People are terrified of bees. This small insect, smaller than the tip of my pinkie, can terrify a large man to the point of leaping to his feet, sprinting as fast as he can in any direction, and jumping into a body of water. Why is this? Because they sting. The poison in a honey bee can cause a variety of reactions in different people–from a mere pinch to painful swelling to death. But bees also pollinate trees and plants and make honey. Let’s take a closer look at a honey bee: friend or foe?

A honey bee is a uniquely designed insect. They release scents when they’re afraid. They dance to talk to one another. Drones die when mating. They have compound eyes which are made up of hundreds of little eyes. They have an extra stomach for carrying nectar. They obey their queen and follow their caste system. Honey bees are intriguing creatures, for sure–but what are they to us?

Besides their tendency to sting when feeling threatened, honey bees have a few other irritating habits. When searching for water, they tend to cluster around swimming pools, often scaring children and getting swatted at–an act which triggers their defense mechanism–stinging. While swarming, they have been known to stop sporting events by landing on a goal post, or to land other places where they are unwelcome. When possible, they steal honey from beekeepers who are harvesting another hive, from candy factories who leave their windows open–even right from your kitchen. If a source of honey is located, hundreds and thousands of bees can descend in a kitchen or barn to acquire as much of that honey as possible.

On a hot summer day, if a colony was built in the walls or ceiling of a house, honey will occasionally begin to melt and ooze through the cracks. Most irritating is that during their cleansing flights, they like to poop on laundry that has been hung out to dry.

On the other hand, bees pollinate our gardens. They make it possible to eat blueberries, almonds, and cucumbers. They pollinate the maple trees and the locust trees and the apple trees. They make honey of all varieties–dark and light, sweet and rich, clover and bamboo, which is good to eat, good for medicine, and good for washing your hair.

Bubbles from pouring slowly rise to the top, producing a foam that dissipates over time

They make beeswax, which we use to make candles, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals. Pollen, which they bring back the hive, is consumed by humans to improve their immune system; propolis is another product made by bees and used for car wax and various medicinal purposes.

So the answer is yes, bees can be annoying. Sometimes they are even dangerous. But in the long run, they do more good for us than harm. Here is a quick anecdote: my brother was always allergic to honey bees; on more than one occasion he ended up in the emergency room. But my dad was a beekeeper. Their compromise was this: the bees were kept several acres away, over the hill and behind a copse of trees, and my brother never went there. Despite this affliction, he helped with extraction (the part away from the hives) and selling the honey. As a family we harvested many gallons of honey every year. We learned about a fascinating species which lived in our own backyard, and we learned of their importance to our ecosystem and to society as a whole.

The key is not to destroy those things that frighten us and can hurt us, but to learn to work with them. The question still stands: honey bee–friend or foe? I say friend.

Ariele Sieling grew up loving bees and working beside her father. She writes the blog “I’m in Love with the Universe” and is working on two novels. She is currently an writer, researcher, and electrician.

Childhood obesity is a major problem in North America, where annual obesity rates have seen significant gains in recent decades. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 17 percent of U.S. children and adolescents aged 2-19 are obese, nearly triple the share in 1980. Many studies document the connection between a school’s food environment and dietary behaviors in children. As anyone who grew up in the U.S. public school system can attest, lunches served in the country are highly processed and high in sodium, sugar, and fat.

Initiatives that connect schoolchildren to fresh, healthy foods and that encourage healthy eating habits from a young age are critical to ending the obesity endemic. One example is the U.S.-based 30 Project, which brings together key organizations and activists working on hunger, obesity, and agriculture to talk about their visions for the food system over the next 30 years. The effort is exploring long-term solutions to address obesity and improve the food system by ensuring that everyone has easy access to fresh fruits and vegetables, among other goals.

“Consuming nutrient-packed veggies may be even more important now, considering that obesity has become a nationwide epidemic in the United States and that diabetes is becoming more prevalent across the globe,” said Nourishing the Planet project director Danielle Nierenberg. “It’s important that we teach kids how to eat well and take care of themselves now, as children, so they can continue to take care of themselves as adults.”

