Richard Benyon MP, Minister for the Natural Environment and Fisheries, helping to launch the BBCT’s Bees for Everyone project

The Bumblebee Conservation Trust (BBCT) had commissioned me to write ‘a political poem about bumblebees’ for these launch events.  I performed the poem with the able assistance of deely-bob-clad schoolchildren. (Video to follow …)

The London launch took place at Battersea Arts Centre, whose entrance is decorated with beautiful bee mosaics!

Bee mosaic at Battersea Arts Centre

The children assisting me were from Stoneydown Park Primary School – all prize-winners from the BBCT’s bumblebee art competition. Their prize included copies of my newly published Buzzing! book – with a Foreword by the BBCT’s CEO Dr Ben Darvill – for their school library. (The copies kindly donated by my publisher, Brambleby Books.)

Me with one of the prize-winning children and his copy of my Buzzing! book

Take a look at some of the children’s wonderful bee pictures:

Prize-winning bumblebee pictures

The Edinburgh launch was at the stunning (and gorgeously sunny) Royal Botanic Garden (where I had performed my Buzzing! show a couple of years back as part of the Edinburgh Fringe).  The children at this launch were from Duddingston Primary School in Edinburgh, and they had also taken part in a bumblebee art competition:

Edinburgh prize-winning bumblebee pictures, by Duddingston Primary School pupils

These children were also presented with a copy of my Buzzing! book - by the Scottish Environment Minister …

With Scottish Environment Minister Stewart Stevenson MSP, presenting a copy of my Buzzing! book to a young bumblebee artist

… and Scottish tv’s Beechgrove Garden presenter, George Anderson.

Scottish Environment Minister Stewart Stevenson and tv’s George Anderson presenting my Buzzing! book to Duddingston Primary pupils

The Edinburgh launch also featured rather fabulous bee cakes and buns, created and donated by Edinburgh Cakes.

Fabulous bumblebee cake and buns

The great and the good were at both these launches, during which the Bumblebee Conservation Trust introduced their new ‘Bee Kind’ app. Go take a look – it’s a great way of making sure you have the very best selection of flowers in your garden to attract bumblebees through the year.

Professor Michael Usher OBE, FRSE, Chair of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, launching the Bees for Everyone project

And in case you were wondering why you should bother about bumblebee numbers – bear in mind that 84% of our crops are pollinated by insects, including bumblebees. (A point I made in a slightly more entertaining way in my poem. Watch out for the video …)

Many thanks to everyone from the Bumblebee Conservation Trust for inviting me to be part of their launch events, especially to CEO Dr Ben Darvill for commissioning  a poem from me and seeing its potential, to Gill Perkins who organised the London launch, and to Linda Evans who organised the Edinburgh launch. Thank you too to all the schoolchildren who joined in my poem with such gusto – and to the staff who chaperoned them.

I wish the BBCT the very best of luck with their vitally important Bees for Everyone campaign.

With Gill Perkins, who organised the London launch of Bees for Everyone

Anneliese Emmans Dean – info@theBigBuzz.biz – www.theBigBuzz.biz

If you’re on board with this thinking, enjoy the ease of this quick and inexpensive vegan lipbalm recipe. If you find that you LOVE making it, there may be an etsy booth for vegan cosmetics waiting with your name on it.

You’ll need:
(you may use much less if you make small batches)
1 cup Candelilla Wax
2 cups Coconut Oil
2 cups Castor Oil
Optional essential oils
Lipbalm containers of choice (upcycle old ones if you like)

1.Fill a pot halfway with water, and set it on your stove with temp set on low to medium low.
2.Prepare a small metal or glass vessel and fill it with two parts candelilla wax, 2 parts .room temperature coconut oil, and 2 parts castor oil. For small batches you can use tablespoons and parts instead of cups.
3.Place the container of wax and oil in the pot of water, and thoroughly melt the mixture together over low to medium-low heat.
4.Remove from heat and optionally add several drops of your desired essential oil before and pour into lip balm containers before it cools.

But what is Kickstarter?  From their website:

Kickstarter is a new way to fund creative ideas and ambitious endeavors.

We believe that…

• A good idea, communicated well, can spread fast and wide.
• A large group of people can be a tremendous source of money and encouragement.

Kickstarter is powered by a unique all-or-nothing funding method where projects must be fully-funded or no money changes hands.

With each project featured on the blog comes a promise from me to pledge at least the minimum amount.  I ask that each of you, if able, do the same and in return the same will be done for your Kickstarter projects!  This way we’ll ensure we’re all able to create some pretty amazing stuff regardless of monetary deficiencies.

