Sunday, May 9, 2010
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
A Cookbook Featuring Our Bees and Honey!
From wild chanterelle mushrooms and Walla Walla onions to marionberries and hazelnuts, the Pacific Northwest produces some of the country's most delicious food. "The Northwest Vegetarian Cookbook" features 200 fresh, accessible recipes that celebrate these unique flavors. It also profiles twelve growers and beekeepers of Oregon and Washington through inspiring essays that transport the reader to the farm where food is picked from trees, bushes, and vines. Debra Daniels-Zeller has created a great culinary reference and an introduction to the bounty of local markets, with tips on how to buy and store seasonal produce. This title includes breakfast foods, year-round salads, soups and breads, starters and sides, entrees, and desserts. Readers will walk away from this book - and straight to the local farmers' market - with recipes for each season and every part of the day.
It can be found here.
A Government Overview of CCD
Honeybee colony collapse disorder
This report shows the depths of the problem on many different levels, in an easy to read and understand format.
This report shows the depths of the problem on many different levels, in an easy to read and understand format.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
All Purpose Beeswax Cream
Great for Wood, Leather and seasoning metal. This recipe has been used to finish wood for years.
1 part beeswax (here)
1 part turpentine (Hardware stores and Odorless turpentine is used for oil painting and can be found at craft stores though, both work)
1/2 part boiled linseed oil (hardware stores)
Furniture polish
The beeswax wood polish:
2 oz grated beeswax
5 oz turpentine. I would use the odorless turpentine from the art stores used for oil painting.
You may want to use a double boiler to get the beeswax to melt quicker. Do not use direct heat, this is very flammable.
beeswax
Monday, May 3, 2010
DIY Beeswax Lip Balm
We recommend that you use a double boiler, even just putting your pot in a pyrex baking dish with water in the bottom will prevent the fire hazard as well as keeping your beeswax and oils from browning from too much heat.
If your beeswax is too hard, soften it in a bowl of hot tap water for about 10 minutes and it will be ready to grate.
Find beeswax here
Lip balm tubes here
DIY Bullet lube with beeswax
You can get your beeswax here
lithium grease can be found at hardware stores and molybdenum disulphide at many gun shops.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Colony Collapse Disorder
Interestingly CCD has been around for quite a few years before recent events became a main stream phenomenon. To draw a metaphor from human pandemics I wonder if a lot of the problem is similar to people being so mobile now. Where humans can spread an outbreak globally within hours via international flight; bees are trucked around the country and it spreads annually with the pollination cycle. Isolated CCD would burn through an area, wipe out colonies but within a few years only CCD resistant colonies would be left. Better to have the disease localized than national; but large scale agriculture keeps prices low. The double edged sword of modern agriculture.
Bee Colony Collapse Disorder
Bee Colony Collapse Disorder
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
CCD
More evidence that colony collapse has many facets.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/03/26/bee-killer-still-at-large-new-evidence-makes-pesticides-a-prime-suspect/
This spring, many beekeepers across America opened their hives and found ruin within. At a time when they should have been buzzing with activity, the hives were half-empty, with most adult bees having flown off to die. A new federal survey indicates that 2010 has been the worst year so far for bee deaths. Another study suggests that pesticides might be to blame for the mass wipeout of adult honeybees.
This winter’s die-off was the continuation of a four-year trend. At any given point, beekeepers can expect to see 15 to 20 percent of their bees wiped out due to natural causes or harsh weather. But this alarming phenomenon, termed colony collapse disorder (CCD), has seen millions of bees perish in a mysterious epidemic, with some farmers losing 30 to 90 percent of their hives.
As for the cause of this epidemic, experts say their best guess is that many factors are combining to sicken bees, with the list of culprits including parasites, viruses, bacteria, poor nutrition, and pesticides. Now a new study published in the scientific journal PLoS ONE strengthens the case for pesticides’ culpability.