With children preparing to begin the school year, Nourishing the Planet offers the following solutions for schools to encourage healthy eating:

·     Connect Local Farmers to Schools: Providing locally sourced foods in school cafeterias improves diets and strengthens local economies. The U.S. state of Vermont is a leader in the nationwide Farm to School movement, which integrates food and nutrition education into classroom curricula and serves local foods in school cafeterias. Over the past decade, 60 percent of Vermont schools have joined the effort, forming a statewide network aided by the state’s Agency of Agriculture, Department of Health, and Department of Education. Children benefit from farm-fresh foods for breakfast and lunch, and local farmers expand their business into a market worth over $40 million. Urban areas across the United States, from New York to Los Angeles, are also participating in this growing movement.

·       Savor Mealtimes: Emphasizing the importance of mealtimes teaches children to appreciate the value and taste of good food. France, which has one of the lowest rates of childhood obesity in Europe, takes lunch very seriously. School lunches are well funded, and every part of the meal is prepared on school grounds in professional-grade kitchens-a stark contrast to the heat-and-serve kitchens in U.S. schools. Kids from preschool to high school are served four- to five-course meals and are encouraged to take time eating and socializing with friends. At some schools, detailed menus even suggest what parents should serve their children for dinner. Soft drink and snack machines are banned from school premises.

·       Implement School Gardens: School gardens provide hands-on opportunities for children to cultivate and prepare organic produce. In the United States, REAL School Gardens creates learning gardens in elementary schools in high-poverty areas of north Texas. The organization has found that the school gardens not only nurture healthy lifestyles and environmental stewardship, but can also improve academic achievement through active participation. REAL School Gardens supports 81 schools, providing daily access to nature for more than 45,000 children and 2,700 educators.

·   Nutrition Education: The city of Chicago’s public school district doesn’t offer mandatory nutrition education as part of its curriculum. To fill this void, the nonprofit Communities in Schools of Chicago (CISC) connects 170 schools to volunteer professionals who run a broad range of programs that address the social, emotional, health, and enrichment needs of students. Demand for nutrition classes has almost tripled in the past four years. This is due in part to the results of a Personal Health Inventory administered by CISC to more than 5,000 students, which showed that nutrition was the lowest scoring area.

  ·  Equal Access to Healthy Foods: Childhood obesity disproportionately affects low-income families that may not be able to afford healthy foods. Schools in Greeley, Colorado, are taking a giant leap forward by cooking every meal from scratch. This is a much healthier alternative to the processed factory-food items that dominate school cafeterias today, and can be more cost effective for poorer school systems that take advantage of U.S. federal reimbursement rules. With 60 percent of the city’s students qualifying for free or reduced-price meals, Greeley is proving that it isn’t only rich school districts that can provide their children with healthy meals.

Additional Examples:

• The Community Alliance with Family Farmers coordinates relationships among school cafeterias and local food producers in California’s San Francisco Bay Area, bringing nutritious meals to students who might not otherwise be able to afford them.
• The Fresh from the Farm program in Chicago conducts classroom activities such as tastings, cooking demonstrations, visits from farmers, helping in school gardens, and field trips to local organic farms.
• Revolution Foods delivers tasty and healthy breakfasts, lunches, and snacks to schools in Colorado, California, and Washington, D.C. Many of the ingredients are organic and locally sourced, and no artificial flavors, trans fats, high-fructose corn syrup, or milk with hormones and antibiotics are used at all.
• Seeds of Nutrition helps schools in Atlanta, Georgia, start school gardens and teach children how to prepare delicious recipes using the fruits of their labor. The group also collaborates with teachers to create cross-curricular lessons that center on gardens and food.
• The Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley, California, is a one-acre organic garden and kitchen classroom where inner-city students at a local Middle School participate in all aspects of growing, harvesting, and preparing seasonal produce.
• New York City’s enormous school district used its market power to pressure vendors to reduce food prices and eliminate unhealthy items, including fried food, artificial ingredients, and trans fats, from its cafeterias. With this welcome change, many children now enjoy fresh fruit, salad bars, whole-grain breads and pasta, and foods made with low-fat and low-sodium recipes.
• In 2010, Italy adopted a nationwide policy to supply all school cafeterias with locally sourced organic food in an effort to curb childhood obesity and preserve culinary traditions. Seventy percent of all school cafeteria food in Rome is now organic, with ingredients coming from 400 Italian organic farms.

