What is a Swarm of Bees and What Should I Do About It?

...y’ll take any dark enclosure with a small, easily defensible, entrance. In urban areas, in addition to tree cavities, they might choose the walls of buildings, utility boxes, compost bins and even the inner workings of hot tubs. But before a swarm can find permanent digs, they need a place for the swarm to hang out while the swarm’s scouts go off in search of the perfect home. Where a swarm lands When shopping for permanent real estate most swarms...

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Saturday Tweets: Foxes, Library Hand and Pyracantha

Gallery of London's urban foxes https://t.co/Et0md5ATv7 — Root Simple (@rootsimple) February 17, 2017 An Artist Mends Cracks in the Sidewalk with Gold https://t.co/5hGw5RgHln — Root Simple (@rootsimple) February 17, 2017 Library Hand, the Fastidiously Neat Penmanship Style Made for Card Catalogs: @atlasobscura https://t.co/N9MsFVmAb3 — Root Simple (@rootsimple) February 17, 2017 ICYMI on the blog: in praise of pyracantha, by @gardeningshoe1 h...

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Root Simple: 2015 in Review

...not optimistic about this but I hope to be proved wrong. Honesty in Urban Homesteading We don’t do nearly enough blogging about the many hair brained notions and failed projects that transpire here at the Root Simple Compound and Labs. We did mange to chronicle a few of our shortcomings, such as our lack of a clothes line (Busted: Drying Racks, Clothes Lines and Cheese Puffs), the train wreck that was our summer garden (Our Disasterous Summer Gar...

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Will We Keep Keeping Chickens?

...operations. There’s a lot of negatives for keeping chickens in our small, urban backyard. We have lead and zinc in the soil, so many predators that the hens have to live in what I call “chicken Guantanamo,” and a small irregular piece of property that makes using a chicken tractor impossible. While I built a generous run for our four hens, I really wish that they could wander more freely, but that’s just not possible where we live. Another big ch...

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Saturday Linkages: Raccoon Robber, Facebook Phreaks and T-Bricks

...ple) March 4, 2017 California Assembly bill would extend tax break to turn urban lots into farms https://t.co/jbXQ3KMVyW — Root Simple (@rootsimple) March 4, 2017 T-bricks, the easy way to make an #adobe home https://t.co/2pqQOb93Hp #naturalbuilding — Root Simple (@rootsimple) March 4, 2017 Re-purposed Laptop Screen for Raspberry Pi https://t.co/HuqOH6zxGM — Root Simple (@rootsimple) March 2, 2017 How to French Polish https://t.co/TttyWoHq9b — Roo...

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