The Japan Times published my op-ed article “Tokyo’s urban design role.” My argument is that Tokyo’s past urban design failures paradoxically make it a model for rebuilding existing cities and designing hundreds of emerging cities. In the context of climate change and global warming, livable cities can create a new balance between people and  nature.

I talk about fireflies, Ginza rice and honeybees, modern bonsai, satoyama in the city, businesses and biodiversity, and how Japan can promote innovations in urban life, alongside achievements in popular culture and high technology.

http://www.beekeepingsuccess.weebly.com In this video you will be offered to learn the “Free Video That Reveals The Number One Secret To BeeKeeping Success.” Simple press the link provided or enter the web site address into your browser to get started and watch for the bonuses.

Recently I met with Yamada Yoriyuki (山田順之), Manager of the Office of Global Environment at constructino company Kajima and a leader in bringing biodiversity ideas to Japanese corporations. He showed me the new interactive illustration Kajima created of an integrated sustainable city, where bees pollinate community gardens, school fields are mowed by goats, falcons provide crow control, rivers support animal life, hospitals have healing gardens, and plants and animals contribute to a better environment.

Yamada’s vision for new urbanism is holistic, with the widest variety of wildlife improving human life. Contrary to the government’s minimal regulations, Yamada boldly states, “I am not interested in greening.” Instead of applying green to existing projects, Yamada emphasizes habitat and culture. Habitat requires links between insects and birds, bees and food, trees and birds, clean water and fish. As an anthropologist, I was also pleased to hear Yamada emphasize culture as key to creating social change in cities. Yamada cites the importance of “eight million kami“ (ya-o-yorozu no kami or 八百万の神), a Shinto belief in animism and the presence of spirits in an infinite number of natural beings and materials.

In addition to working with Kajima and the Japanese Business Initiative for Biodiversity, Yamada is very hands-on. He explained how he monitors honeybees on Kajima’s Ikebukuro dormitory using GPS and biking along a 2 kilometer radius. From his observations, he sees urban honeybees avoiding park and street trees because pesticides have made them unsafe, and preferring instead small gardens grown by residents.

Yamada also cites the Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker as a key indicator species. Because it travels relatively short distance, urban habitat requires a series of interconnected parks and street trees creating a green web. I find this idea of the ecological connection between large public spaces and individual gardens very inspiring.

I also highly recommend the article he co-authored: Kumagai, Yoichi and Yoriyuki Yamada. “Green Space Relations with Residential Values in Downtown Tokyo: Implications for Urban Biodiversity Conservation.” Local Environment, Routledge Press, Vol. 13, No. 2, 141–157, March 2008.

Mary Beth: Winter is coming, I think, and even though the weather continues to be unusually warm for this time of year, I’ve been getting the bees ready.

So, what about the bees? Every time I tell someone that Ray and I are moving back to Colorado (Ch, Ch, Changes), I hear this question. I’ll say, “We’re leaving.” and then, wait for it, wait for it…a look of dismay and “What about the bees?!” Of course it’s logical, but I’ve been a little surprised and amused that the fate of my bees worries them. On the other hand it’s nice that my friends and readers have become so engrossed in this story that one of their first thoughts is for the bees.

So here is the answer.

Out of the three hives that I ended up with after the swarm season, the Top Bar Hive is the only one that survived.

The Hippie Shack

For some reason the other two lost their queens after they swarmed (read about it here and here) and I ended up shaking out the remaining bees in front of the TBH in hopes that they would be accepted into the hive. Losing the Blue and Green hives made me very sad — I was surprised by how much I’ve come to love my bees.

As for the Hippie Shack (named in honor of the laid-back nature of these bees), I checked it recently and it didn’t have as much honey as I thought it should. I think the hive was being robbed. I put an entrance reducer in to make the the hole smaller to give the guard bees less area to defend. Now, even with the warm weather prolonging the season, I’m worried that they won’t have time to store enough food to make it through the winter.

