Gunther Hauk to visit Louisville for film screening of "Queen of the Sun" and biodynamic beekeeping workshop - April 1st and 2nd, 2011. Don't miss it!

While I've had many generous spirited people contribute to my bee learning,  I consider Gunther Hauk my Teacher - my honey bee guru, if you will.  

Honeybee hives at the Spikenard Farm and Honeybee Sanctuary.  Notice how Gunther names the queens of each hive, and puts a nameplate on the hive.  There's as much science to this practice as there is affection for the bees. 

The first year I became a beekeeper was exciting - but most of the common practices for beekeeping involved ways that didn't make sense to me.   It's very common to feed bees high fructose corn syrup (I was guilty of purchasing a 'starter' 5 gallon bucket of it myself!).  So common, that in almost every bee supply catalog I've seen, there's a picture of a semi truck full of high fructose corn syrup .  You can "buy 1/2 or full truckloads" of the stuff with only a minimum 24 hour notice.  Wow. 

Beekeepers have gotten in the habit of treating the bees in the hive with antibiotics, putting pesticides in the hive to kill mites, and a number of other pracitces that seem more toxic than helpful.  For almost every need a beekeeper has, the chemical companies offer their version of a solution. 

The more I learned about the conventional ways of beekeeping, the more that I had very mixed feelings - excitement but also concern - about becoming a beekeeper.   Then I heard about Gunther Hauk, and had the opportunity to participate in a workshop with him at Foxhollow Farm Center.   Gunther is a lifelong student of Rudolf Steiner and the biodynamic approach to agriculture.   He has been integral in biodynamics in the United States, and is a master beekeeper. 

What I heard him talking about was another way of interpreting the causes of colony collapse disorder and the plight of the honey bee (and our own plight!).   He offered methods of beekeeping, which include a better understanding of the honey bees, which made more sense to me - and were healthier for the bees, for us, and for the environment.  



Gunther Hauk teaching a biodynamic beekeeping workshop at Foxhollow Farm Center, Spring 2008. 

I left the workshop elated to know that was another way to approach beekeeping.  Gunther and his amazing wife have been developing a learning lab for their work and a sacred space for their honey bees at the Spikenard Farm Honeybee Sanctuary.  Fortunately, it's within driving distance of Louisville - located in the Blue Ridge Mountatins in Floyd, Virginia.  I travelled there last year to study with Gunther - and am really looking forward to my next trip there in May to learn from him more about honey bees, swarming, and expanding the hive naturally. 

Because of my gratitude to Gunther and Vivian for the work that they are doing - and my belief that their work is critical to developing solutions for beekeeping and honey bees, I wanted to do something to help support the Spikenard Farm Honeybee Sanctuary.   

So, after several months, I am excited to share with you that Gunther and Vivian are returning to Louisville for three very special events.   Foxhollow is generously providing a space free of charge for these events, and the proceeds will go towards the Hauk's efforts to purchase the land for the Spikenard Honey Bee Sanctuary. 

The Waldorf School of Louisivlle is hosting one of the events and has been very supportive of Gunther's visit.  (To note:  Rudolf Stiener who developed the biodynamic approach to agriculture is the same person who created the Waldorf method of education).   

The goal for their visit is to raise $5,000 toward support of the Honey Bee Sanctuary.  Please consider attending one of both of these very special, very exciting opportunities.....


Foxhollow Farm and the Waldorf School of Louisville are pleased to host Gunther Hauk, biodynamic beekeeper and author of Toward Saving the Honeybee for two days of learning and inspiration.

Please join us for these exciting events:

Friday, April 1st 9:00-11:00 am: “Out of the crisis the Future is born.”
Colony Collapse Disorder: symptomatic for our economic, environmental and cultural crises." Gunther will dialogue about understanding root causes and creating solutions to address the crisis that the honey bees have shown to us.

Location: Waldorf School of Louisville. Donation of $25 per person requested. This is a special event for the parents of WSL students.

Friday, April 1st 7:00 pm: Exclusive film screening of Queen of the Sun.

This event will be an opportunity to screen the internationally acclaimed film Queen of the Sun along with Gunther Hauk, a biodynamic beekeeper for 35 years, who is featured in the film.

A discussion with Gunther Hauk will follow the film screening.

The filmmakers have generously permitted us to hold this screening as a fundraiser for Gunther’s work with the Spikenard Honeybee Sanctuary.

Each participant is requested to donate a minimum of $50 to directly benefit the Spikenard Honeybee Sanctuary, and support the next generation of solutions to save our honey bees.

