For the last two weeks, we have made the rounds and visited each colony of bees. There is a lot of walking as the land is too wet to drive on to get closer to each yard this is part of the sacredness of the journey. The quietness of the fields is punctuated by the birds and gentle winds.

After four months of winter, packing cases and insulated wraps are taken off. Boxes of honey are transferred from the hives that have died, and do not need it, to those that are alive, and hungry for more food. It is a very symbolic act as one member of the family gives new life to another.

As beautiful as Spring is with all of the birthing on the land, this greeting of the bees is a very somber time for me as many of the bees have passed on. With the decline of the bees worldwide because of the deterioration of the water and the air, these loses are very evident each day in the Spring. Working organically with our bees, we do not use chemicals that could artificially keep them alive. The exciting news is that we are seeing the light and hope of the turnaround in the health and strength of our bee populations. Now we are in the second year of a long term program to raise queens bees from the survivors. In these last weeks, we saw that queens Sam raised last year overwintered the best and were among the strongest. This gives us great encouragement to continue. I understand that while moving the bees South two winters ago enabled us to build them up after their loses and make a huge crop last season, it does not make them stronger our work with queen bees is a vital part of the path to sustainability and better health for the bees and beekeepers.

For over 100 years, the bees have been challenged by American Foulbrood, a major disease of the young bees, the “brood”, that has a distinctive odor, called “foul”. It kills the bees, but does not harm the honey. We have learned to smell it when opening up a hive. Our bees do not have much of this as we work organically with them a hive will be burned when discovered and the disease and weaker bees taken out of circulation. Drugs will only mask the symptoms and not get rid of the bacterial spores. The drugs allow the disease to spread throughout an operation. Because of the extensive use of drugs for this disease, much of the Chinese honey on the market in recent years has been contaminated. Last night I burned a hive that Tim had found earlier in Charlotte. The burning is conducted with great respect for the bees to not do this would threaten and weaken each of their other families in this community.

The fire that burns away that which is not wanted is a metaphor for many of us personally this Spring. As we moved the honey house to Route 7 in Ferrisburgh, we made a huge fire and burned that which we needed to clean up and remove from our work. The moving was a team effort and was a time to reflect on some things that I feel are important over all the years in our most honorable honey house:

• The healing goodness of elderberry has been shared with many via our elderberry extract and the distribution of plants each season.
• We work with the Amish community, on their land and with their families. Dan Miller was encouraged to build bee equipment for us, and a family business was born and has grown to serve the beekeeping community in New York State and the region.
• There is another side of the story with an invasive plant like purple loosestrife, which is involved in enormous healing as well as providing tons of honey to pollinating insects.
• We have seen that people working together can make a difference in their health and in the market. Our work is a string of partnerships across the land, and for that I am most grateful.

Because of your interest and support of the bees through the market, they will survive, get stronger and prosper. Thank you so much.

healing with bees

“Ouch, that one really, really hurt!”

“That one was the kidney point representing fear.” That was what my acupuncturist/bee venom therapist said to me after stinging me with a bee. Acupuncture is based on releasing stuck energy through meridian points in the body. With bee venom therapy, the process is greatly enhanced.

I was first introduced to bee venom therapy in October 2005 when I apprenticed at Honey Gardens Apiaries. During my week there extracting and bottling honey, wrapping hives, I was stung several times. My co-workers informed me that bees are divinely inspired to sting at points where your body needs attention. I was fascinated and I wanted to learn more. Todd shared how he stings people on purpose, the healing art of bee venom therapy (BVT).

I told him of my physical struggles and he consulted his acupuncturist/BVT teacher regarding a plan for stings. We began the process right away. I was stung on purpose in several meridian points. I was told I reacted well I was swollen, red and itchy for several days. But the pain from the arthritis in my knees subsided.

I learned that to be really effective, the stinging needs to be done regularly for an amount of time determined necessary. A few months later, I spent three weeks with Todd’s acupuncturist friend and experienced freedom in many ways. I never before realized how emotions such as fear and sorrow affect health.

