The Great Sunflower Project

April 1, 2008

Help determine the health of urban bees with a citizen science experiment called the Great Sunflower Project. It’s simple and free. Just register at the Great Sunflower Project website and you’ll be sent a package of wild annual sunflower seeds (Helianthus annuus). Twice a month you’ll get an email to remind you to time how long it takes for five bees to visit your sunflowers. Sounds like it has drinking game potential, though that might lead to...

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How to Make a Bee Skep

Mr. Homegrown

May 10, 2013

Animals, Bees

9 Comments

...oneycomb, skeps are “bounced” over an empty skep to remove the bees. These bees are then combined with weaker hives and overwintered. It’s easy to see, from the hard work and level of skill required, why the modern and much easier to manipulate Langstroth style hive boxes replaced the skep. And skeps are technically illegal in the US as state bee inspectors require hives with moveable frames that can be easily inspected. There are some, however, w...

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Mulch, mulch, mulch!

Mrs. Homegrown

May 14, 2015

Back to the Garden, Garden Design, Gardening, Permaculture, Soil

11 Comments

...ention that it is a good idea to leave some soil bare in a yard for native bees and other insects. Some native bees harvest dirt and mud for their nests, others nest in the ground and need access to the soil. I’m going to do a whole post on native bee habitat later in this series, so you’ll be hearing more about this. In the meantime, just keep in mind the idea of leaving the odd corner or bit of slope un-mulched.) Mulching vegetables: Mulch in th...

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Why is My Squash Bitter?

Mr. Homegrown

November 8, 2013

Gardening, Seeds, Squash Baby, Vegetable Gardening

6 Comments

...t to save seed and you take the precaution of taping up the flowers, bumblebees and solitary bees can chew their way through the tape to get at the pollen. In short it’s really easy to breed a freak Frankensquash or Frankencucumber, which can actually be toxic. Cynthia, a Root Simple reader in Texas, alerted me to an interesting hazard with bitter out-crossed Cucurbitaceae. According to Tony Glover, regional extension agent at the University of Al...

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Print and Internet Resources for Natural, No-Treatment Beekeeping

Mr. Homegrown

March 5, 2014

Animals, Bees

8 Comments

...” to describe systems like beehives that benefit from adversity. Challenge bees with an invasive parasite such as Varoa mites and they’ll eventually figure out a strategy to deal with them. That is, unless we humans decide to prop up weak colonies with misguided interventions. Taleb says, Crucially, if antifragility is the property of all those natural (and complex) systems that have survived, depriving these systems of volatility, randomness, and...

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