badbeekeepingblog.com

Sam Droege, bee scientist extraordinaire, has a USGS Flickr website populated with great bee photographs. Last week, somewhere around April first, Sam posted the results of some clandestine bee training going on in a secret lab in the USA. In addition to being able to count and solve simple puzzles USGS scientists at the Patuxent Native Bee Lab have taught bees to driver miniaturized automobiles. Using rewards such as flower smoothies and honey laced with addictive pollens, bees were gradually induced to drive in order to continue receiving their rewards.

The best-practice guidelines manual begins by describing why beekeeping is important: “While residential beekeeping can prove extremely rewarding to the beekeeper (a single colony can produce more than 40 pounds of honey, as well as other valuable products such as pollen, propolis, and wax), it also provides considerable benefits to neighbors and the city as a whole. Thus, this simple but appropriate drawing: There are a few things missing from this 17-page manual (for example: how to stop robbing once it has started; how to carry a hive of bees into your back yard without discommoding the neighbours) but this guidebook doesn’t pretend to cover everything. For those extra details, the authors recommend that you participate in a bee course, learn from a good neighbour beekeeper, or at least seek out good practical advice. This manual provides the closest thing I’ve seen to best practices for backyard beekeepers.

Three million people have watched this 12-minute video of a person eating honey comb and fried chicken. It refers to a tingly, exciting euphoria that some people spontaneously experience when they are exposed to particular everyday events that the more callous of us don’t recognize as stimulating. As the Times reported, it can arrive “in a wave, like a warm effervescence, making its way down the length of [the] spine and leaving behind a sense of gratitude and wholeness. But apparently many of the three million people who have watched the noisy demolition of a large chunk of comb honey and several hunks of chicken receive some pleasant benefit.

I’d like to give a special thanks to Liz Goldie, who helped immeasurably with the preps and props. Liz is the most active member of our local bee club, the Calgary and District Beekeepers Association. Also a warm thank you to my friend Bert Blouin, a past bee club president, for loaning his observation hive. Finally, thanks to the station’s great staff for pushing all the right buttons – thanks, Heather, Tiffany, and Sarah.