm