Monday, January 26, 2009

Registration for 2009 RI beekeeping schools


The following is a press release from the Rhode Island Beekeepers Association:

The Rhode Island Beekeepers Association teaches beginner beekeeping classes every year in March.This year there will be two bee schools; one at the William M. Davies Career and Technical High School in Lincoln and the other at the East Farm at the University of Rhode Island.

2009 Bee School Schedule for Davies Tech
Wednesday evenings on March 4 to April 1, 2009 from 7:00 to 9:00 pm
Instructor: Betty Mencucci

Directions: William M. Davies Career and Technical High School, Jenckes Hill Road, Lincoln, Rhode Island. (The school is located on Rt 123 right next to CCRI in Lincoln. From the south, take 146 north and take the exit for Rt 123 - Breakneck Hill Road. At the end of the ramp turn left, go over Rt 146 and go a few hundred feet to a stop light. Go straight ahead. The Davies School is just ahead on the left. There is a large parking lot. Enter the school through the main entrance and look for signs. If you're coming from the north, Rt 146 south, take the Rt. 123 exit and take a right at the end of the ramp).

2009 Bee School Schedule - URI East Farm
Wednesday evenings on February 25 to March 25 from 7:00 to 9:00 pm.
Instructor: Mark Robar

Directions: The entrance to East Farm is located on route 108 about 6/10 of a mile south from the light at the intersection of Route 138 and 108. Classes will be held in building # 75.

Cost: $50 per person, plus $5 per person for each additional family member from the same household

Topics covered include:

Getting started
The honeybee life cycle
Choosing an apiary
Buying bees and equipment
Installing package bees
Catching Swarms
Bee diseases and pests
Spring Inspections
Getting ready for the honeyflow
Wintering bees

There will be a variety of beekeeping equipment displayed and demontrated each week. Beekeeping catalogs and other handouts will be distributed and several beekeeping videos will be shown.

Once you sign up to attend the class, you will also become a member of the Rhode Island Beekeeping Association where you will receive the Association's monthly newsletters with tips and information on beekeeping in the Rhode Island area. The Association has monthly meetings at various locations in the state where you will get to meet other beekeepers and participate in the Association's activities.

Why do people keep bees? It insures that you will always have good pollination in your gardens. It's a good hobby for people who love nature and enjoy watching and learning about bees and the flowers they pollinate and gather nectar from. Some people keep bees because they love honey! Some people even keep bees because they have arthritis and wish to get stung to alleviate arthritic symptoms.

Registration forms may be downloaded from the Association's website:
http://www.ribeekeeper.org/beeschools2009.php

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Harp and Conrad at the Pfeiffer Center

Chris Harp of HoneybeeLives in New Paltz, New York was commended in June by New York State Governor David Paterson for his "tremendous work in fostering knowledge and awareness of naturalistic and organic beekeeping practices." For some of Chris's current interests and activities, have a look at the HoneybeeLives newsletter. On February 21 at the Pfeiffer Center of Chestnut Ridge, NY, Chris Harp will present "Introduction to Organic Beekeeping: Preparing a New Hive for Spring". This hands-on workshop is recommended for all new beekeepers.

Ross Conrad of Vermont is the author of the widely-praised manual "Natural Beekeeping" (see the sidebar for his link). A 2007 article about him details his thoughts on Colony Collapse Disorder. On April 24-25, Ross will join Chris Harp and Mac Mead to present the Pfeiffer Center's annual "Organic Beekeeping: Principles and Practices" workshop.

Ross will return on July 25 to the center for its first-ever Summer Beekeeping Workshop. This will be a chance to explore seasonal topics such as working with swarms and preparing for the honey harvest, as well as general practices for ensuring your bees' health and vitality.


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Thursday, January 15, 2009

Hoping...


It's snowing again. The temperatures have been hovering between single numbers and the low 20s for days. It's been a fiercely cold and windy week.

I've never been at my best during the Winter. Oh, I appreciate the beauty of the season. But life can be challenging for all creatures who remain here during these months.