Our feature Kickstarter article comes from voice artist and writer, MICHELLE FIX, who is working to get her ridiculously adorable cartoon THE GLAMOUR BEES off the ground.  [Michelle will be taking over the weekly Kickstarter column after this so let's all welcome her!]  Let’s hear from Michelle about THE GLAMOUR BEES, their message and how she got involved with Kickstarter.

Dew Bee

What was the inspiration for the Glamour Bees?

This started as a back and forth between a roommate and myself almost ten years ago. Wow, time flies! It was a joke that we were both the Queen Bee and needed worker bees to clean the apartment. We decided to make it an animated show and started initial back and forths, but he moved, stopped contributing and lost interest so I took the reins.

I turned the focus to teaching children how to be kind, thoughtful, and respectful of others by using good manners. So instead of fighting about who is the Queen Bee, it’s more like “Please, after you.” “Oh no, I insist…after you.” It’s become about sharing and valuing other people and their feelings and place in this world –having respect for your own self, of course. But not to the detriment of others – the title of Queen Bee is not the “bee” all and end all, a loving, kind child is the goal. And with the bullying nowadays getting younger and younger, it’s even more important to start teaching this early. No more mean girls. Glamour is a kind heart on the inside.

How long have you been working on the project?

In total about six or seven years. I did TONS of initial research about bee colonies because I wanted the show environment to reflect an actual hive – and for the show to empower little girls to do whatever they want in life. In a hive, there is one Queen, about a hundred drones (males) and then 40-50,000 workers who are all female.

They do everything! And I think little girls can do everything and anything to, so it’s a great reflection of real life – in my world! And the cooperation amongst a hive and the amount of work they accomplish and good they do, all appealed to me from a story-telling perspective. I could go on and on about bees at this point. I love them!

What were your first steps after research?

Well, after researching the bees themselves, I did research on children’s developmental processes, television, and education. And I worked out tons of characters other than the two main girls (Honey Bee and Dew Bee), then selected a few that came to life and started writing little stories, poems, book titles, and the like. I went to the Little Airplane Academy to learn how to write a children’s animated show. They created The Wonder Pets (a fantastic show), Oobi, and Third and Bird. They’re experts and do really quality programming for children; and I wanted to partner with people smarter and more capable than me to get the coolest show possible.

I soaked up as much I could and wrote my show bible, found an animator and someone to do backgrounds (a friend of mine found them and has become a producer on the project). Then I created a website and a little mini-movie on DVD of the bible itself. That all took about two years in total with the scheduling conflicts and re-draws.

What are your long-term goals for these characters?

Well, the astronomical costs of animation led me to a re-think. I did pitch the show to children’s television producers in Los Angeles summer ’08 and the show was received with very positive feedback. But they had no budgets. It was not the best time in the economy. So…..I decided to have them made into puppets and film my own online series and also have live puppet shows in nursery schools and daycare centers.

I want to be able to eventually do shows for free in low-income areas so that those children are also included in this process.

Ultimately, I want the Glamour Bees to be an entire brand that fosters respect for one another and the environment. I’ve been looking into having little t’s, bibs, hoodies, etc. made and I want to follow the Tom’s shoes model of a one-to-one program. For any purchase, a commensurate amount goes to a charity. Also organic, and fair trade – made by people who are being treated decently. I think that creative projects can be fun (super important!!) and also be socially conscious and span many disciplines: media, education, production. Honey Bee and Dew Bee and their friends and family are great ambassadors for this goal.

What has been the most challenging element of the project?

I’m super impatient – so waiting for people’s schedules to be free to work on drawings, backgrounds, setting up meetings, getting people to answer the phone or reply to an email! That’s the most frustrating thing for me. I work really, really quickly and like to fire on all cylinders!!! Put the turbo on, so to speak. So learning that you can’t do everything at once and you can’t do it all yourself has been a good, but challenging lesson for me. I’m an instant gratification person.

Also, just getting it in front of people. The web is both a blessing and a curse. It’s so much easier to get your stuff to look really professional and have a site and content. But that means it’s that much easier for thousands of other people too. So, you have to be just as creative in marketing and being that crab that crawls out of the bucket as you are in creating the content itself. Of course, if your story and characters aren’t compelling, you are going nowhere fast. But if they are, you just really, really have to believe in yourself and keep forging ahead.

Luckily, the Glamour Bees was selected for this great site called Kickstarter and that has helped with another avenue to get the word out.

How did that happen and what is that process like?

