See what I did there? 😉
So I’ve officially joined a co-curricular at Olin, called Sustainable Beekeeping! On Sundays we meet at 11am and tend bees for two hours. This Sunday was so warm and sunny. It was the perfect day for an introduction to beekeeping, since warm days make the bees happy and calm.
First, we learned how to start/use smoke tools. Smoke is an important tool to have at your disposal when beekeeping. It disrupts pheromones that bees use to communicate with each other to coordinate attacks on predators. It is also believed to cause bees to believe that their hive is burning, sending them into a feeding frenzy (which causes them to care even less about humans, protecting us from angry bee stings).
We then learned how to use “hive tools” to pry open the hives, check on the bees, pull out individual combs, and identify sick vs. healthy bees and hives. Oh, and we got to taste some fresh honey straight from a comb at the end;) Pretty awesome, right?
Professor Ben Linder and myself all decked out in face nets. Ben is holding a honey comb.
Close up of a full honey comb.
A five box hive. This was one of the biggest hives in the bee lot.
Three of the hives.
Bees are the busy workers who pollinate a huge portion of the foods we eat, this includes fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds, and hay (to feed livestock). So even our animal products are owed to the awesome work of bees!
Bees are hugely important to our world, and yet have become so overlooked (bee populations have been dying recently, most likely as a result of human actions upon the environment). But the great news is that the importance of bees has been “rediscovered” by many in recent years. Beekeeping as a hobby has grown. Professor Liner told us that years ago, one could purchase a starter bee kit for about $70, now the same kit costs near $130.
I don’t know all the ins and out of the sustainability issues surrounding bee husbandry. I’m sure there are as many problems with the beekeeping industry as with the practices that harm bee populations (as always seems to be the case when looking at sustainability from all angles). But because of this, I am enthusiast to learn more.
I can’t wait for next Sunday!!