When I woke this morning I looked from my window to the hive in the back garden. As a beekeeper in New England I do little more than hope at this time of year...Hope there's enough honey to sustain the hives until I can open them briefly to check food stores...Hope we've properly ventilated the hives to keep condensation from building up...Hope the workers are healthy enough to keep the hive's temperatures in the low 90s for their queen's well-being...Hope that each of our queens has survived...Hope that the organic practices we've put into place haven't left the bees weakened by parasites or diseases...Hope a January thaw will bring a 45º day soon so we can briefly check the hives...Hope the hives in Foster, where it's been considerably colder and there's been more snow, won't be dead or weakened when we are finally able to give them a fleeting inspection...Hope we can keep all the hives alive until the end of March or early April when they will begin to really strengthen again...hope...

For the moment I can only hope...and plan for Spring.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

"The Secret Life of Bees" Cookbook


Sue Bee Honey of Iowa has produced a Special Edition cookbook inspired by the feature film "The Secret Life of Bees," which opened in theatres in October 2008. All net proceeds from the sales of the cookbook will go to benefit First Book, a nonprofit organization that gives new books to children from low-income families.

The cookbook features recipes from the main cast members Queen Latifah, Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Hudson, Alicia Keys, and Sophie Okonedo. They include dishes such as Honey Cornbread, Easy Homestyle Chicken, and Crispy Honey Drops, recipes for which can be viewed at
Sue Bee Honey

First Book was founded in 1992 and has worked with a variety of existing literacy programs across the United States. Since its inception the organization has distributed more than 50 million books to children in over 3,000 communities.

When "The Secret Life..." was first published in 2001 I read it over a humid and lazy weekend that summer. I loved the book and never imagined that I would become a beekeeper a few years later. Books, when I was a child, were my dearest companions and my life-savers. I hope you will consider supporting First Book, to foster the love and excitement of reading in another child. Your contribution will be an enriching one and may help change the course of a youngster's life.

[Poster: Fox Searchlight]

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Saturday, January 10, 2009

"Dreamers Awaken"--planning a new blog


It came as a surprise last week when I was reminded this blog was launched one year ago. Though I haven’t always written as much as I would have liked, it's been a wonderful learning experience and a useful outlet for some of my latent creative urges.

I've been thinking quite a lot during the quiet of the snowy holidays about many, many things in my life, and reading a lot of new blogs that have stimulated my ponderings even more. Many of us use this time of year to reflect and to plan. I savor the feelings of possibility that seem to accompany the dawning of each new year. There is something beautifully human in all our hearts that hopes for better days and fresh opportunities in the year that stretches before us.

Recently I've discovered several new blogs that have been entertaining and thought provoking. What I found over the holidays was a seeming endless number and variety of amazing women bloggers: talented, funny, intelligent, generous, hopeful, vulnerable...and so much more. I uncovered them as you do using the Internet--I followed a link from a Google alert email to a blog that looked like it might be interesting. That blog contained links leading to about a half dozen other blogs and websites. Soon I was reading web pages late into the nights, bundled against the chill in a darkened room (so I would not disturb Mike’s sleep), and broadening my horizons yet again thanks to this magical beast known as the worldwide web.

My plan to launch a new blog, rather than digressing too much on these pages. Here I want to keep to the topic of beekeeping and its related issues as much as possible. Creating the new blog as I envision it will be another sort of fun and challenge for me--a lot like beekeeping is. I've given it the name "Dreamers Awaken" in celebration of, and support for these newly-discovered dreamers, magicians, artists, business professionals, writers, mothers, gardeners, and so many more...these people who inspire me and fill me with a sense of possibilities. Hopefully reading about them will spur some of the dreams lying dormant within you, too!

I hope you will join me there as that journey unfolds!

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Wednesday, January 7, 2009

A taste of Summer in the heart of Winter


Several people have asked.

Yes, we still have honey for sale from our 2008 extractions.

Our honey is raw, unfiltered, unheated, and untreated. No chemicals are used in the hives, and we follow the practices of Ross Conrad, Dee Lusby, Gunther Hauk, Michael Bush, and others. We cannot ethically or legally label the honey "organic" partly because forager bees will travel up to three to five miles away from their hive, making it impossible for us to guarantee where they've landed in their search for pollen and nectar.

