I visited the bees again today. It was a beautiful spring day – about 8 degrees Centigrade. I approached the hive in anticipation……hoping that they had overwintered well. What a pleasant surprise to see the bees coming in and out of the small entrance – almost as busy as on a summer’s day. The snowdrops are out at the moment – but whatever they were foraging for, they were busy collecting it! The entrance was still showing the damage from the woodpecker or mouse – but there was no additional damage since last November. I briefly lifted the top of the hive and looked inside through the glass crown board. The bees looked very healthy and active. I hefted the hive and there were good stores still. So Faith (the name of the hive) has done well – and the Queen is now entering her third year. I expect I will have to do an artificial swarm in the Spring just to make sure she does not swarm. I am also hoping to import two new colonies from a beekeeper who lives in the next door county. What a joy it was to see and bee with the bees again after such a long break!
Archive for February, 2008
February Inspection
Posted in Bee Present, Beekeeping on February 17, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Sherlock Holmes’ Magnum Opus
Posted in Bee Lore, Beekeeping, Beetwixt & Beetween on February 5, 2008| Leave a Comment »
“But you had retired, Holmes. We heard of you as living the life of a hermit among your bees and your books on a small farm.”
Sherlock replies: “Exactly, Watson. Here is the fruit of my leisured ease, the magnum opus of my latter years, The Practical Handbook of Bee Culture.”
As quoted by Dr Watson in Conan Doyle’s “His Last Bow”.
If anyone has a copy of Holmes’ magnum opus, I would love to see it!
Honey as Welsh Tax
Posted in Bee Lore, Bee Present, Beekeeping on February 3, 2008| Leave a Comment »
I have just paid my tax bill for last year. Interestingly, many years ago, the Welsh used to pay some of their taxes in honey. I don’t think I would want to give my honey to the Tax Man. It is too precious!
Honey Gatherers of the Mind
Posted in Bee Lore, Bee Present, Beetwixt & Beetween on February 3, 2008| Leave a Comment »
“Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.”
Quotation from the Preface to “The Genealogy of Morals” (written in 1887) by Friedrich Nietzsche the German philosopher – who lived from 1844 to 1900.
What a lovely analogy – “honey gatherers of the mind!” Nietzsche died well before the invention of the internet – which, by his analogy has surely now become a truly magnificent “beehive of our knowledge”. And how quickly the honey gathering of the mind has accelerated with all the search engines, blogs and wikis that are now available to us. Even more reason for us all to find the hidden treasure of the secrets of life that the bees have known for so many millions of years!
Dance of the Melissae
Posted in Bee Lore, Bee Present, Beetwixt & Beetween on February 3, 2008| Leave a Comment »
I am fascinated by the Ancient Traditions of the Melissae and found this on the web:
Artist Statement by Nancy Macko
‘My last major piece was an ambitious installation entitled Dance of the Melissae, a multi-sensory, multi-media body of work that explored the world of the honey bee society and its relationship to art, science, technology and ancient matriarchal cultures. This piece was exhibited at the Brand Library Art Gallery in Glendale, California in 1994. The 3,000 square foot space lent itself well to my ideas for creating a multi-sensory construction of an ancient and sacred site and its interior components. The integration and centralization of bees and bee worship by ancient matriarchal cultures are historical testament to the power and fascination of the astounding world of bees.
Borrowing images from nature and bee society, I attempted to reveal the inherent connection between the natural world and technology. The piece incorporated mixed-media wall reliefs, found-object sculptures and computer-generated photographic images installed together and linking traditional media (drawing, painting, printmaking and sculpture) with the more contemporary world of digital media. From a conceptual base that is framed by feminist thought, I am using the “bee” and the “honeycomb” as metaphors to re-interpret scientific ideas. My intention is to suggest that science is based not only on observing nature’s structures but also on imagining them.
“The exhibition thus becomes an investigation of the Enlightenment from the perspective of the practitioner; Nancy Macko’s critique of the information world suggests a Kuhnian paradigmatic shift in which technology becomes ritual, science reverts to magic and art is removed from the site of culture and comes back to life.” (J. M. S. Willette, “How Sweet It Is,” Artweek, February 17, 1994.)’
I’m not exactly sure what this Kuhnian paradigmatic shift is – but you can find out more on Nancy Macko’s work at: http://www.cla.purdue.edu/waaw/Ressler/artists/mackostat.html
See also: http://www.nancymacko.com/ about Nancy Macko’s exibition on LA a year ago – including a wall of hexagons – none of which I saw, unfortunately. But I think her art and interpretation of the bee lore and feminism is fascinating!
A Funny Video on Beekeeping
Posted in Bee Present, Bee-ology, Beekeeping on February 2, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Defying the Law of Gravity: Melting Bees Uphill
Posted in Bee Law, Bee Lore, Bee Present, Bee-ology, Beekeeping, Bylaugh on February 2, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Then the veiled angel lit a match and put it into the can she was holding. The “smoker” started smoking. She squeezed a small contraption on the end of the can and smoke appeared from the nozzle. She said at me in her low, chanting voice: “It reminds them of a forest fire and although they are drowsy, they will move away from the smoke and into the box”. Very slowly, very gently she started puffing small bursts of smoke onto the bees so that they melted uphill into the box, just as honey might melt from a spoon into a jar – only against gravity! Perhaps it was like honey would flow if you were pouring it in a spaceship – though I didn’t suppose that honey was a sensible food to take on a spaceship! “We need to find the Queen”, she said. After about ten minutes the medicine ball was down to the size of a football. It was then that she said “There she is! Once the Queen is in the box the rest of the swarm will follow very quickly. The worker bees are in love with her smell.” She was quite right! Once the Queen had been smoked into the box, it only took another few minutes before the last remaining bees moved much more quickly to follow her. Overall the exercise took about twenty minutes. Incredible, since the whole swarm had landed on the fence in about forty five seconds.
Talking to the Bees
Posted in Bee Lore, Bee Present, Beekeeping, Beetwixt & Beetween, Bylaugh on February 2, 2008| Leave a Comment »
She went back to her box, picked it up and can and then carried it slowly up to the swarm.
And she started speaking in a low voice. It was almost like singing. Her hands were bare, yet the rest of her body was covered in white. I did not understand this, because I though that the one place which the bees would sting her would be on her hands. The barrage of questions rushed back into my mind:
“Are they wild bees – or domesticated bees?”
“How many times have you done this before?”
“What was the most dangerous bee catching job you did?”
“How many hives do you have back in your home?”
“How long have you been keeping bees?”
But I never asked her any of the questions because she was too concentrated in talking to the bees!
Bee Lore 