As passionate as they come..

I've taken a beekeeping course over the weekend with Steve J Benbow, the man behind Fortnum & Mason's rooftop beehives and their honey, as well as many others in the city of London and all around the UK. He's as passionate as they come..really enthusiastic and so knowledgeable. I was surprised he wasn't so concerned with Colony Collapse...maybe he didn't really have the time to talk about it because it was a course on beekeeping (though he did mention it a couple of times.) I really got the impression that urban beekeeping is the way forward to saving bees and re-populating them again...

sowing your seeds

If you've got seeds from my Bee Day @ the Design Cafe, you can follow these simple instructions on when to sow the seeds and when they will bloom. Good luck!

Expect to pay a lot more £££ for almonds this year..

California produces 80% of the world's almonds and the trees need 40 billion bees to pollinate the flowers. Vanishing of the Bees interviewed David Hackengerg yesterday and he says that this year will be the worst year ever in the USA when it comes to CCD. They are 200,000 hives short!

human pollination

"With the rate of annual bee loss, it may be time for us to look at the world of agriculture without the pollination of the honey bee. "

For an immediate glimpse of this dubious future, we can look to Maoxian County of Sichuan, China. It is an area that has lost it pollinators through the indiscriminate use of pesticides and the over-harvesting of its honey. The result is that hand pollination of pear and apple trees has become a common practice. In this part of China, the honey bee has been replaced by the human bee.

Consider that every spring for the last two decades, thousands of villagers have climbed through fruit trees hand-pollinating blossoms by dipping “pollination sticks”(brushes made of chicken feathers and cigarette filters) into plastic bottles of pollen and then touching them against each of the tree’s billions of blossoms. Could this method of pollination be a glimpse of our future? Humans replacing bees by hand pollinating trees and plants in an attempt to produce one third of our food staples.

design vs nature

What if objects had the power to influence nature? I don't mean by technology because technology could change nature/habitats. But if we put objects out there where bees could find them and find it useful, helpful, health-giving, and rewarding, that'd be pretty cool. Here's a few ideas I tried sketching and made some models out of paper.

The natural system - Tomatoes love the bumble bees

Recently I watched a documentary where Jimmy Doherty (Britain's famous TV presenting pig farmer) explores the global logistics that bring fresh food from around the world to a shop near you, and uncovers the science that keeps food fresh for weeks. In this, they introduce Britain's biggest tomato grower- and how he uses bees to pollinate the flowers and uses no sprays for pest control. Really amazing stuff- check it out! I think it could be an options to keep the bees warm during the winter and away from the bad pesticides!

bee love

Untitled from alex kassian on Vimeo.