Please remember that honey almost never spoils...ever. We have carefully stored ours and bottle it as sales demand. Because it's raw honey it will eventually begin to cloud and then crystallize. That's not honey "turning bad" or somehow becoming less nutritious. It's what honey does, especially raw honey. You can liquefy honey again by placing the jar in a pan of warm water. There’s no need to throw a jar away unless you feel sure the honey has somehow been tainted.

We offer the 2008 honey in half-pound and one pound sizes (currently at $3.50 per half pound). Honey is heavy and we ship using first class mail through the United States Postal Service. For our customers in the U.S. the mailing has generally cost about $4.00 per pound. If you are local to our area and wish to meet up or stop by, we'll be glad arrange that for you. We also deliver personally, too, within reason (meaning, if you wouldn't make the drive, I might not, either). Contact us at stardog235@swan-island.com, or at pleasantlaneapiary@swan-island.com if you wish to place an order, or have any other inquiries. We accept PayPal.

And, as the fellas in the old Bartles & Jaymes commercials used to say, "Thank you for your support."

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Sunday, January 4, 2009

"...God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth."


I find news, as it is presented to us now, often resoundingly inane and tedious. I often have to remind myself that news of the-worst-whatever-it-is-in-the-history-of-the-entire-universe is being reported by a person about half my own age, who often has no personal frame of reference by which they might put the "disaster du jour" into some perspective. That doesn't mean there aren't awful events unfolding daily in this world. It means they needn't be made even more so by the breathless exclamations of one whose earliest memory might be as long ago as the Tiananmen Square Massacre or German citizens celebrating atop the Berlin Wall. So, in my efforts to remain informed, I read most of my news from a wide variety of sources, in an attempt to avoid some of the sensationalism and editorializing that seems to pass as serious journalism.

However, in the midst of this year's doom and gloom ending 2008 the media quietly reminded us that forty years ago this Christmas the first humans landed on the Moon. I was a teenager during that tumultuous year: 1968 had seen the Tet offensive in Vietnam, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, riots in America's ghettos and at the Chicago Democratic National Convention, the massacre at My Lai. The lunar landing was probably the brightest, most optimistic news of that frightening and chaotic year. The excitement of the historic landing was somewhat dimmed for me by the knowledge that in the new year the young man who was my first boyfriend would be drafted into the military.

Despite being a young person feeling overwhelmed by events in my life and in the world, the photograph that came to be known as "Earthrise" deeply touched me that season as it did so many others, and helped me sustain some feelings of hope. That picture, take by the crew of Apollo 8, was of our planet Earth in the darkness "like a Christmas tree ornament lit up in space, fragile-looking..." It may seem incredible to those who are too young to remember that before those days no one had ever seen the Earth in that way.

That photograph of the Earth rising over the horizon of the Moon has, according to one news source, "become one of the most reproduced and recognized pictures of our planet." After the lunar mission "Life" magazine called the image one of the "100 photos that changed the world." Astronaut Bill Anders said, "After all the training and studying we'd done as pilots and engineers to get to the Moon safely and get back, [and] as human beings to explore Moon orbit, what we really discovered was the planet Earth."

I can only liken the experience of seeing those images for the first time to living your entire life without ever having the ability to step outside to view the exterior of your home. You feel sure you know what the house looks like, but you function every day without ever really giving much consideration to where you are living. And then one day a stranger approaches, opens the door, guides you into the dazzling sunlight, and says, "Here is the place where you live."

Apollo 8 orbited around the Moon ten times over the course of 20 hours. On Christmas Eve 1968, during the ninth orbit, the astronauts read passages from the Old Testament Book of Genesis during a telecast that featured their live transmission of images of Earth. It is estimated that about 2 billion people--approximately half the Earth's population that year--watched and listened. The Apollo's crew began their journey home to Earth on Christmas Day.

On this Christmas Eve, while reading the Fox News website, I happened upon a link to the audio recording from that other Christmas Eve forty years ago. Everything in my life has changed since 1968. But I was filled once again with so many of the same emotions as on that night in my youth when, from our black and white television, I heard the reassuring voice of Commander Frank Borman conclude the broadcast of the Genesis reading with: "Good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas — and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth."

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