Remember I posted about my bee problem in my worm compost bins? Turns out I had 7000 uninvited (or rather accidentally invited) guests and I was fortunate enough to have Kirk, the Natural Bee Guy, come out and remove them to be given to a home where they can be put to good use making honey. There was enough comb inside also that potentially was housing another 7000 bees so by September my worm bins might have been filled with bees. So Kirk came out today to remove the swarm. You can find more about him here. He is a great person who knows tons of information on bees and natural beekeeping. You can see some of the conversations we had and the entire process of removing the swarm here. I wish I had time to collect bees and Sharren wasn’t allergic (and who knows about my neighbors) to stings. Kirk, I apologize if the videos are lousy but they show you at work and you did a great job removing the swarm. Thank you again!
Our first video segment shows Kirk getting his smoker and smoking the bees to get them to think the hive is on fire. They race to eat honey and that gets them to relax and if need be leave the hive. Southern California is bee paradise. There are dozens of types of bees (well, at least more than one or two) and they each handle the pollination of different things. There is also the matter of honey. Why have natural bee keeping?
Did you know that 80% of the world’s almonds are grown in Northern California? That requires a beeload of pollination and that requires that bags of bees, nay, truckloads be shipped up to keep our crops growing. From what I remember of genetics and crops, that isn’t a great idea and if something happens to our crop, there goes most of the world’s almonds. What happened to bio-diversity?
I will tell you what happened. It went out the window in exchange for bigger, hairy bees that are raised on corn syrup and other yucky things instead of letting natural selection take care of bees and letting them live and die on their own. Did you know that if you let most of your hive fight off mites without antibiotics and crap that you will end up with a group of survivors that will grow up to be mite resistant. As Kirk says, the mites are here and they ain’t going anywhere so let the bees that can handle them make it, breed and their next generation will be even tougher.
Now that is what I call natural selection. Currently, bees are carted back and forth, stuffed with meds and food to optimize breeding and all being bred by specific male bees. Bad idea. The ancient Pharaohs tried that and so did some people in Ancient Rome and we all know that in-breeding or specific gene pooling doesn’t work. We are not allowing for nature to plan for contingencies and adapt like she has been doing for thousands of years. Kirk and the urban beekeeping community have this crazy idea that taking care of bees naturally will work.
The crazy thing is -- it does. Despite the crummy quality of my videos, look at how effortlessly the bees just allow themselves to get moved naturally. It doesn’t hurt that Kirk has been doing it for so long he can’t even remember how many swarms he has collected since January. He just works with what has worked for him (and others) for decades (if not longer).
I wish I could keep the bees on my property but I am not worried. If I want to attract another swarm I can just leave my worm bins up and closed with one entrance like before and I bet it will be filled within a few months with another batch of tenants. I just can’t deal with the defensive bee measures once they have a hive full of honey.
Also, Kirk has some thoughts on “Africanized bees”. That term is pretty meaningless nowadays since swarms have been intermingled and God Knows how many generations have passed since the first true African Killer Bees made it to the U.S. Bees are generally in two groups -- happy and angry. If you have a swarm that is pissed off at you, you either have to make the most of it, try to contain them, destroy them or run away. Most swarms generally are interested in protecting the hive and if you treat the bee collection with that in mind, you can start to understand how to keep bees from getting mad at you -- or at least try to.
Folks, please do what you can to protect wild bee keeping and keep our bio-diversity in the bee kingdom alive. If you live in areas that can support bees, do what you can to try and keep some urban hives. They don’t take much to manage and if the bees are happy they tend to leave you alone and go about their own business -- taking care of the hive.
The video was too large -- I will need to edit it down -- please enjoy the other videos in the mean time. Warning-I may not get to edit this video down for awhile 
.
//* *
Did you know that a bee can learn the territory around a hive for up to three miles? That is a lot of ground and airspace to take in but that is what bees today can do. They have evolved into efficient workers and if you are interested in keeping plants and flowers going, it might be worth your while to looking into wild bee hives. It turns out that wild bees are a lot easier going than genetically altered or mutated bees. Kirk didn’t get stung once and I was right there in some of the videos and because the bees main focus was what is going on with the hive, I lucked out. Kirk said that only once recently did he come across a swarm of angry bees.
Folks, play it safe and smart. Please don’t go near hives if you don’t want to get stung. Especially if you are allergic to bees or don’t know if you are or not.
That being said, if I had the space and weren’t concerned for others around me, I think I would take up beekeeping in a heartbeat. I still might if I can get a larger piece of property somewhere sometime. Thanks again Kirk for being there for us and the education! Here is the last video. Check out all the freakin’ bees!
Have a great weekend everybody and be safe, healthy and sane.
June 19 2009
If you are looking for a day job, part time work, suggestions for saving money or investing, please check out my book, Practical Money Making, that is listed right after his paragraph in this very post. There are some great suggestions and ways to survive the Depression we are in.
Interested in any of my books? You may want to make a stop over here. Please click through to purchase my books and some other interesting items that actually ARE on sale.
Have you read my book, “Bad Tax Idea, Good Tax Idea“? Please order it today. The tips inside can save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars! Tax planning should be done year round and not just two weeks into January or later.
Part of all the proceeds from the sales of that book go to Rett Syndrome research. One girl is born with Rett Syndrome worldwide every fifteen minutes. My daughter Arianna has Rett Syndrome and we are working to do all we can to make her life easier and find a cure in her lifetime. Boys born with the Rett gene generally die at birth.
Kim Isaac Greenblatt
7000 Tenants Relocated Safely
Tags: bees, bio-diversity, Business, killer bees, natural beekeeping, wild bees