Kickstarter is this amazing site that funds creative projects for artists, tech people, designers, and the like. It’s amazing! I love it. You send them a proposal for a creative idea to be funded and they have a committee review it and then give a thumbs up or thumbs down. If accepted, you write up a dossier about your project, get a list of pledges and their corresponding rewards together and then film a little video plea. Launch, give yourself a deadline and then promote, promote, promote because it’s an all-or-nothing situation. If people don’t contribute and you don’t make your pledge amount, you don’t get anything. The prospect of failure is a good motivator, let me tell you.

I heard about it through Rachel Biello, who forwarded it for a different project that we were working on together. But I thought it would be a great opportunity for the Glamour Bees too. So, I sent off a submission.

Is this something you’d recommend for other creative ladies?

Absolutely. 100%! Whole-heartedly!! The process of submitting your project to the site itself puts you into a very disciplined, focused space. And with the deadline to get the funding you really have to think about what it is you want for your project. It’s been great so far – fingers crossed it continues until my deadline ends!

Find out more about THE GLAMOUR BEES on their website here: http://www.glamourbees.com and MICHELLE on her personal site here: http://www.michellefix.com/.

MICHELLE’S Kickstarter goal is a mere $8,600.  She has raised $1,523 to date and has 18 days to raise the rest.  I’m sure we can help out with that! [The minimum pledge is $3.]

THE GLAMOUR BEES Kickstarter Page: http://bit.ly/b5bL8j

You can like the BEES on Facebook www.facebook.com/GlamourBees and follow them on Twitter @GlamourBees

Do you have a Kickstarter campaign?  Email us at contactgloc[at]gmail.com

Every journey is fraught with minor disasters along the way but the rewards for plugging along to make it to the top can be great.

Last week we took a family trip up to Mendocino.  We all love the Mendocino coast — Glass Beach, Bowling Ball Beach, the quaint Mendocino downtown — in fact, this trip we were talking about buying a farm up there where we could spend our summers and holidays.  Both goats fit easily in the back of Danae’s van, so they too could make the trek up with us and enjoy a vacation of open spaces, varied vegetation and fresh air.  When we’re in Mendocino we just feel peaceful and, ever since I found out that College of the Redwoods has a Fort Bragg campus, I have to admit I have toyed with the fantasy of moving up there full time one day.  But that’s the future…

Part of our motivation to take a trip to Mendocino County was to make a trip up to a store called Bee Kind in Sebastopol.  The store sells everything honey (candles, soap, bath additives and, well, honey) as well as anything you’d need in the way of beekeeping supplies.  Any supplies they may sell can certainly be found on the internet, but I really wanted the chance to put my hands on everything before making a decision about what to buy.  We also wanted to visit Western Farm Center in Santa Rosa — they are an old school feed store and, unlike many of our local feed stores, carry milking supplies.  We were running low on milk filters and, while I could have easily ordered those online too, I think I was just stocking my excuses to get back up north.

After two nights on the coast, we headed back inland to 101 to start the drive south to home.  We hit Bee Kind first and were able to get everything we needed to add a honey super to the top of our hive.  The women we spoke to asked if we had checked in on our hive’s progress — presence and health of the queen, how many brood, quality of brood, etc. — and when we answered that we had never even opened the thing (it’s been at least four weeks), they looked at us as though we were a little stupid.  And we probably are.  Truth be told, we got Redwood just a week after we got the hive and the beekeeper who sold us the swarm told us to let them get settled for a week or two before opening the thing up.  A week became four as we set out on our steep learning curve of caring for and milking the goat and then goatS (after we got Rainbow) and then we didn’t open it because we knew we wanted to get a veiled hat and a smoker before and…and…and…the bees just got away from us.  We did notice that the die down of the first week to ten days had decreased and that was a good sign.

After making our purchase at Bee Kind we had twenty minutes to get to Santa Rosa in order to make it to Western Farm Center before it closed at 4:00.  We drove, quickly, and made it with a few minutes to spare.  I barked at Danae to run in and get her foot in the door while I got the kids out of the van.  She jogged across the parking lot and went inside.  By the time we met her in there she was totally relaxed.  No one was rushing her.  In fact, the man who was helping her at the counter was taking his time.  I overheard him explaining to her that the prices at the farm supply stores are generally lower than specialty stores (like Bee Kind) because they operate on the assumption that farmers generally don’t have a lot of money.  They would rather make up profits in bulk and repeat business than take advantage of each individual sale.  I wish I’d known that an hour earlier.  As Danae got everything on the list, I distracted the kids by leading them to the back of the store where they had kittens, chicks and parakeets.  The kids ran to the kittens and fell madly in love (“Can we buy one, pleeeeeeze?”) while I looked up the aisle next to me and realized that it was stocked with beekeeping supplies.  We could have saved ourselves some stress, time and money by just coming here — next time.