More about the film: “QUEEN OF THE SUN: What Are the Bees Telling Us?” is a profound, alternative look at the global bee crisis from Taggart Siegel, director of THE REAL DIRT ON
FARMER JOHN. Taking us on a journey through the catastrophic disappearance of
bees and the mysterious world of the beehive, this engaging and ultimately uplifting
film weaves an unusual and dramatic story of the heartfelt struggles of beekeepers,
scientists and philosophers from around the world including Michael Pollan, Gunther
Hauk and Vandana Shiva. Together they reveal both the problems. Learn more about the film here:  http://www.queenofthesun.com/

Location of the film screening: Foxhollow Farm, 8905 Highway 329, Prospect, KY 40059




Gunther and apprentice, David Hosey (a KY native!), utilize the Spikenard Honey Bee hives as part of the hands on teaching for students during a workshop in August 2010. 




Gunther Hauk teaching about biodynamic beekeeping methods during a hands on learning experience at the Spikenard Honeybee Sanctuary in Floyd, Virginia.  Students travelled from Kentukcy, Tennessee, and several other states to attend. 


Saturday, April 2nd 9:00 - 12:00 noon: Gunther Hauk presents "Toward Saving the Honeybee": An Introduction to Sustainable & Biodynamic Beekeeping principles and practices.”

This workshop is for those who are currently beekeepers and those who are interested in learning more about beekeeping with natural approaches, including biodynamic beekeeping. Don’t miss this exciting and rare opportunity to learn from the master himself! Gunther’s beekeeping workshops are full of information, lively discussion, Q&A, and inspiration.

A requested donation of $50 will benefit both the Spikenard Honeybee Sanctuary and the children’s education programming at Foxhollow Farms.

Location: Foxhollow Farm, 8905 Highway 329, Prospect, KY 40059

Urban Rooftop Beekeeping - an example from Chicago

While I don't yet have experience with rooftop beekeeping (but am ready to help someone get the first rooftop hives started in the urban core of Louisville!) - I've been researching it quite a bit.  Chicago is doing some exciting work in urban beekeeping - from the Chicago Honey Co-op to some really great rooftop hives.  Here's a video about one group integrating roof top bee hives into their green initiatives...

Urban Rooftop Beekeeping

March and April beekeeping events

If you live in or near Louisville, Kentucky, there are some great opportunities in March and April to learn more about beekeeping and support an amazing master beekeeper.   Mark your calendars! 


March 4th:  Kentuckiana Beekeepers Association meeting, 7:30 pm at the Bon Air branch of the Louisville Free Public Library.  The evening will focus on "natural approaches to beekeeping and using top bar hives."  I'll be introducing the biodynamic approach to beekeeping (in 10 minutes or less) and sharing resources with the group.   Hopefully, the local top bar hive expert, Sara Fazio, will also be speaking about her experience using top bar hives.  Sara is amazing and passionate about honey bees and beekeeping and I look forward to hearing more about her experience. 

http://www.kyanabees.com/

March 8th:  Louisville's 3rd Pecha Kucha night.  It will be at 21c.   I'll be presenting on the importance of Louisville's urban beekeepers - and showcasing several of them.  The interviewing process was really fun, and I got to visit several urban apiaries!   Here's more about the event: 

http://www.pecha-kucha.org/night/louisville/3


March 12th:  The annual Bluegrass Beekeeping School.  It's held on the KY State University campus in Frankfort.  Hundreds of people attend - from all walks of life.  It's really fun - one of my most favorite days of the year, in fact!    There are so many types of classes, you get to meet other great people who love talking about bees, and there are vendors selling lots of great beekeeping related supplies, books, etc.  Including one of the Louisville beekeepers, Bekah Lunn, who created really cool honey bee inspired items.

I'm doing a workshop on Urban Beekeeping.   Here's the description: 

"Small backyard? Living in the city or near other neighbors? Curious about roof top hives? Maintaining hives in populated areas brings special challenges and considerations. Join
Carrie for some tips on how to be a great urban beekeeper as well as creating a community of
great honey bee neighbors. If you're currently an urban beekeeper, please join the conversation to share your experiences."  

Here's more about the school:  
http://www.kyagr.com/statevet/bees/bee%20schools/KYBeeSchoolFrankfort.htm

March 13th:  
Fresh Start Growers is hosting a great workshop where I'll be doing a 45 minute class for new beekeepers "5 key decisions a new beekeeper must make."  I'll bring some fun beekeeping supplies with me. 

March 13 Workshop: BeeHave!

Get bee savvy, tame your weeds, and get your plant starts going.
- Introduction to urban beekeeping with Carrie Van Winkle of Fleur de Bee.
- Organic plant starts with Kim Jordan of Wilson Nurseries.
- Organic weed management techniques with Steve Paradis of Fresh Start Growers' Supply.

WHERE: Creation Garden Marketplace, 725 East Market St., Louisville, KY 40202
WHEN: 1-5pm, Sunday, March 13
COST: $15 per person
RSVP: (502) 442-7883 with credit card

All proceeds go to The Shelter for Women & Families Raised Bed Garden Project.

