From Gerald in Cullowhee, NC So–I am now an organic beekeeper. But am cheating a bit–we have no other bees that we know of within a couple miles so no chance of catching something from other hives. Hi Gerald, Glad to hear you are interested in moving to a more beneficial environment for you bees. Regarding the distance…
I could barely sleep last night because of this. Manifesto alert, proceed at your own risk. Everything we post about here on Backyard Ecosystem. Everything underlying the movement toward greening our cites over the last several decades. The very title of the excellent book written by Erik and Kelly over at the blog formerly known as Homegrown…
Here is another reason to keep your bees in town. Dennis Murrell of BeeNatural talks about being Malathioned. I remember our bees getting overspray from soybeans planted across the road when I was growing up and the resulting pile of dead bees in front of the hives was heart wrenching. Crop dusting specifically andchemically addictedagribusiness…
This is a great article from the BBC on the better diet that bees in urban and suburban beehives have access to. It talks about research into my long held suspicion that bees, like humans, love the variety that urban life has to offer.
This was written the first week of May, when swarms start flying things get crazy. Monday Night… Today Natalie and I rescued two swarms from the fence of my friend Paige here in Denver. I learned about the swarms from a post Paige put up on Facebook with a video of one of the swarms….
Last week I took advantage of our warm weather here in Denver and opened up the hives to take a look at things. Our original hive is in great shape. This hive has a one year old queen I witnessed cutting herself out of her cell last spring after the old queen swarmed. Workers are…
I wanted to closely document the transition to small cell to help others with the process, both backyard and commercial scale beekeepers. If you are not aware bees raised on natural comb have a good track record of surviving without any chemicals in managed hives. A much better track record than commercial or backyard beekeepers…
Today, I opened the hives to monitor and document progress on the changeover to natural cell beekeeping and incidentally noticed a bee doing the waggle dance. This is typically done to communicate to the other bees the location of a new source of nectar and pollen. I paid more attention than normal because I was…
Backyard Ecosystem began as an expression of my determination to make a difference in our own backyard. Literally and metaphorically making a difference at the micro level of my yard and to operate at macro level of treating the entire planet as something I am an integral part of and whose destiny is shaped everyday by what I do in my corner of the world.
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