Since Ray and I decided to leave after the holidays, I’ve been trying to figure out how to leave the bees with enough food. I researched fondant ‘bee candy’ and it seemed like a good solution, so I made a frame to hold it and placed that in the hive.

This small frame holds 5 pounds of sugar fondant!

Another good thing about the bee candy is it won’t cause the moisture problems inside the hive that the sugar syrup did in the early spring. I placed the fondant between the false back and the last comb hoping it wouldn’t attract any more robber bees.

I hope the warm weather will last long enough to let them build up their supplies. Every day they’ve been coming in with a lot of pollen, which is a very good thing.

Dandelions and the last of the aster are blooming, so I think this is where they are getting the bright orange pollen.

Another sign that the bees are preparing for winter is each day a few more drones have been getting kicked out of the hive. I watched this play out one day — those girls are ruthless!

Poor drone!

One poor male was pulled by his leg and tossed out like yesterday’s paper. It’s a cruel, cruel world my friends, but there is not enough to go around in winter for lazy freeloaders.

I moved the hive from it’s original spot so it will get maximum sun exposure all winter. This should allow the bees to break cluster on sunny winter days.

I also wrapped the hive to give it a little more insulation and to keep the wind out. Now it’s up to the bees. Other than a few more feedings before we leave for Colorado, my girls are on their own until March.

You may wonder why I haven’t given the hive away. I did consider moving the hive to my friend’s property, but I was afraid if I moved it up the steep, bumpy road to my friend’s house, a comb or two might break off ruining any chance of the bees’ survival. So I decided to leave them where they are on my family’s property. I’ll fly back east in the spring for a visit and check on the bees and I’ve arranged for my beekeeper friends to check on them now and then. Fortunately the TBH needs little maintenance and the bees will take care of themselves.

Becoming a beekeeper has been a wonderful journey. Learning about honeybees opened up new worlds for me, not just the world of honeybees in my garden, but the important roles of all pollinators and how critical every last one of them is. It’s led me to examine the negative impact we’ve all had on our environment. I’ve been reading about the decline of the honeybee from Colony Collapse Disorder — just one of many examples of our carelessness towards our environment. But the good thing is it’s made me more aware of what I’ve been doing.

So, with that new-found awareness, I try to do my part to help by adding native plants to the existing flower gardens. And I’ve decided that I will delay mowing the outer fields until after the first frost to allow time for the last of the butterflies to emerge from their cocoons and to let the wildflowers reseed themselves for next year.

Of course, at the center of it all is the honeybee, the incredible little powerhouse.  If you have not yet read any books on honeybees, you should. Some of the things you learn will astound you.

It’s been a great year even with the loss of two hives and no honey to harvest. And next spring I will have a hive in Colorado with even more challenges — bears, skunks and who knows what else, but I have a plan!

You’ve seen the news,watched the most recent documentaries and know that the earth is in a downward spiral. So what do you do with all those negative feelings you have deep in your gut? Put it to good use and throw your weight behind some of these environmental campaigns that are already doing well and every extra bit of support will help them reach critical mass! If you have a campaign you’d like to see added to this list, leave a comment and I’ll add it!

A Young Girl Helping at the Save Our States Park Event

Environmental Campaigns

• http://www.350.org/ – 350.org is an international campaign dedicated to building a movement to unite the world around solutions to the climate crisis–the solutions that science and justice demand. The number 350–as in parts per million, the level scientists have identified as the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere. But 350 is more than a number–it’s a symbol of where we need to head as a planet.
• http://www.1010uk.org/ – 10:10 is an ambitious project to unite every sector of British society behind one simple idea: that by working together we can achieve a 10% cut in the UK’s carbon emissions in 2010.
• http://www.rainforestsos.org/ – The Prince’s Rainforest – An oldy but a goody. Save the Rainforest.
• http://www.theecologist.org/take_action/campaigns/285917/help_protect_our_honeybees.html – You like food, don’t you? Honeybees still need help!
• http://green.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Campaigns – Find more campaigns over at the green wiki.

