Urban Beekeepers
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Bhramari Devi – Hindu Goddess Of Black Bees
“The Indian Bee goddess Bhramari Devi derives her name from the word Bramari, meaning ‘Bees’ in Hindi. It is said that Bhramari Devi resides inside the heart chakra and emits the buzzing sound of Bees, called ‘Bhramaran’. Likewise, the sound of a Bee humming was emulated in Vedic chants and the humming of Bees represented the essential sound of the universe all across India.”
WHO: Melissa Haslam
WHAT: Honey Hive
WHERE: melissahaslam.com
Vegan Beekeeping
by blog.lagusta.com
The vegan ethic is complex and nuanced. Any vegan that says otherwise is itching for a (respectful, intelligent, I hope) fight. So I may as well be calling this piece, ‘It’s actually impossible to be vegan, but we are all doing our best.’ To me, veganism is about trying to live in harmony with the planet. My beekeeping is not an exception to my veganism. It is a well-thought out amendment. It might even make me a better vegan, depending on how much of this you follow along with.
Still, I am a beekeeper and I am a vegan and that is a sticking point for about 50% of the vegans I know. This is my attempt to explain my position. I am vegan because I deeply care about animal rights. I dig the other benefits, but in my heart, I believe eating animals is wrong. My purpose for saying so is that it needs to be clear from the start that I really care about bees. I am not arguing that I think killing bees or treating them with anything but the utmost respect is OK. I don’t keep bees because they fall outside of my deeply felt consideration. In fact, I think bees are amazing…
Whenever I think about the shortcomings of the human species, I always end up being reminded of the near perfection of bees. Selfless, female-dominated, self-reliant, dancing, mysterious bees.
Human life as we know it is dependent on bees. It is true that there are wild bee populations; but they are dying. It is a widely held belief within the beekeeping community, and those educated about what commercial beekeeping has done to the world’s bee population, that small-scale “backyard beekeepers” hold the key to preserving disease resistant stock that can survive to pollinate all the foods upon which vegans and non-vegans rely. About 1/3 of the human diet can be traced back to bee pollinated foods…
The point is vegans need plants, and plants need bees. And bees make honey.
Just finished making our first batch of HoneyLove California Orange Poppy Seed Packets!
JOIN US – JUNE 14TH !!!
We are presenting an “Urban Beekeeping Pilot Project” to the Mar Vista City Council in the hopes of beginning the process of legalizing beekeeping in Los Angeles – COME OUT AND SHOW YOUR SUPPORT FOR HONEY BEES!!
Tuesday, June 14 · 7:00pm – 9:00pm
Mar Vista Recreation Center Auditorium
11430 Woodbine Street, Mar Vista CA 90066
New York, Seattle, San Francisco… and most recently SANTA MONICA have legalized beekeeping….
Now we NEED YOUR HELP to get Los Angeles up to speed!
If you can’t make it – you can also email Bill Rosendahl to show your support!
bill.rosendhal [at] lacity [dot] org
Check out the list of Los Angeles Urban Beekeeping supporters so far!
WHO: Eric Tourneret
WHAT: “The Bee Photographer”
WHERE: thehoneygatherers.com
WHY: “I grew up in a village on a mountainside above Annecy. When I learned about the dying out of the bees, my instinct as a child of the countryside told me something was wrong in our relationship with nature. I chose to commit myself to the bee and pass on the idea of a living nature.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9m-Idp8aVc
How to Keep Bees in New York City
by Sami Grover, Carrboro
When we spoke to the directors of the Vanishing of the Bees documentary as part of Discovery’s Bees on the Brink efforts, they talked about their delight that cities around the world were recognizing the value of bees in the urban environment. In fact, they told us, bees are often doing better in inner city environments than they are in the countryside where monoculture fields of single crops have become all too commonplace. Nowhere is the renaissance of urban beekeeping more noticeable than in New York City, which only recently lifted its ban on city bees. The video [above] gives a glimpse into the life of an urban rooftop beekeeper in New York City.
Click here to view the full article
By sealing up cells full of contaminated pollen, bees appear to be attempting to protect the rest of the hive.
Honeybees are taking emergency measures to protect their hives from pesticides, in an extraordinary example of the natural world adapting swiftly to our depredations, according to a prominent bee expert.
Scientists have found numerous examples of a new phenomenon –bees “entombing” or sealing up hive cells full of pollen to put them out of use, and protect the rest of the hive from their contents. The pollen stored in the sealed-up cells has been found to contain dramatically higher levels of pesticides and other potentially harmful chemicals than the pollen stored in neighboring cells, which is used to feed growing young bees.
“This is a novel finding, and very striking. The implication is that the bees are sensing [pesticides] and actually sealing it off. They are recognizing that something is wrong with the pollen and encapsulating it,” said Jeff Pettis, an entomologist with the US Department of Agriculture. “Bees would not normally seal off pollen.”
But the bees’ last-ditch efforts to save themselves appear to be unsuccessful – the entombing behaviour is found in many hives that subsequently die off, according to Pettis. “The presence of entombing is the biggest single predictor of colony loss. It’s a defence mechanism that has failed.” These colonies were likely to already be in trouble, and their death could be attributed to a mix of factors in addition to pesticides, he added…
Bees naturally collect from plants a substance known as propolis, a sort of sticky resin with natural anti-bacterial and anti-fungal qualities. It is used by bees to line the walls of their hives, and to seal off unwanted or dangerous substances – for instance, mice that find their way into hives and die are often found covered in propolis. This is the substance bees are using to entomb the cells.
Click here to read the full article – Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent
WHO: Post Office Films
WHAT: Bee City
WHERE: New York City
article by milkwoodkirsten
Bees just want to be bees. I’ve learned recently that, like most things in nature, a honeybee colony is most happy, calm and resilient when it’s left to do what it does best. For bees, this means forage for nectar and pollen, raise a brood, and make honey. And bees want to do this in their own time, on their own schedule, and with the freedom to respond to each unique season. Which is quite contrary to how we currently manage bees. So what’s going on here?
Our species’ treatment of the honeybee is a striking metaphor for our wider relationship with nature. In short, we started out okay, with a suitable amount of reverence, and then we progressively sought to bend the way of the bee to our wishes, convenience and ultimately, gross profit at the expense of all else. The result of this treatment has pushed the honeybee (a primary pollinator of most things we eat) to the point of collapse, and now we’re wondering what went wrong and how the heck to fix it. Sound familiar?
Until recently I thought beekeeping was pretty simple and straight forward. Don’t you just get a hive, plunk some bees in it, put it somewhere suitable, check it lots for disease, then harvest honey once a year? But once i started thinking, reading and chatting about it, I realized there are ways and there are ways…
…a bee colony is a finely tuned super-organism with about 40 million years of evolutionary backup. Bees have been refining what they do for a bloody long time, and they’ve got things pretty much sorted. Understanding how they operate in a completely natural system is a good starting point for understanding their needs.
So natural beekeeping (as opposed to not-quite-as-bad-as-conventional beekeeping, sometimes called by the same name) is all about letting bees be bees, and harvesting surplus honey when it is available. In the meantime, you get fantastic fertility from having so many pollinators around, and you’re creating resilient colonies which are disease resistant.
We at HoneyLove believe that the city is the last refuge of the honeybee. Our home gardens are generally free of pesticides, and in cities like Los Angeles, there is year-round availability of pollen and nectar for the honeybees! 
Become a member of HoneyLove and learn to be an urban beekeeper!
Plant an organic garden without the pesticides that harm honeybees!
Provide a water source on your property – bees love clean water to drink! 
