Queen Bee Assassination By Honey Bee Kill Squad!
FRED SAVE THE QUEEN! A fellow organic beekeeper, Fred, posted this amazing video on YouTube. Background for non-beeks: “Balling” is the beekeeping term for “assassinating the Head of State.” When bees decide to commit regicide and bump off the queen bee for whatever reason, they form the bee version of a firing squad (so everyone [...]
June Food Stamp Challenge: Mini Farms Are The Future
This morning I attended the monthly Backwards Beekeeping club meeting at Farmlab in downtown Los Angeles. On the way out, one of the farmlab-ers offered me a free varigated flax plant, that’s going right into my front yard (YAY!) and a mulberry start. I have no idea where I’m going to plant the mulberry tree…yet, [...]
Swarm Stopper! (I Hope).
Look at the gorgeous natural comb that the Lincoln Log Bees created. It’s so pretty. And such a pain in the ass to inspect. Mr. Homegrown Evolution came over on saturday to get some open brood from me for his Hollywood Hills trap out. Since he was already in his bee gear, he was nice [...]
Honey Harvest! The Speaker Bees Give Us 40 Pounds Of Honey!
My friend Laura came over last friday to help me harvest the honey out of the Speaker Bee Hive. In preparation for this event, last week I’d separated the fourteen frames of capped honeycomb from the brood comb by putting the honeycomb into the top two boxes on the hive, and adding an escape board, [...]
June Bee Hive Inspection
In advance of this week’s honey harvest, I inspected all of or our hives to see what each colony was up to. The Hot Tub Bees Background: It’s a good thing that these bees live in my yard, because they’d never make it as corporate bees. They suck at building. Earlier this spring I added [...]
June Food Stamp Challenge: Hunger And Shame
If you can’t tell from my obsessive knitting, my love of mahjongg or the fact that I drink a hot beverage with every meal, I was born to be a little old lady. Which is probably why I enjoy reading Time Goes By, a blog about aging. Or maybe it’s just because Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist [...]
June Food Stamp Challenge: Eternal Hamnation A.K.A. The Salad Of Destruction
I’m working at my friend’s clothing store this weekend, so today my lunch was paid for by the boss’s husband. Yay! It was another delicious panini sandwich. I’d brought coffee with me to get me through the morning crush and then just made tea from my emergency caffeine stash of tea bags that I always [...]