Other Active Thing to Participate in Today

• http://www.wiserearth.org – Wiser Earth is a place where you can search in your area for movements you would like to join. It’s also a bit like an environmental facebook.
• http://www.ourmedia.org/ – Our Media has over 150,000 members is seeking to use social media to advocate for the causes that improve people’s lives.
• http://www.fundforthepublicinterest.org/jobs/citizen-outreach-staff – Work for the Fund for the Public Interest and get paid to make a difference for the grass root causes that need more skilled talent.
• http://www.theecologist.org/take_action/campaigns/270487/universities_going_green.html – Universities Going Green – Help push yours in the right direction!
• http://www.theecologist.org/take_action/campaigns/308457/better_than_shopping_five_things_to_do_instead.html – http://www.theecologist.org/take_action/campaigns/321769/how_efficient_are_your_home_appliances.html – Do your own part at home to green up your life.

Start Your Own

For those of you that have the perserverance and determination to make a difference, this website provides a handbook on how to handle all the tasks involved in setting up your own grassroots movement and making it work.

• http://vcn.bc.ca/citizens-handbook/ – how to build grassroots movements guide very nice if none in your area!

Online Petitions

Another great way to throw your support behind good causes is to head on over to http://www.thepetitionsite.com/ (a sister site of care2.com) and sign petitions that you believe in.  Here are some of the most recent and popular ones that probably strike a chord with you.

• Stop Overfishing – http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/511498402
• Farmed Fishing, Bad Fishing – http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/674505931
• Polar Bears – http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/438855048
• Stop Mountaintop Removal Pollution – http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/674401908
• Remind Obama About His Promise – http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/843501195

An amazing mature witchhazel in a fountain of November flower. A great honeybee shrubbery as it is a asymetric sort of bloomer. It could snow tonight!

So I cooked up yet another batch of the 2:1 sugar syrup just now, that makes it a month since I started and they are still readily accepting the sweet stuff. I changed it up today and I cooked up a double batch since it’s getting colder each night and soon it’ll be too cold for them to use the sugar syrup.

In other news,  two very nice post were written about my locally harvested honey over at Twenty-Something and Starving. So you should go over there and check it out, if not just for the two posts, but for the other wonderful posts, recipes, and advice my friend Jen has! Tell her beekeeper John sent ya!

Actually if you happen to be a Rowan student reading this post, Jen just had a really informative article about French press coffee, as well as some tasty new recipes, in yesterdays issue of The Whit!

An 11-year-old boy catches a butterfly and pulls out its wings and then kills it. His father tell him:

“As punishment, you can’t have butter for two weeks.”

The next day, the son catches a honeybee and drives a needle through it’s tiny heart. His father tells him,

“As punishment, you can’t have honey for two weeks.“

That night, his mother steps on a cockroach and squishes it dead. The son asks his father,

“Do you tell her should or should I?”

Source: Pulp Magazine

We got in a load of USA Made Burley HoneyBee bicycle trailers.  We are closing them out at $279 which includes Free 48 State USA shipping!

Supply is very limited- so buy now before they are sold out for the holidays!

Mary Beth & Barbara: Here’s another post where we’re going to let the pictures tell the story. All we really want to say is that the rewards for not using chemical pesticides are many. Some are obvious, like just knowing that you’re not adding to the chemical load in the environment. Others are more subtle and you’ll have to slow down and pay attention to recognize them. (That’s a good thing all by itself.)

Since becoming organic gardeners, we have noticed a marked increase of wildlife in our gardens, mostly for the better. Sure you might get a few more pesky bugs, but for the most part you’ll be getting a lot more of the good guys who will help you keep those pests under control. We’ve seen lizards and insect-eating birds in Barbara’s garden and  frogs, dragonflies, butterflies, and all kinds of bees in Mary Beth’s garden.