Obesity is an immense problem for children growing up in today’s world of processed junk food, but many opportunities exist to reverse this trend. Schools are the most efficient means of transmitting healthy behavioral changes that can last a lifetime to students, families, and communities. It all starts with connecting schools to the best foods available: fresh, organic, and local.

Worldwatch’s Nourishing the Planet (www.NourishingthePlanet.org) project recently traveled to 25 countries across sub-Saharan Africa, shining a spotlight on communities that serve as models for a more sustainable future. The project is unearthing innovations in agriculture that can help alleviate hunger and poverty while also protecting the environment. These innovations are elaborated in the recently released report State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet.

-Gary

Gardening organic is easy to do, when you’ve got tips like these. Mulch, compost and effective pest control are all essential to gardening organic. 

Compost 

Compost is an organic material that has decomposed and is re-used as an organic fertilizer. The rawest form of composting is piling up waste outside and waiting a year or more for it to decompose. Today’s modern form of composting is multi-step with closely measured water, air and carbon and nitrogen-rich materials.

The plant matter is shredded, water is added and the mixture is regularly turned for ideal aeration. Additionally, worms and fungi break up the material further.

To create your own compost, create a pile of carbon-rich and nitrogen-rich materials. Carbon-rich materials are brown in color and include fall leaves, dead flowers, straw and shredded newspaper. Nitrogen-rich materials are green and include grass clippings and plant-based kitchen waste, such as fruit rinds and vegetable peelings. In addition to the carbon-rich and nitrogen-rich materials, add a few shovelfuls of garden soil. [Ed. Note - don't put eggs or meat in your compost bin.]

To create this compost site, alternate layers of different items- e.g. leaves and grass clippings. If you fill it entirely with greens, such as grass clippings, it will get very hot and decompose quickly, but you don’t want it to get so hot that it risks burning.  After adding greens and leaves, add a thin layer of the garden soil. Finish by moistening all of the layers thoroughly. You can also use an organic compost starter to aid your composting.

Continue this layering until it’s 3-feet high. The ideal ratio is 3 parts carbon-rich material to 1 part nitrogen-rich material.

To help with decomposition, use a garden fork or shovel to turn the pile, every few weeks. You want a compost pile that is moist, but isn’t wet and soggy. If you don’t turn it, it will still decompose, it will just happen more slowly.

Mulch

For organic mulch, use loose, coarse-textured material. Any once-living material can be used as mulch, including pine needles and grass clippings. Water the ground thoroughly before and after you apply the mulch covering.

Mulch not only gives your flowerbeds a neat, finished look, it also prevents the soil drying out, adding humus and other nutrients, while discouraging weeds. Mulching is the equivalent of Mother Nature maintaining a forest floor.

Any acid-loving plants can be mulched with a thick layer of pine needles. Do it each Fall and as the needles decompose, their acid will be deposited into the soil, enriching it.

Any new plantings should not have bare soil visible around them. Make sure you cover all your new plantings with a layer of mulch. It benefits the plants by protecting the plant roots from the sun’s heat during the summer months and the plant crowns from the cold of wintertime.

Pest Control

Did you know homeowners who use chemical-based fertilizers and pesticides apply more per acre than farmers? The result is chemical run-off, harming water-based life and ultimately contaminating the food chain. When you keep your soil healthy, with good mulch and a powerful organic fertilizer, you have a garden that is not only environmentally friendly, but thriving as well.

There are effective organic pesticides that can be used when gardening organic. When selecting your pest control, look for one that has the OMRI Listed logo on its label. This means it has been reviewed and approved for gardening organic.