I will continue to seek healing from the bees by ordering my own bees and stinging myself as needed.

I am thankful for the education I received while working at Honey Gardens. I am amazed at the many healing facets of the bee. Bee venom therapy is just one facet. It is now my privilege to share this wealth of information all over the country doing demos of Honey Garden’s products and marketing for this small Vermont bee farm.

for more information on bee venom therapy, see www.Apitherapy.org or contact Honey Gardens

saving the honey bee in Texas

It was my grandfather, who I called Ga, that first introduced me to the world of honey bees and beekeeping. Growing up in Texas, I would spend my summers with him and my grandmother at their home in Scotland. In the tight community where they lived, everyone knew Ga as “the beekeeper”.

Graham Dodds, honey bee savior

During those summers in Scotland, the neighbors would call for our help when swarms of bees would gather in their trees. Swarming is a natural process honey bees use for family improvement and survival. Half of the bees in a hive will leave to allow for a new, younger queen to be raised. Also, when they get too crowded in the hive, some swarm and leave for a new home where they will have more room. Ga and I would set out on a wild goose chase and follow behind the bees. He was too old to climb the trees, and so once the bees were settled, it was me who would be given the clippers and set up the tree to fetch them. My Ga never wore much protection as the stings were good for his rheumatoid arthritis, and as a result I never wore much protection either. Up a tree I would go, with just shorts, a T-shirt, and a veil to do my best to bring the bees gently down. I would then place them in a box on the ground and return after sundown to retrieve them and bring them home. There would be thousands of bees ! I would stand in awe and watch the bees calmly crawl into their new home.

In Junior High, I got my first beehive from a local pest control company that did not want to exterminate honey bees. I was soon getting dozens of calls a week. Recently I went out with Amy to save the biggest most grandiose colony I have ever seen in the wild. Using a very precarious ladder, we managed to saw the branch off that the bees were clinging to. As they fell into the hive below, the ladder fell over and bees exploded into the air, their colony in pieces on the ground. We were sad, feeling that the most beautiful colony I had ever seen had been destroyed. Knowing that they would have perished with pesticides if we had not finished the job, I gently placed the comb back into the box and left all there for the day. When I returned the next morning, all of the bees were inside of their new hive, calm and fixing up the comb that had broken. I can not save all of the bees in Texas, but it is important to do what we are able.

I feel it is critical in today’s age to save these wonderful insects and to educate people about how truly beneficial they are. I hope that everyone can learn to value their healing gifts for our health.

Honey used topically is being used in healing, including diabetic foot ulcers
http://www.diabetesincontrol.com/modules.php?name=News& file=article& sid=2880

Our first honey house was in the international village of Morses Line, Vermont & Quebec. On the right of the road is the old Richard Brothers Apiary that we moved into. The second building on the right is the Bucket-of-Blood bar, with the Vermont-Quebec border in the middle of the bar. In the Prohibition, the customers would move north to Canadian side for liquor the name of the bar and remnants of glass in the back yard attested to some of action in this building. The buildings on the left are all in Quebec. The forage for the bees was abundant, and they were independent of any boundary or business there.

If you draw a line from the United States north into Canada, the further north you go, the more honey the bees generally make each season. Our first honey house was as far north as one could go in the United States, in Morses Line, Vermont, north of the US Customs office and hugging the Quebec border. The flowers from the dairy farming community on both sides of the international line supported our bees as they gathered nectar, pollen, and propolis. The two Richard Brothers had kept bees here for years, and we continued that tradition, working with a peak of around 180 colonies of bees in Franklin Country, Vermont.