If you take a seat in your garden and stay still for a while, you’ll begin to notice a world of activity and see some of the benefits of organic gardening for yourself.

This honeybee looks like she's high on pollen. Do we need to give this an R rating?

Hang on little peeper!

Now you're ok.

Bumble bee butt! Makes me laugh every time I look at it.

This little crab spider found the perfect setting to show off her beautiful chartreuse hue.

Be sure and check back early next week when we’ll have more photos of our garden creatures to share with you.

A third of our diet is predominantly dependent on honeybee pollination.

The recent decline of our honeybee population has been of great concern to farmers and beekeepers. You, too, may be familiar with the issue; maybe you came across a Häagen-Dazs ad, watched M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Happening” or read a related academic journal article. We can easily imagine how insects may affect us when they are out of control (think crop ravaging grasshopper swarms!), but it is difficult to grasp the impact a group of insects can have on the human population by disappearing.

According to an article in Discover Magazine (October 2009), honeybees in North America pollinate more than 90 crops with an annual value totaling almost $15 billion. A third of the human diet depends on plants pollinated by insects, the honeybee first and foremost. Yet since 2006, one third of all commercial honeybees have disappeared each year. The disappearance is not a new phenomenon. A 10-year bee survey published in 1995 showed a drastic decline in the bee population due to mites and pesticide use, 23 percent annually, in fact.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is most likely not a single-source occurrence, but a complex issue arising from a range of practices with unfavorable cumulative effects. Scientists have attributed bee deaths to bacterial and viral infections, pesticide poisoning and mite infestation, none of which are particularly novel, so why haven’t bees, like many other insects, adapted to these external disease factors?

The Discover article mentioned above introduces a very probable underlying cause: inbreeding. Bees have been bred for years to maximize pollination and such breeding practices inevitably reduce genetic diversity.  Coupled with the growth of monocultures bound to limit nutritional variety, and considering the ongoing use of toxic pesticides, one can imagine how acutely the honeybees’ immune system must be compromised. The bees themselves have been turned into a sort of monoculture, genetically weak workers, no longer capable of maintaining their own well-being.  These weak and sometimes disoriented bees often end up lost in neighboring colonies, spreading diseases that wipe out entire populations.

33 percent of commercial honeybees have disappeared each year since 2006.

In light of these findings, it is safe to say that the decline of the honeybee population is the result of a repeated mistake in agricultural practices. After many lessons in the pitfalls of monoculture farming, ranging from loss of crop species, proliferation of pests and soil depletion to compromised nutritional value, taste, and increased cost and environmental impact of distributing specialized crops, we have yet to adopt widespread sustainable practices.

The honeybee decline should be an eye-opener, and while a handful of beekeepers and scientists have dedicated themselves to breeding genetic diversity back into the bee population, the lesson, like so many, is likely to get lost, because the consumer has not experienced a direct and measurable loss. Businesses like Häagen-Dazs, who rely on honeybee by-products, do well to invest funds into ads that raise awareness among consumers. In turn, consumers would do well to support businesses that demonstrate environmental responsibility, in this case polyculture and organic farms. It is our hope that the lessons of recent years, including that of the honeybee, will lead this and coming generations into an era of awareness, cooperation and, once again, diversity.

A closeup of a honeybee on a dandelion.

Sorry to have missed the regular Friday post; I’m leaving yet again and will be gone for at least two weeks. This will be the last post before I go. I hope you enjoy your weekend and I hope to be back around Halloween. Have a great October.

I know it’s a little late notice, but I just received word myself that tomorrow, Saturday, there will be a NJ beekeeper association meeting at 8:30 am to 3:15 pm. This is the fall meeting, which will be held at Rutgers EcoComplex, on 1200 Florence-Columbus Rd., Bordentown, NJ. There will be a guest speaker from Cornell University’s Department of Entomology. Associate Professor Nick Calderone will speak about, “Varroa Management and Control of American Foul Brood”. Both Varroa mites and American Foul Brood being two of the biggest threats to honeybee populations in the more recent years. The rest of the information can be sought out at the New Jersey Beekeeping Association website.

