In the early days of Spring, we visited the bees as the last patches of snow lingered throughout the land. Choruses of frogs sang for weeks, as waves of red maples were lighting up the hills, signaling the end of maple sugaring and also the beginning of the flight of honey bees as they gather nectar and pollen from the same trees that syrup was made from. The colonies of bees that have mite resistant queens and where organic practices are followed continue to come out of the winter stronger.

In the season of abundant dandelion flowers for the bees, we have been splitting the surviving colonies, which makes up for the winter loss. We are encouraging them to raise their own queens this year and support their health with organic mite procedures. Last week, the colonies of honey bees were moved out of the apple orchards.

Another sign of Spring is the lone queen bumble bee flying from flower to flower, gathering nectar and pollen to feed and start their new families. The bumble bees often have more muscles and are larger than honey bees, and can thus fly in the cooler temperatures of Spring. They are native pollinators and social like honey bees; the bumble bees are also a critical piece of our ecosystem and like honey bees, they are at risk. You can find out more, including how to help them, at the Bumblebee Conservation Trust
http://bumblebeeconservation.org/

Wainsworth Brown, David Buchanan, Noel Henry, and Neville Buchanan, Zolfo Spring, Florida, April 2008. The boxes of orange blossom honey have been brought to the honey house for extracting. The bees were just starting to work on the palmetto palm flowers. These men work with the bees in South Florida, and maintain strong ties to their community in Jamaica.

Nearby in Zolfo Spring, the honey bees were working the flowers in a 180 acre field of watermelon. When these watermelon are pollinated by honey bees, the yield of the fruit is between 80,000 – 90,000 pounds/acres. Without the bees, the farmer only gets 10,000 – 15,000 pounds of melons/acre.

Environmental filmmaker Jan Cannon has spent many days of the last two years with the crew of Honey Gardens, in the field with the bees, moving through the seasons with the bees, filming as we were making plant medicine, talking with and gathering footage of our team of queen breeders, bee venom therapist, vegetable and dairy farmers. His film is all about the teamwork that makes this work possible, and it documents the changes in our work at Honey Gardens.

We are grateful to Jan for his heartfelt film on the bees and Honey Gardens.
www.jancannonfilms.com

Health & the Hive: A Beekeeper’s Journey explores the importance of honeybees in our lives and the many health benefits that come from the beehive. The film considers the current state of the bees and suggests approaches to beekeeping and agriculture that would improve the outlook for bees and the humans who rely on them. Some of the topics addressed in the film are pollination, queen breeding, disease control, bee venom therapy, organic agriculture and honey based plant medicine. This film is 53 minutes and is available here

The name of the Mapuche community was first given to me by Facundo, the gaucho with whom I had just spent a month and half riding across Argentina with, over 800 miles in 40 days. I wrote to the community leader, the shaman, to ask if I could come spend a week or so with his people. He wrote back that although he was happy to hear that I had spent time with other Mapuche communities, he was not interested in having a white girl from the US come disrupt the daily on-goings of his people. And I thought that was the end of our correspondence. A couple of days went by and I received another message from the shaman. This time he wrote that he had a dream about a white outsider, a girl, coming to his people, bringing something important. He wrote to ask me if I was this white girl, and to ask what I thought I was bringing. At this point in my journey through South America, I had seen many white people traveling, thinking that they were spreading something precious, bringing foreign, educated thought to rural, poor communities. I wrote back, telling him that I was not here to be oppressive or to educate other people. I was here to learn, to observe, to make connections, and to educate myself. I told him that I was interested in agriculture, in farming, in creating wholesome connections, and fruitful relationships. I told him that I had grown up beekeeping with my dad. Instead of sending me a message in reply, he sent me three horses. One horse to carry Juan who would lead me through the mountains back to their community, one horse for me to ride, and one horse for the box of bees that I was asked to bring and share with their community.

At first they were silent. I worked next to them in the fields. I sat with them at their fires. I ate with them. I slept on horse blankets in between their bodies. And each day at four, after everyone was done working in the fields, they would gather around me and I would try and teach them about bees. They didn’t speak English, and I didn’t speak their native tongue, but somewhere, using Spanish as a middle ground and many hand gestures, we found a compromise. And then one day a child invited me to play a ball game with a group of her friends. And somehow, as soon as this one girl overcame her skepticism and opened up her world to me, so did the rest of the community. Suddenly I realized that many more of them could speak Spanish then they had first let on. Suddenly they were extremely curious about where I had come from, and what my world was made up of. Suddenly I could ask them all the questions that had been building in my mind about their farming techniques, culture, and history.
After about a week and a half I had to continue on with my journey. It was an overwhelming goodbye. Everyone in the community wanted to give me something. A piece of ribbon, a fork, a dried flower, a rock…anything to remember them by. It was hard for me to accept anything from them- they came from a world with so little, and I came from so much, yet to refuse would have been an insult. Looking back, I wish that I had brought something more than a boxful of bees. I said this to the shaman. He looked at me slowly and replied that I had given them so much more. He told me that I was the first outsider to ever come spend time with them, and that I had opened up their eyes to other ideas and thoughts. I tried to tell him how much they had given me in knowledge. I tried to show him how much I had learned about new farming ideas, permaculture designs, sword fighting, killing and gutting a sheep and then being able to use or compost every piece of that animal, and many other things. But he merely brushed aside my words with a smile, and slapped the rump of my horse to send me on my way.
As I continue to travel the world, I have come to realize the power of the land. The land is a common language that many understand. It is the form of communication that many times I have fallen back on when words seem to not suffice. And through my journeys and experiences, bees seem to help me build powerful connections whether it is with my colleagues at Colorado College, my neighbors in Vermont, or my newfound friends in South America. Thank you, bees!

Honey Gardens is sending a computer to this community of Mapuche. The Mapuche and other indigenous people around the world are being pushed off their land by the government and other groups of people. The Mapuche people have peacefully occupied their land for generations and generations, and many of them do not own deeds to that land. Even those who have deeds to land are intimated by the government, due to a very bloody past history. So when the local police officer puts up a fence on 100 hectares of their land, the Mapuche are afraid and unsure of how to act – they quietly submit to this treatment. We are helping them get a computer so that they can make contact with other communities around Argentina. There is a power behind numbers and organization. We are also helping them get a computer so that they can create a market for their goods in the US. Currently the government restricts the price that they can sell their woven goods for, and thus after a week’s worth of weaving, they receive about enough money to buy a half a week’s worth of food, not enough to sustain a person, let alone a family. We are helping them get this computer, to help them create communication, to help them make a network. We are grateful for your support which helps to make this happen.