permaculture

["Eugene Monaco" <efmonaco@comcast.net>]

Last year I didn't feed my bees because I believed that they would be
stronger (immnuo or otherwise) if they fent for themselves. Turns out they
starved because there wasn't enough food.  I felt like a jackass for not
paying closer attention but I was learning (there is no failure, only
feedback). 
The moral of that story is that it's hard to gauge how much food is out
there.  Some say it's damn near impossible.  One can assume that there is an
infinite supply, but there's not.  This year I'm watching and I'm worried.
The freeze Easter weekend knocked out a lot of plants and trees haven't come
back yet, notably the tulip poplars, which are the main event for bee food
around here during the spring flow.  They will probably come back, but will
there be any nectar; and if so, how much?
How can you tell in late winter how many colonies to try to raise?
If you're not moving your hives around to the ag fields full of GMO plants,
which I'm not, or if you're not in the midst of some huge organic garden
that you have planted yourself and have greenhouses to manage the weather
variables, which I'm not either, then you're dependent on the plants in the
area for that year.  Either that or you feed.  One cool thing about
apiculture is that it forces you to pay attention to the food in the area
and the phenology.  IMO this is the hardest thing to do (at least for me),
but it is the essence of permaculture design.  If you go off and design
something thinking you understand the way nature works, but you're wrong,
well then you get some, uh, feedback.
Our longtime friend Peter Bane wrote in an Activist article awhile back
(Keith can find it) that the Oaks vary the number of acorns each year
(running on 3-year cycles) to keep the squirrel and deer population guessing
so they will not eat every acorn in site hence killing the new oaks (I ran
around yelling Eureka for a few days when I heard that one!).  This year the
oaks came out 3 weeks early and then froze, with no signs of life yet.
Maybe no acorns at all this year!  But why did they come out 3 weeks early?
If the oaks are confused, the humans are quadrupally confused.
Ignoring for a moment the notion that humans are actually a part of
nature... 
Somebody posted that we have no business raising apis mellifera en masse
anymore than we have any business raising monocultures of GMO corn  This is
a good point.
The challenge is that we are already stuck in the middle of 10,000 years of
agriculture that has gotten us to this point.  There's no turning back
without a massive die off, which is possible, maybe even likely; but let's
ignore that for a moment.  So what to do? (permaculture anyone?)
If the answer is in the garden, then backyard beekeeping may not be such an
evil thing after all.  We grow what we can and what we're guided by spirit
to plant.  This includes the bees.
Well, if the plants need water, we water them.  If the bees need feed, we
feed them.  If the cows need milked...
I'm raising 3 new colonies this year and I want them to build up their brood
now and collect nectar to make honey during the spring flow which normally
would be on now.  I'm not sure if there's enough food due to the crazy
weather, so I have the feed on them.  I am using organic dried cane juice
from the health food store (ordered in bulk); equal parts dry volume of cane
to liquid volume of filtered tap (or collected rain) water.  The cane juice
has at least some trace minerals in it.  I'll pull the bottle away from the
babies as soon as the Keepers let me know that there's enough food out
there.  Now if I could just shut up my logical mind long enough to hear
their call.


Gene Monaco
Knoxville, TN 

Here are my thoughts, so I'll just throw them out there-

I am not disagreeing with the cell phone perspective, it's just that I think
there may be an additional component to the picture. 

I could easily believe this about cell phones. The problem for me with the
honeybee/cell-phone theory is the statement that 'wildlife will not go to
raid the abandoned hive for honey, pollen, etc.'.. That implies to me that
the problem is likely there where the hive is, and maybe the bees are not
going back to their hive for the same reason the other animals are staying
away. Maybe a cell tower has been put up near the hive or something like
that, or maybe it's something else, but it seems to me that the
disappearance of the bees may have more to do with the hive itself.

A further thought of mine is that maybe all the GMO pesticide- and
terminator-DNA-loaded pollen is wiping out the pollinator population. Maybe
the collected GMO pollen is poisoning the hives. 

Lastly, IMHO a hive which has been fed sugar-water is immuno-compromised,
and would have less resistance to overcome other health challenges. 

The problem could be the totality of a number of things, cell phone vibes,
GMO pesticides, terminator DNA and sugarwater, together with varroa mites
and other parasites. Maybe it's all just too much.

These are my thoughts. 

IMHO that avoidance by the abandoned-hive raider populations is too big a
flag to be ignored.

Linda Ray, Founder
Linda Ray Research
PS: Just looking for answers..