Man, 81, killed by swarm while mowing his yard in Tivoli, TX  By LESLIE WILBER Victoria Advocate

Sept. 17, 2009, 6:09AM

A previously hidden colony of bees killed a Tivoli man Tuesday in an attack seemingly culled from a horror movie or nightmare.

But honey bees typically aren’t inclined to aggression and won’t sting under most circumstances, experts say. Fatal attacks by bees are rare — with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recording about 100 a year.

 “They attack if they’re trying to protect their hive,” said Roy Parker, entomologist with the cooperative extension office in Corpus Christi. “That’s the only time they’re aggressive.”

 Amador Villarreal, 81, was mowing the lawn across the street from his Scott Street house when the bees attacked.

 Bees feel vibrations from lawn mowers and can perceive them as a threat, said Jerry Gray, an extension agent for Refugio County. 

Read the entire story here:

Another post in the Practical Advice series is in the works: Everything I Wish I Had Known About Pan-Trapping Before I Began a 5-Year Project Involving Pan-Trapping.  Or something like that.

In the meantime, enjoy this poem by Lisel Mueller, winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.  Yes, I know, I know, it’s a honeybee poem, and this is a wild bee blog.  But it’s a good bee poem.  And there’s no harm in posting a good bee poem, methinks.

LIFE OF A QUEEN

CHILDHOOD

For two days her lineage is in doubt,
then someone deciphers the secret message.
They build a pendulous chamber
for her, and stuff her with sweets.

Workers keep bringing her royal jelly.
She knows nothing of other lives,
about digging in purple crocus
and round-dances in the sun.

Poor and frail little rich girl,
she grows immense in her hothouse.
Whenever she tries to stop eating,
they open her mouth and force it down.

THE FLIGHT

She marries him in mid-air;
for a moment
he is ennobled, a prince.

She gives the signal
for their embrace;
over too soon.  O, nevermore.

Bruised, she drags herself from
his dead body,
finds her way back exhausted.

She is bathed, curtains are drawn.
Ten thousand lives
settle inside her belly.

Now to the only labor she knows.
She remembers
nothing of him, or their fall.

THE RECLUSE

They make it plain
her term is over.
No one comes;
they let her starve.

The masses, her children,
whip up sweets
for a young beauty
who is getting fat.

Nothing to do.
Her ovaries paper,
her sperm sac dust,
she shrivels away.

A crew disassembles
her royal cell.
Outside, a nation
crowns its queen.

From Life of a Queen by Lisel Mueller, 1970

Sooo… Mueller glosses over the fact that, at the beginning of the queen’s life, when she first emerged from her queen cup, she singlehandedly killed any and all rival young queens in the colony, destroying them in their cells as they developed, or fighting them to the death in one-on-one combat…

… and the fact that on her mating flight, the queen mated not with one male, but many, many males –12-15 on average…

… and the fact that, at the end of her life, after the “young beauty” emerged to replace her in the supersedure process, the old queen’s worker children crowded around her, forming a ball of hot bodies, overheating her, bringing her death.  That, or the new queen herself came to claim the old queen’s life.

I argue, though, that while the life of a honeybee queen is not something to be envied, Lisel’s Mueller’s poetic voice is.

It’s true, these little insects aren’t all sting and honey. In fact, while doing a little research for this post, I learned that a third of the world’s food supply depends on pollinators like the honeybee.

Pollinate your brain with more information about nature’s hardest working creature at the Library.

- Lisa

Everyone has something they love more than anything, and for me that would be the Honeybee. Today is the day I have been waiting all winter for … the arrival of the Honeybees.

