Backwards Beekeeper Phil and I transferred some bees from a bird house to a hive box in his backyard. You can read the rest of the story on the Backwards Beekeeper’s blog. Here’s what it looked like when we opened the front of the bird house:...
Kent sent this to me–a picture from someone named Scotty showing a bee swarm that landed on the seat of a bike at Venice Beach. Here’s a closeup: It’s not the first time bees have taken to a bike seat in LA. They also like minivans and motorcycles. How do you capture a swarm? Watch this....
g us to scoop them up and pour them into the deep box. We took a couple of breaks to allow worker bees in the field to return to the hive. As they returned we sprayed them with sugar water and poured them into their new home. It was a long day. Demolition work started at 9 am and it was 5 pm by the time we put the box in the car to be taken to their new home at Maurice’s apiary. What you can’t see in this picture is all the rat poo B...
...e At the end of all this machinery the oil pours out of a spigot and into a steel drum: We all had the great privilege of tasting the freshly squeezed oil. I won’t soon forget that heavenly flavor. Matt told us that it takes around a ton of olives to make 25 to 30 gallons of oil. The olives come from a thousand trees that are tucked around the vineyards. If you’re ever in Northern California the Preston Vineyard is well worth a v...
To those of you who purchased an e-version of our book Making It and had trouble reading it, I just received a note from our publisher Rodale: The “disappearing words” are actually words that appear in a faint gray color that was hard or impossible to see over light background color settings on some devices, especially the Kindle from Amazon. We have corrected the e-book files and re-released them to all retailers. The corrected vers...
A reminder to locals–we’ll be speaking at Vroman’s Pasadena store this Friday June 17th at 7 PM. We’ve got a wacky new powerpoint and we’ll be signing copies of our new book Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World . Hope you can stop by!...
It’s was a difficult year in the garden. A lead and zinc issue screwed up my winter vegetables garden plans. At least we managed to find some river rocks and put in a path. I found this photo from December 2010. I was certainly a lot more organized that year. For 2012, I’m putting in raised beds to deal with the heavy metal issue and we’ve already planted more native plants. But most importantly one of my New Years resolution...
Swarm season is here in Southern California and will arrive elsewhere in North America with the coming of spring. In this video, beekeeper Kirk Anderson shows you how to catch a swarm. It’s the best way, in my opinion, to get bees to start your own hive. Why? Swarms, unlike packaged bees, are free. They are also local, meaning the bees know how to deal with your micro-climate. To capture a swarm you: Spray the swarm with a mixture of...