In the study, researchers found about three out of five pollen and wax samples from 23 states had at least one systemic pesticide — a chemical designed to spread throughout all parts of a plant [AP]. The scientists say that in the 887 wax, pollen, bee, and hive samples, they found 121 different types of pesticides. The pesticides weren’t present in sufficient quantities to kill the bees, they say, but when combined with the other detrimental factors the mix could prove lethal for the tiny workers.
This is the fourth year of honey bee losses across the United States. In 2007, the nation’s beekeepers lost 32 percent of their colonies. In 2008 they lost 36 percent. In 2009, 29 percent [Discovery News]. With the official 2010 numbers (which will be announced in April) expected to be even worse, farmers across the United States are worried. About one-third of the human diet is from plants that require pollination from honeybees, which means everything from apples to zucchini [AP]. Almond growers in California are particularly concerned; the state is one of the largest producers of almonds in the world, and with the decline in the bee population, pollinating the trees has been a challenge. CCD has also dealt a tough economic blow to the beekeepers who truck their hives to the orchards. For Zac Browning, one of the country’s largest commercial beekeepers, the latest woes have led to a $1 million loss this year [AP].
As federal, state, and private agencies hunt for the elusive bee killer, the USDA has advised people not to use pesticides indiscriminately—especially at midday when honey bees are most likely out foraging for nectar. The agency is also asking people to plant and encourage the planting of good nectar sources like red clover, foxglove, bee balm, and joe-pye weed to give the besieged honey bees a boost.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/03/26/bee-killer-still-at-large-new-evidence-makes-pesticides-a-prime-suspect/
This spring, many beekeepers across America opened their hives and found ruin within. At a time when they should have been buzzing with activity, the hives were half-empty, with most adult bees having flown off to die. A new federal survey indicates that 2010 has been the worst year so far for bee deaths. Another study suggests that pesticides might be to blame for the mass wipeout of adult honeybees.
This winter’s die-off was the continuation of a four-year trend. At any given point, beekeepers can expect to see 15 to 20 percent of their bees wiped out due to natural causes or harsh weather. But this alarming phenomenon, termed colony collapse disorder (CCD), has seen millions of bees perish in a mysterious epidemic, with some farmers losing 30 to 90 percent of their hives.
As for the cause of this epidemic, experts say their best guess is that many factors are combining to sicken bees, with the list of culprits including parasites, viruses, bacteria, poor nutrition, and pesticides. Now a new study published in the scientific journal PLoS ONE strengthens the case for pesticides’ culpability.
In the study, researchers found about three out of five pollen and wax samples from 23 states had at least one systemic pesticide — a chemical designed to spread throughout all parts of a plant [AP]. The scientists say that in the 887 wax, pollen, bee, and hive samples, they found 121 different types of pesticides. The pesticides weren’t present in sufficient quantities to kill the bees, they say, but when combined with the other detrimental factors the mix could prove lethal for the tiny workers.
This is the fourth year of honey bee losses across the United States. In 2007, the nation’s beekeepers lost 32 percent of their colonies. In 2008 they lost 36 percent. In 2009, 29 percent [Discovery News]. With the official 2010 numbers (which will be announced in April) expected to be even worse, farmers across the United States are worried. About one-third of the human diet is from plants that require pollination from honeybees, which means everything from apples to zucchini [AP]. Almond growers in California are particularly concerned; the state is one of the largest producers of almonds in the world, and with the decline in the bee population, pollinating the trees has been a challenge. CCD has also dealt a tough economic blow to the beekeepers who truck their hives to the orchards. For Zac Browning, one of the country’s largest commercial beekeepers, the latest woes have led to a $1 million loss this year [AP].
As federal, state, and private agencies hunt for the elusive bee killer, the USDA has advised people not to use pesticides indiscriminately—especially at midday when honey bees are most likely out foraging for nectar. The agency is also asking people to plant and encourage the planting of good nectar sources like red clover, foxglove, bee balm, and joe-pye weed to give the besieged honey bees a boost.
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