Now that you received more information on gardening organic, you’d probably like to learn more about organic fertilizers.

In many places across the U.S.A. there is a growing fascination within the local communities that comes with urban gardening and the local food market. This may seem strange at first because the local market is a lot more expensive that going to your local “Super Mart” for your groceries but given a little bit closer of a look, you can see why this is becoming more and more popular.

First of all the quality of the food at the local market is flat out about ten folds better. Not only that, but there is a certain amount of pride invested in the food as it is personally grown or created, and taken care of.

Sunday Morning Celebrations

Every Sunday morning the local markets are just booming with activity. Many people look forward to this time of the week just as many college students look forward to their weekend to begin on either Thursday or Friday night. [Ed. Note - it's not just Sundays, I used to live in a city that had a huge Saturday market. The Sunday time was garage sale day]

Many of the times there will be a local band there playing throughout the day. The band usually keeps the crowd energetic, and is usually a great addition to the ability to check out what the local farms have to offer.

Not only is it a celebration for the people that come to do their shopping, but it is a place where the hard work of local farmers, or food creators pays off as they get to talk all day about their product, their inspiration for it, and their goals, aspirations, and future plans for their product. At the local farmer market, you will find all sorts of creative ideas, including new ones and new spins on old ideas.

A Boost for the Economy

One reason why this trend is growing so much is because the crowds of people that attend these markets on the regular know already that it is great for the economy. It helps keeps jobs local, and it supports the local community in a lot of different ways.

For instance, a study being done in Maine, or moreover a campaign, encourages people to spend at least $10 a week on local farm products. If this is done one hundred million dollars will be put back into farmers’ bank accounts and the Maine economy each growing season. Imagine the benefits if only 10% of the population of the USA spent only $10 a week at the local farmers market. That is approximately $16,000,000,000. That’s right – an annual 16 billion dollar industry. And each cent of it would stay in the United States of America.

When it comes to buying local, food may be one of the best options to go. The quality of tastes and freshness is unmatched, it is very entertaining, there is a variety of great options, and you are doing the economy a great justice.

This article was written by Laura Zanskey. In her spare time, Laura loves to garden. This post was inspired by her time spent at the local farmers market where she saw many interesting ideas. Her favorite was “Holy Canoles” which consisted of deconstructed canoles where the usually middle filled cream was made into a dip of which you could dip your canoles into. By day, she works for www.YouReviewElectronics.com – a website that gives LED TV reviews.

This book serves as an update of prior work written by Richard Bonney, expanded to cover beekeeping across the entire U.S., instead of just the Northeast (i.e. added zones 6-11). Dr. Sanford is a professor at the University Florida, and operates a thorough monthly newsletter about beekeeping news, which you can subscribe to on his website.

This book looks like it would be  good for someone who really wants to learn to keep bees and be serious about it – it goes in depth in many areas of caring for bees, taking well-thought and measured tone regarding the risks and rewards of beekeeping.

It gives and overarching description of how to keep bees, from what equipment you need to hive management, to harvesting honey. Serious consideration is given to the challenges of beekeeping – not just diseases, but also legal, health, and business record keeping. The appendix includes sample forms for contracts and ordnances.

It covers some business issues – such as a potential business plan for someone interested in branching out into pollination services.

This book is well written and a satisfying read. with lovely pen & ink illustrations, with lots of practical, hands-on advice, which could benefit many beekeepers, even if they already have some experience.

Storey’s Guide to Keeping Honey Bees: Honey Production, Pollination, Health (Storey’s Guide to Raising)

Norman Gary’s book, Honey Bee Hobbyist: The Care and Keeping of Bees (Hobby Farm) is an easy, fun read, with lots of large, glossy pictures of honeybees. It would be a great for a kid interested in beekeeping, for a library, or a 4-H club –  from beginner to intermediate beekeeper.

It has lots of little tips to get you started, although certainly not detailed enough to solve all your beekeeping needs. There are numerous sidenotes about interesting natural history, revolving around activity inside and outside the hive, as well as details on honey and products of the hive.

