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News
Tue Dec 8
Urban Beekeeping: Is it in Your Future?
Urban Beekeeping: Is it in Your Future?
Many urbanites are turning to beekeeping partially in response to Colony Collapse Disorder. Is beekeeping for you?
My father situated the wooden hives in a wooded area between two alfalfa fields at the back of the forty-acre farm where I grew up. While the apples ripened and the mulberries dropped from the trees, the air became thick with the smell of honey and I felt my mouth watering in anticipation of the fall harvest. We would don hats with funny veils and smoke the bees to calm them before we opened the hive and entered a world so simple and yet so complex and extraordinary.
We raided their stores, always leaving a sufficient amount to get our bees through the cold
Only after beginning a family of my own, did I realize the value to be had in land. Hard work brings a family together. The knowledge of your self-sufficiency brings pride. And the freedom to run around a farm unsupervised brings independence and confidence.
I miss gathering eggs in the morning; miss growing bushels of green beans and putting them up with my mother. I wish I could share the taste of freshly gathered honey with my children.
But I live on a quarter acre plot in the middle of a development. It’s too late for all that now.
Or is it?
In
Experts have proposed many contributors to CCD, including parasitical mites and the miticide used to treat affected hives[iv], global warming, overdevelopment and subsequent malnutrition, pesticides, fertilizers, and genetically modified crops.[v] Whatever the cause, the loss of the bees is devastating. Not only is the production of honey down. Down, too, is the number of bees available to pollinate our food. In fact, “The French beekeepers’ union reckons 65 percent of agriculture plants worldwide risk not getting pollinated.”[vi]
The incidences of CCD may be decreasing, and scientists have been experimenting with a number of cures ranging from organic beekeeping to the use of fumagillin, an antibiotic used to kill off a fungus Spanish researchers have recently identified as a contributing factor in CCD.[vii]
In the meantime, urban beekeepers from around the world are getting in on the act, in
Beekeeping isn’t easy. Hive owners must keep up with the local regulations, calm the worries of concerned neighbors, and possibly deal with many of the same issues large-scale producers currently face.
Is beekeeping for you? Start with the basics. See whether your area permits beekeeping by going to
Books on beekeeping abound; but I remember with fondness my father’s worn copy of what’s considered one of the best: The ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture (Root and Root).
For more information about urban beekeeping see: http://www.citybees.blogspot.com/
Finally, to get an idea of beekeeping supplies you’ll need see one of the following links:
It may be some time before I get back to the farm. In the meantime, maybe I’ll set up a hive. And get a few chickens. Maybe a cow or two.
Just don’t tell my neighbors.
--Kelly Prill, 2009
[i] Kurowski, Rachel,
[ii] IBID
[iii] Ellis, Jamie, Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) in Honey Bees,
[iv] Hammes, Mary Jessica, Decline in Bee Population Cause for Concern, The
[v] Hadley, Debbie, 10 Possible Causes of Colony Collapse Disorder, About.com. http://insects.about.com/od/antsbeeswasps/tp/CausesofCCD.htm