The first twenty-four hours after we got our beekeeping gear home, it started to get on my nerves.  The honey super took up the seat cushion of an entire armchair.  The kid gloves, hat and veil, hive tool and smoker added height to the overall mass.  The pile taunted me with my own laziness, fear and neglect and I found myself getting irritated with it (the way you do when you’re arguing with someone even though you know they are right).  I had to either hide the pile of stuff and start nagging Danae to get on it, or do something myself.

After milking the goats and feeding the chicks, chickens and ducklings Tuesday morning I decided it was time to bite the bullet and go up to deal with the bees.  I am terrified of getting stung and when I do get stung I swell up like Lisa Rinna’s lips after a fresh collagen injection. But this particular morning I was motivated to get all the bee gear off of the office armchair and out to where it belongs.  How hard could it be?  I put on a pair of Danae’s jeans (mine don’t fit right now, and likely won’t until I drop that ten pounds that I gained last semester), my Ugg boots and a leather jacket then extended the ladder up to the roof and began hauling up everything that I would need — stuffed smoker, matches, drill, the super.  Once everything was up on the roof, I put on the veiled hat and let Gwen know where I was going to be.  As I climbed the ladder she said, “I’m coming up!”  I told her she’d better stay put, unless she was looking for some bee sting therapy.  She stayed down, but lingered at the bottom of the ladder.  I put a match to the kindling in the smoker but couldn’t get it to stay lit, so I decided to proceed without it.

I took the drill and unscrewed the top of the hive, surprised by the length of the screws the beekeeper had put in just for transport, then placed the drill down and attempted to lift the top.  It took some doing to get it off the box and, once I did, something felt off.  It was much heavier than I had expected.  I lifted it a little higher to get a look underneath only to realize that four frames covered in bees had come off with it!  I freaked out.  Bees started to surround me and I dropped the lid back on the box, oblivious to how it fell (on or in) and how many bees were smashed in the process, then ran screaming to the other side of the roof.  Gwen called up to me again, “I’m coming up,” as if I needed some adult supervision.  I called back to her that it wasn’t a good idea and as I walked to the edge of the carport roof to ask her to bring me the hive tool, her eyes grew wide as she looked at me — bees all over my jacket, all over my veil.

All she could say was, “Uhhhh…”

I needed to scrape the wax that was attaching the frames to the lid in order to get them to drop down into position.  Gwen climbed part way up the ladder with the tool and handed it to me.  I had to go back into the hive.  A calm came over me — this just had to get done.  The feeling was similar to the first time we milked Redwood when we got her home.  We were so nervous and unsure of ourselves, but there wasn’t an option not to do it.  I sat down in front of the hive box and lifted the lid once more.  Bees once again surrounded me but I surrendered to the inevitability of the sting — likely there would be just one or two, and I had so much protective gear on that any sting that could penetrate leather or make it through a hole in the veil, I likely well deserved.

I scraped the lid and the frames fell easily back into place.  I could see honey glistening in the matrix of waxen cells, but I saw no brood.  I didn’t take the time to investigate further — I had caused enough damage.  Drones had fallen off of the sections in my panic and were dying on the roof.  I tried to put some of them back into the hive but they didn’t seem to have the will to go back in.  I placed the super on top of the hive box and placed the lid on top of the super then looked around at the bee carnage.  There was a distinct trail of smooshed yellow bodies where I had panicked — obviously shaken from the frames and then trampled by me as I ran away to the other side of the rooftop.  I felt so inadequate and sad.  What if my fear had caused the death of the queen?  What if I had caused substantial losses — flattening more of the resident populace than could recover?

Flowers abound in downtown Mendocino.

My bee debacle reminded me of so many other things in my life — the way that there is never really a “good” time to do most big things.  Some times may be better than others to buy a car or house or to relocate, start a new career or (not to equate this with bee stings) have children but there is always a level of discomfort with the decision — a level of uncertainty as to whether you’ve done the right thing, a level of inconvenience that goes along with the choice, no matter how well justified.  Any change worth making carries with it that necessary period of adjustment, the learning curve that seems insurmountable from down below.  If you just sit and look at your metaphorical pile of beekeeping crap, or the untended hive up on the roof, you are bound to feel like a failure.  But if you jump right in there and screw things up in your own special way, who knows, the learning curve may just become a rainbow with a pot full of honey at the end.