The First Honey Harvest - an event of great joy.

You likely already know my priority with beekeeping - to support a healthy hive of honey bees - while they teach and inspire me. 

Honey has never been a driver for me - I think that a beekeeper who is 'hungry' for honey ends up exploiting the bees in her care - leading to unhealthy hives.   Many beekeepers have taken off too much honey to either consume or sell, and then feed the bees high fructose corn syrup or sugar water as an unhealthy, inferior substitute.  

Ok - stepping down from the soap box - a surplus of honey can be shared with humans - which is wonderful!   By July, the bees had stored over 150 pounds of honey in their hive - wow. 

My friend Wendy documented the honey harvest and Rich shared his basement 'brewhouse' space to do the work. 

I wanted to find out the simplest, lowest cost way to harvest honey - and after some research online found a wonderful video of the 'crush and strain' method done my 'online mentor' Linda.  See here for the video:  Linda's Bees.

I first used a bee escape from Brushy Mountain Bee Farm to separate the boxes with honey frames (called honey supers) that I was going to harvest from the rest of the hive.  The bee escape allows the bees on the honey supers to move down into the rest of the hive, but not get back up into the honey supers.  This worked really well with only a few bees left on the honey supers (vs. thousands) after having it on for a few days.  I love this option, as it's chemical free.  Often, beekeepers use a chemical to make the bees leave the honey frames. 

I pulled 22 frames off of the hive and put them into a plastic bin with a lid (to keep bees from flying back onto the honey frames).   I took them around to our screened front porch as a 'holding area' to let any hiding bees fly off before taking them into the house.  No stray bees were found!

I had set up a little work area in the basement - with the recommended cardboard to minimize honey tracking everywhere!   

Here's the set up:

Plastic bins and nice stock pot - donated from Rich's brewing supplies (many of you know that my husband is a top of the line homebrewer);  I used a baking pan to cut the comb from the frames; I bought a bottling pail (which you could make yourself and just buy the 'gate') and 3 mesh filters that fit nicely on the rim of the pail.  Total bought was about $45 including the shipping.  This was a huge difference from the hundreds of dollars to buy a honey extractor and the other supplies that are often 'needed.'

With my little harvest it was perfect.  If I have a larger honey harvest with the addition of hives I'm keeping for others, it could require a bit more of a set up.

Key steps:

The honey comb has thin caps of wax over each honey cell, which indicates it's finished honey (vs. nectar).

I used a fork to uncap each side of honey on the frame. I just lightly run the fork down the length of the frame and it nicely breaks the caps to open the cells of honey.  After uncapping, I took a sharp knife and cut the comb out of the frame - as I'm doing above.  Next year, I'll use a bigger roasting pan - this one was a little too small for the job. 



An action shot taken by Wendy Zent of cutting the comb out of the frame.  It was really beautiful.





I used a potato masher to mash the comb. 

I then poured the chunked honey and comb into a filter which was resting on the bottling pail.  After researching, I decided to just filter once, which leaves the honey pretty raw, but most of the pollen and comb are well filtered out (some people dont' like 'bits' in their honey!



Above is the honey comb that's been filtered overnight.  Underneath the filter is a pail of beautiful honey ready for bottling. 


This is a pic that shows one of my critical 'learning moments' (trying to forgive myself for screwing up and affecting the hardworking bees).  These are comb cells packed with precious pollen.  It's different colors from different sources (thanks neighbors!).  You can see how it's packed in layers.  I should have left the frames that had much pollen in the hive for them.  They need this source of protein and nutrition to have healthy brood -esp. as they are building up their hive population for the winter.  Now I  know.  : p

Honey harvest!   The bottling gate really makes the job easier and less messy.  Otherwise, you would use a soup ladel to get the honey into jars.  I ordered sweet little honey jars - but ended up loving the simple jelly jars for my own personal daily honey use.  For the experienced beekeeper, you'll have already noticed that the honey is flowing over top of the honey gate.  Hee hee hee - when I screwed the honey gate into the hole in the pail, I had wondered if there was a certain way to position it.  Of course there was - and I did it upside down!  It wasn't that bad - but Rich was a little horrified by the incorrectness of it all.  

I'll leave you with one of Wendy's 'art pics'  - beautiful chunks of wonderful honey comb. 

It felt sacred and celebratory to harvest some of their surplus honey.  I think this is the gift to the hobby beekeeper - relishing each moment. 

My backyard honey bees - 2010.

So heading into the winter of 2009, I fully expected that my first year struggling hive would not make it to spring.  (I know, I'm talking about 2009 - but it's to catch you up since my last post about my backyard hive - I promise to keep you better posted in 2011!).

