As always, I want to know the big secrets of the tiny bees...

I recently met online quirky (... hope he doesn't mind, I mean it in a very positive way...) Geoff Kipps-Bolton, a beekeeper from San Diego. He writes in his resourceful website bees-on-the-net, "...no matter how many books you read..., the bees will retain the right to do something different...They have an infinite capacity to make you look foolish...they don't read the same books!" When I sent him my favourite questions about beekeeping, he so spontaneously and quickly shared his very entertaining insights (and again, I mean it very positively).

1. What makes you take up beekeeping and become a bee person?

On my way to school, when I was about 12, I used to pass a house which had a couple of hives. A friend of mine, Mark, knew the man who owned them and he used to help with them, but I never got to find out what it was all about. I suppose I was a little jealous of Mark. It just seemed a very unusual, almost esoteric thing to do.

2. Did you learn the art of beekeeping from someone?

Not really, mostly self taught, I read some books. But the bees don't read the same books. After 20 years I'm still learning.

3. How did you get your hives, did you buy them?

I used to buy them, then I bought a table saw instead. Now I make all my hives, but I buy the frames which go inside. I wouldn't want to make them for what they cost, they have to be made to quite a tight tolerance.

4. Most people do not react well to the sight of swarming bees, were you afraid of them when you first started out as a beekeeper? If yes, how did you overcome that fear?

I was a little afraid. In fact when bees are actually swarming they're probably at their most harmless. I had a couple of sessions watching other beekeepers else them jumped in a the deep end. Being afraid wasn't really an option. I remember the first time I collected a swarm. The people who called me were watching, asking things like, "Have you been doing this long?" I think I just said, "Not all that long."

5. Do beekeepers get stung by bees? And what's your experience so far? Is beekeeping dangerous?

Daily, I think I've been stung about 10 times today. The most dangerous part is climbing a ladder to remove a swarm high up, I'm scared of heights. (Did you read the part on my sting page about collecting a swarm). I did think next year I should put a counter on my site and update it every time I get stung. I'm sure it would be a couple of hundred times this year. It still hurts.

6. We all always use the phrase "as busy as the bee", just wondering, do bees sleep or rest at all?

I don't know if they sleep exactly, but they seem to quieten down at night. I think I read somewhere that they often aren't especially busy all the time, so the 'busy as a bee' thing is based on a falsehood. They spend quite a lot of time just 'hanging out'.

7. Do bees recognize their hive?

Yes, sort of. They aren't supposed to go into strange hives. In fact there are guard bees to stop them, but they

8. Can they recognize their owner, the beekeeper (you)?

Only when I've upset them. If there are several people nearby they seem to be able to select the one who opened the hive and go after them.

9. Do bees from the same hive have different temperaments like humans? Have you encountered the more aggressive bees and the gentler ones?

Yes, definitely, and their mood changes according things like the time of year, the weather and the available forage.

10. As a beekeeper, do you become more sensitive or more in tuned to nature - the weather and environment?

I know I should but I'm not sure I actually do. Maybe I notice natural things going on more than some people do. I'll be talking to someone and stop mid sentence and say, "Oh look a Western Tanager."

11. What's the most fulfilling part of a beekeeper's job?

Collecting a swarm and putting it in the hive. I love it, and I confess I play to an audience! I have a degree in Bee S.


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ruth_Tan

As our human urban sprawl continues we find that we are crowding out some of the native species in our neck of the woods. Of course, humans will need to have adequate territory, but it also makes sense to leave some of the area readily available for those species which have inhabited such regions for 10s of thousands of years. Indeed, most would agree that it is only fair to share.

In areas were suburban a life meets an open field that leads to wilderness, often the wild life comes up and makes themselves at home along the fence line or impedes onto the property of the humans. Can you blame them? Especially considering that humans live where there is water and they water their lawns and everything is nice in green and plush. Actually, they develop their own little eco-system, more insects, critters, birds and food supply.

Still the humans will complain that the animals are causing them problems. This is rather silly considering the wildlife and nature was their first. It's kind of like going to a park where there are lots of kids playing and leaving two dozen cupcakes on the picnic table and walking away and then returning in an hour and a half and being pissed off that all the cupcakes have been eaten. What on earth did you expect?

Nature is as nature does, you cannot change that and only a fool would try. Humans are going to have to realize this as they continue to impact nature with larger and larger suburban areas. Please consider this.



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lance_Winslow

There are many causes of environmental pollution. Most infamously, there are the sealed drums of toxic waste material produced as a byproduct of nuclear reactions. There are the smog and toxins that float through the air, caused by burning industrial smokestacks and the overuse of petroleum-burning vehicles and other machines. There's slash-and-burn deforestation with the additional airborne toxins it creates and the massive environmental changes caused by the death of innumerable species that called the forests their home. Yet among all of these causes of environmental pollution, one development looms larger than any other. That development is the economic miracle of the twentieth century: the revolution in plastics.

Strangely enough, plastics were developed as a solution to some of the other major causes of environmental pollution in the nineteenth century. Animal and plant-based materials like ivory, rainforest wood, tortoiseshell, and rubber were recognized as scarce and worthy of protection even in the nineteenth century, an epoch known above all else as the time in which people believed in the "myth of perpetual progress": the belief that mankind's destiny was to dominate the creatures of the earth and exploit them in order to build an ever-greater, cleaner, and safer future. The fact that coal-burning smokestacks and river-ruining industrial development was the means by which this shining utopia was to be reached never seemed to register with people--or if it did, it was viewed as at best a transitional phase, something that would in time cease altogether to apply. Yes, today our lungs are being poisoned with coal, and we are planting the seeds of many causes of environmental pollution. But tomorrow, we'll have something better on our hands.

The first step in that revolution was plastics. No longer was it necessary to harvest elephant ivory or rubber tree plants in order to get materials that could be used in industrial machines and consumer goods. Now synthetic polymers could be manipulated chemically in order to create a material that was at the same time durable, flexible, and reusable: a material, in other words, like plastic. Following from the development of cellulose and Bakelite in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, respectively, plastic began to slowly conquer the world markets and to become the sine qua non of industrial technology. By the 1970s, the production of plastic had outmatched the production of steel worldwide. Surely the causes of environmental pollution were trumped forever.

But plastic was too durable and not reusable enough. The non-biodegradable nature of plastic made it an excellent material for high-stress machines, but a terrible material for preventing the causes of environmental pollution--of which it quickly became one. Today, plastic debris fills 25% of landfills, and it'll continue to fill 25% of landfills for the foreseeable future. In trying to solve the causes of environmental pollution, we've created our own worst nightmare--and the dependency of industry on plastic means that no end is in sight.



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Watson_Greg