This is a bi-lingual community the language would gracefully move in out of French and English throughout the day. There is an innocence that is so pure here I remember going to a baseball game in Montreal with one of the neighbor children, and he remarked that the buildings were taller than his silos. The farms here are a sacred space, and are passed down from generation to generation in families that carry their traditions forward in time. We began here with a two seater outhouse, a mortgage of $130/month and a huge, sacred poplar tree in the front yard that gave propolis to the bees (seen as a smaller tree in this picture, on the right of the road.)

Our bees are all wrapped for the winter now. They are stronger than they were 12 months ago, with many more bees of the Russian, mite-resistant stock than we have ever seen. For years we have wrapped them, and when the last yard is completed, there is a peace that settles over the honey house. The hard working bees are insulated from the cold winds, snow and rain. With more than 30 bee yard locations, the wrapping takes weeks and is a rhythm of fall moving into winter that invariably ends with time outside in the snow in a polar environment. This year we started to bring four bee hives tight together, and wrap them in a cluster so that they may share their heat and move through the winter as stronger families. These changes convey and air of hope and promise to the bees.

We are continuing to work with our bees with organic policies. It is expected that at least 30% of the colonies may pass on this winter, and from the stronger survivors we will raise more queens, with the genetics of the Russian bees providing mite resistance. We will not use any chemical medicines to artificially allow the weaker colonies to live. Our organic procedures will protect our Apitherapy raw honey and our traditional plant medicines made with this honey. We feel that every action that we move through regarding the bees is transmitted into the integrity, medicinal and food value of our honey and plant medicines.

There is a new snow today covering the honey house and the fields around here. The snow is welcome as it will insulate the nectar plants, bring water and nitrogen to these plants, and remind us to get our cross country skiis and skates out of storage. As we wind down this season and anticipate the holidays, we reflect on the years of the rhythms of traditions of working with the bees. So much is old, and also so much is new as we learn more about how to have a relationship with the bees that are facing so many environmental challenges. .

About 40% of what you eat depends on pollination by insects, much of this by honey bees. With the decline in bees, gardeners and farmers have been noticing less crops honey bees are the “canaries in the coal mine”, and they have helped us be more aware of changes in our environment. We are grateful to be sharing the traditions of beekeeping and plant medicines with all of you and send you our best and the end of the agricultural season and beginning of new seasons.

I envision Honey Gardens as a string of partnerships across the land, with our most honorable market, those who work in stores, you who provide the demos at stores in the grassroots of education, the herbalists and scientists who we ask for help, the organic farmers we partner with and adore, our faithful business partners & suppliers ~ thank you. Our Honey House Propolis Salve is solely the creation of Tim, with some of his words below. Todd

First of all, thank you to the myriad strands of life’s web for the gifts of medicine bestowed to us along with the responsibility to share and rejuvinate these connections. We are constantly amazed by the work of the bees and the apothecary of medicine they produce. Raw honey has been used for thousands of years as a food and topically as treatment for burns and wounds. Honey is hydroscopic, drawing moisture from the environment, effectively incapacitating infectious bacteria. It has an acidic pH which further dissuades microbial colonization and has been found to contain inhibine which is akin to hydrogen peroxide. Honey also coats exposed, irritated nerve endings inhibiting oxidation, thus relieving pain. The bees make propolis by combining resins (from poplars and conifers), beeswax, and pollen. Propolis (bee-glue) strengthens waterproofs and sterilizes the hive. Propolis is antibiotic, antiseptic, antifungal, antiviral, anti-inflammatory, and analgesic (numbing pain). At Honey Gardens, we were inspired to combine raw honey, propolis, and beeswax with olive oil infusions of comfrey root, calendula flowers, and plantain leaves. Comfrey root knits wounds together, promotes cell repair, and heals burns. Calendula flowers sooth inflamed tissues, burns, and stimulate healing of wounds. Plantain leaves are astringent drawing infections to the surface, promoting healing of injuries. Each herb also helps stop bleeding. The propolis acts as a resinous bandage, protecting the wound. Apply Honey House propolis salve to burns, wounds, bruises, swellings, stings and damaged/dry skin