Posted in Bee Present, Beetwixt & Beetween on June 20, 2009| Leave a Comment »
I came across this video on the internet. Wow, for a simple English word “bee” the way of describing it in the Chinese symbols is so artistic. There are two words, each with a picture and a word to pronounce.
None of the character actually looks like a bee.
Think I will stick to English for the moment!
More at: http://www.ehow.com/video_4403826_write-bee-chinese-symbols.html
Posted in Bee Law, Bee Lore, Bee Present, Bee-ology, Beekeeping, Beetwixt & Beetween on May 27, 2009| Leave a Comment »
A great video on YouTube that gives the Lifecycle of the Honeybee:
Posted in Bee Present, Bee-ology, Beekeeping, Beetwixt & Beetween on May 25, 2009| Leave a Comment »
When visiting the apiary yesterday I noticed a beautiful white cobweb glistening in an apple tree about 10 metres from the hives. As I drew closer, I saw it had a cuttlefish-like structure.
On closer inspection it turned out to be a piece of pure white honeycomb – about 5 inches long by 4 inches wide that had obviously been drawn out by one of the swarms from the apiary earlier in the month. It was not the yellow comb you get in older hives. It had no pollen, honey and certainly no sign of the darkened cells you get from the queen laying eggs.
It was quite beautiful. Pure virgin white. I took it home and put it on pride of place on the mantlepiece! I wonder if it will go yellow over time?
Posted in Bee Lore, Bee Present, Beekeeping, Beetwixt & Beetween on May 6, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu understood the power of
the missing piece when he wrote this verse over 2500 years ago:
Thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub,
It is the centre hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel,
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room,
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore profit comes from what is there,
Usefulness from what is not there.
One additional idea that I came up when knocking some frames up:
Create a super with ten frames of wax foundation,
It is the space between that makes it useful!
Posted in Bee Lore, Bee Present, Bee-ology, Beetwixt & Beetween on April 15, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Following my post below, here is another TED talk that sees the world from the point of view of bees and plants.
Makes you think!
Posted in Bee Lore, Beetwixt & Beetween on April 13, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Some beautiful stories from Scotland – a true source of Celtic lore. I love the idea that the bees know so much and are in harmony withe the wind and the rain!
“In Ross, I was told by a man of the Gairloch, they speak . . . in a folk-tale I think he said, but possibly colloquially . . . of the bees as “lords of wisdom” or “the little kings of wisdom.” It is a fine phrase, that . . . the lords of wisdom: and not one to forget.
Oftenest, however, the allusions to the bee are, doubtless, to its “knowingness” rather than to its “wisdom”; its skill in tracking the pathless ways, its intuition of the hour and season, of the way of the wind, of the coming of rain, of gathering thunder.”…….
From: The Works of Fiona Macleod, Volume V, The Sunset of Old Tales
More at: http://www.sundown.pair.com/SundownShores/Volume_V/lords_of_wisdom.htm
Posted in Bee Lore, Bee Present, Beekeeping, Beetwixt & Beetween on April 9, 2009| 12 Comments »
I met an interesting lady on the aeroplane today who told me that her mother kept bees on the Island of Jersey.
When the bees started to swarm, her mother used to tell all her children (she had eight!) to run into the garden with pots and pans and bash them as hard as they could and make as much noise as they could, so that the bees would settle and not fly away. Her mother would then gather the bees up and put them back in the hive. She said it really worked.
I said I was not sure if the bees would naturally go back into their old hive if they have swarmed….to which she said that maybe her mother put them in a new hive.
There is a technical word for this banging of pots and pans – which is called “Tanging” – a descrption of which is in Simon Buxton’s book – The Shamanic Way of the Bee.
I also found this older reference:
Above is a plate from a Dutch book showing tanging.
“In this late 17th-century engraving from a book printed in Amsterdam, a swarm can be seen coming out of one of the straw hives or ‘skeps’ in the middle of the picture. A beekeeper stands to the right and hits what looks like a metal pan or drum in a procedure known as ‘tanging’. Tanging would alert the neighbourhood that bees are swarming and its rhythmic sound would help coax the bees into the overturned hive in the foreground. This empty hive would also have been lined with honey in order to entice the bees to take up residence within it”
“Tanging was also a way for a beekeeper to alert other beekeepers that a claim was being made on a found swarm. Acquiring new bees by laying claim to a swarm was important, as it was routine at this time for beekeepers to asphyxiate their bees with fumes from burning sulphur in order to access the honeycomb safely.”
I am interested to know if any readers have heard of this ritual and any other reasons that beekeepers might do it.
Plate and text in quotation marks from: http://www.nls.uk/moir/tanging.html
Posted in Bee Lore, Beetwixt & Beetween on April 9, 2009| 5 Comments »
There is an old English expression:
“Ask the wild bee what the Druids knew”
Intriguing. It gives a hint of mystery and pagan ritual – as well as a harking back, perhaps, to a time in early English history when we were much closer to the bees and they to us.
Would very much like to know if anyone else has an interesting interpretation of this!
Posted in Bee Law, Bee Lore, Bee Present, Bee-ology, Beetwixt & Beetween on March 29, 2009| Leave a Comment »
For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life
And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love
And to both, bee and flower,
the giving and the receiving is a need and an ecstasy.
~ Kahlil Gibran
Posted in Bee Present, Beekeeping, Beetwixt & Beetween on March 21, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Firstly, worker bees fly out from the hive in search of nectar-rich flowers. Using its straw-like proboscis, a worker bee drinks the liquid nectar and stores it in a special stomach called the honey stomach. The bee continues to forage, visiting hundreds of flowers, until its honey stomach is full. Within the honey stomach, enzymes break down the complex sugars of the nectar into simpler sugars, which are less prone to crystallization. This process is called inversion. With a full belly, the worker bee heads back to the hive.
Once back in the hive, the worker bee then regurgitates the already modified nectar for one of the hive bees. The hive bee ingests the sugary offering and further breaks down the sugars. It then regurgitates the inverted nectar into a cell of the honeycomb. The hive bees then beat their wings furiously, fanning the nectar to evaporate its remaining water content. As the water evaporates, the sugars thicken into honey. Once the honey is finished, the hive bee caps the beeswax cell, sealing the honey into the honeycomb for later consumption.
A single worker bee produces only 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime. Working cooperatively, thousands of worker bees can produce over 200 pounds of honey for the colony within a year.
From: http://insects.about.com/od/antsbeeswasps/f/beesmakehoney.htm
Bee Lore 