While this book has curiously little of Gary’s personal experience with beekeeping given his fame, it does includes a unique “fun things to do with bees” chapter. which would provide a number of activities for beekeeping demonstrations or fun with the kids.

The bees lived in the house of an 87 year old woman. The daughter lived next door. A grandson had a bachelor pad in the old mud room*. There were some problems with grandma, hard of hearing, turning up the volume on her big-screen TV and interfering with Rick watching his big-screen TV.

The house was built by the husband who had been dead for around 10 years. He built it to his own specifications and it bore no resemblance to regular building codes. The studs were mostly three feet apart. The inside was like a maze.

The temperature was over 90 degrees outside and the uninsulated upstairs was also 90 degrees in the closet where I had to work. In the three hours I was there, I drank about 2 lbs of liquids and still came home 5 lbs lighter. I sweat almost 1 gallon and by the time I got home, I had heat stroke symptoms.

I located the bees and started cutting a hole with an oscillating tool. The bees were aggressive so I started vacuuming them at once rather than opening the whole nest. The colony had swarmed 2 days before so there were less bees and lots of queen cells which I tried to save. I also found two queen cells which had hatched. The tip of the cell had been chewed and the tip had swung open like the hatch on a submarine, only facing downward.

When I had vacuumed all the bees I could into the bee-vac, I finished up the stragglers with the shop-vac. That kills them almost immediately. But the time I was done there were only a few bees wandering around. It was late in the afternoon and as I was packing my tools, I looked up and was surprised to see hundreds of bees returning to the now empty hive. It looked like a regular cloud. Worker bees come and go all day and I couldn’t imagine where these had been during the entire removal process. Then one buzzed past my head and I realized that they didn’t fly like regular honey bees. They were, in fact, drones who had been out all day in the drone congregation area waiting for queens.

I told the grandson to spray them with soapy water when they clustered inside the cavity after dark.

At home the next day, I trimmed what comb I could to fit in frames and rubber banded them in place. At least one hatched but a week later she and the few bees that were with her disappeared. I put most of the bees into a separate colony, thinking I must have vacuumed up one or two virgin queens (there were those two opened cells), but to date they are filling the box with honey and there is no sign of stored pollen, eggs, or brood. If the one queen I did find had stayed, I would have caged her and put her in that hive. I just wanted to make sure they didn’t have a queen.

The brood and queen cell loss was unacceptable. Between the last two colony extractions, I lost several hundred dollars worth of queen cells and thousands of worker bees. Warm brood comb bends, twists, and buckles when placed in boxes or buckets. Workers can’t tend to them and the temperature is uncontrollable. By the next morning, the few bees left in the boxes have abandoned most of the comb. As a result, I made for the next extraction, a box in which I can slide the combs in upright, brush a few workers in after and save most of the brood. A standard brood box with adjustable guides can be made in a few minutes. Instead of laboriously cutting and fastening combs into frames, this box can be placed under an empty hive. You either wait for the bees to move up into the new box, or you drive them up after the brood has hatched. The full plans will be printed in Bee Culture, probably in the September issue.

*Old farm houses often have a room attached, usually with a dirt floor where the farmer removes manure covered clothes before entering the house. It’s used to store firewood, tools, and other items that are now stored in a garage.

My wife and I spent last week in the High Peaks region of the Adirondacks. We didn’t see any honey bees – Pete said there aren’t many there, because there aren’t enough flowers, but that makes it a good area for controlled breeding. We did see a lot of other pollinators- different kinds of butterflies, flies, and so on.

There were a great number of a particularly fascinating species of fly – Eristalix tenax (a type of hoverfly). When flying around your head, they bear a strong resemblance to honey bees. In further inspection, they have different markings, and seemed much less industrious, preferring to sit our our things for hours on end, preferring particularly we had that was blue.

I took a few pictures of these, and more, which are available through this article on my stock photography site.

If you’re in the Adirondacks area, check out http://www.adirondackbees.org/.