My fruit trees have been covered in blossoms for more than a week now, but in a way they have still been dormant – until today that is, suddenly, without warning they all arrive – thousands of individuals but all as one. One minute not there, the next a deafening sound descends upon my small orchard. I have a picnic table under the huge apricot tree where I can sit and listen and look at the wonder around me, so loud there are no other sounds that can penetrate, the industrious wonder of the Honeybees who give so much to the continuum and beauty of this planet.

In New Zealand the day that officially takes the title of the first day of spring is the 1st September, but for me today takes that title.

Bees may be solitary or social. They feed on nectar and pollen, and play an important role in the pollination and survival of many flowering plants. New Zealand has 28 native and 13 introduced species of bee. At least three native bee species have a basic social structure, a bit like the introduced Honeybee and Bumblebee. The rest are solitary, although they may make nests close together. Native bees pollinate many native plants. They also pollinate kiwifruit and apple orchards and some vegetable crops, and are important pollinators in horticulture.

The photos I have taken today in my orchard are from the Apis mellifera species, introduced into New Zealand in the 1830’s.

There are many species of Honeybee in the world. All of them build nests with hexagonal combs for brood (their babies) raising and food storage. All of them use dance language as their primary means of recruiting nest mates to valuable resources.

Honeybees do their dance on the vertical plane of the comb and indicate direction by transposing the direction of the sun to the direction relevant to gravity using a straight upwards direction to be equivalent to flying towards the sun. In all species the vigour with which the bee dances is directly correlated with the richness of the resource indicated, while the length of the straight run, or its omission are indications of the distance to be travelled to the resource, this need not be a straight line but may involve flying around some natural obstacle such as a small mountain.

Honeybees pass on additional information to their hive mates concerning the taste and odour of the food resource by means of one bee regurgitating from its crop some of the nectar it has collected and feeds it to another bee, when this is happening it looks like they are kissing, and before long there is a string of bees all ‘kissing’ each other as the food gets passed around. Recruitment to a site is strengthened by returning foragers passing on the location to more of the colony.

The down side is that humans found yet another form of exploitation, exploiting the honey that the Honeybees make for their use in the cold months of winter. The honey is stripped from their hives and a substitute replacement (sugar syrup) is put in it’s place. The sugar syrup is not the Honeybees natural food and is a poor replacement for their own food, especially through a very cold winter. Commercial beekeeping practices are there for profit and not the welfare of the bees. Commercial beekeepers are restricted by timeframe and requires the beekeeper to grab as much honey in the shortest possible time, therefore by not being careful many deaths occur to Honeybees that are sitting on the rim of the hives and through the shock to the colony, Honeybees are seen in their commercial value with no intrinsic value of their own. It must also be noted that many colonies can perish through mis-management; hives not being checked through the winter as cold winds and rain can kill a whole colony if the top cover is not secured; for sufficient food – remembering that we have taken their precious winter honey store and the Honeybees are then totally reliant on a beekeeper making sure there is plentiful food. Honeybees do not venture outside the hive during the cold winters for long periods, only for their toilet duties – yes, that’s right, they do not go to the toilet inside.

In the wild a small part of an existing hive along with a new virgin Queen will swarm, the ritual of mating where many Drones (males) will mate with the new Queen and she will find a new site for her new colony. The sole purpose and desire of the Drone is to mate with a virgin Queen, his life role being accomplished he will then pass away, no doubt with a smile on his face, and definitely with dignity. Nowadays the favoured method is artificial insemination involving the death of the Drone in a most disgusting way, the sperm is obtained by pulling off his head causing an electrical impulse to the nervous system which causes sexual arousal, the lower part of the Drone is squeezed to make him ejaculate, and then collected in a hypodermic syringe and fertilisation of the new virgin Queen is done. No swarming, no virgin flight, no mating, no dignity in death. Nothing short of slavery really.

I leave you with one final photo – the picture of life eternal.