I didn't think it would make it because they didn't finish making any honey to get them through the winter.  There were lots of honeycomb cells with what looked more like raw nectar than finished honey.  Still, I had given them a healthy mixture of biodynamic tea during the fall - and had a healthy hive from Richard Hosey to provide a good start.

Internal feeder - feeding honey to ensure the bees get through the winter. 

Well, I ended up feeding them honey during the winter (I actually went to ValuMarket and bought jars of local honey - thanks Joe Williard! 

I fed them this honey which miraculously got them through the winter.  This is usually a no-no, as feeding the bees honey from another hive has the risk of introducing diseases or bacterias.  At that point though, I felt that I had to do something, and the hive had nothing to lose. 

By April/May, I was in the hive doing the post-winter inspection - and they looked great! 

The queen looked wonderful and healthy...



find the queen....

The hive continued to grow in population during the spring and early summer - and made a good amount of honey. 



The hives grows with lots of frames of honey! 

The bottom two boxes are where the queen, brood (larvae), and lots of workers reside.  They also had some frames of honey and pollen in this section.  I pulled some of the honey out of this area to help ensure they didn't become 'honey bound'.  If they have too much honey in the brood areas, they feel cramped and run out of room for more brood.  This brings on plans to split the hive population by swarming.  Giving them plenty of space for brood helps prevent them from swarming, if that's what you're after. 

You can also see in the pic above the lovely thyme that I've planted around the hive.  It's too close to the hive for them to really forage in the thyme blossoms, but I like to think that it makes them happy anyway.  I've also got some great lemon balm in this part of the 'bee yard' - which is another healthy plant that honey bees love.  Thanks to my friend Heather and her mom for the lemon balm. 

Another thing to notice in the above pic - you might remember me writing about the hive in summer - they like to hang out on the 'front porch' of the hive on the hot days/evenings of summer. 

With such a healthy hive and so much honey, I knew it would soon be time for my first honey harvest....

A hidden KY gem: the annual Bluegrass Beekeeping School

As promised, I'll share with the the top 6 honey bee highlights of 2010.  Here's the first....

As of a few years ago, one of the annual highlights in my life is most definitely attending the day long Bluegrass Beekeeping School.  Click on the link to find out about 6 KY beekeeping schools in 2011. 
It's one of those amazing events that many people don't realize we have in Kentucky.

While they have the schools across the state, from Hazard to Henderson, my 'home' school is the main event in Frankfort on the Kentucky State University Campus.  Always held on a full Saturday in March, this is a gathering of over 300 honey bee fans.  This isn't your grandfather's beekeeping gathering. This is an amazing place where kids, parents, old-timers, new-schoolers, women and men, country farmers, urban gardeners, and suburban dwellers come together to learn from and inspire each other.  

There's a beginner's beekeeping tract of classes - perfect for the first and second year beekeepers.  There are also plenty of really interesting advanced classes.  The workshops I attended in 2010 included a presentation on the nine species of honey bees around the world.  Did you know about the stingless Mayan honey bees?  Or the giant honey bees of southern Asia?  What about the different species that our local beekeepers choose?  Carnolian (from Slovenia), the Italian (the most popular here), and the Russian.  Each is known for certain traits and each beekeeper has her/his own preference.

My favorite workshop was given by Tiffany Gillespie who lives with her husband and son near Mammoth Cave.  She talked about the special type of hives they are using - called a top bar hive (tbh).  Having the opportunity to see the hives that they built and hearing about their experience was inspiring.  It planted the seed that has since then been nurtured into an exciting venture for 2011.  More on this in upcoming posts. 

The school provides a place for vendors who sell beekeeping supplies, bee products (like Toni Downs' famous lip balm), and other fun and important beekeeping items. 

If you're interested in becoming a beekeeper or just want to learn more about honey bees - plan to attend one of the KY beekeeping schools. 

The 2011 Bluegrass Beekeeping School will be on March 12th.   I'll even be presenting this year! 
I'll be providing the first "urban beekeeping" workshop at the BBS.  I expect there will be other experienced urban beekeepers there - so there will be a good space to share and discuss our sometimes unique needs and experiences.  Thanks to Phil Craft, the Kentucky State Apiarist, for getting me on the agenda. 

Rich, my husband, has even said he wants to join me at the school this year!  Should be fun....

My 2010 Honeybee Adventures



Beehives in hillside olive groves near Assisi, Italy



A wonderful thing about it being November...

Getting closer to the end of the year has meant that I've started to look back onto my life in 2010. It's exciting to have experienced some big moments in beekeeping this year. While I haven't posted this year yet - forgive me! - there is lots to tell. In the coming month, I'll be posting the stories and pics from my honeybee adventures this year (so far!).

Above is a photo that I took in September to pique your interest!