The Dead Live

Imbolc                                  Waning Wild Moon

Big news.  The dead live.  Or, rather, the bee colony I declared dead last fall turns out to be very much alive.  I checked busy-honey-bees_1712this afternoon.  That means the whole bee thing looks more and more rosy here at 7 Oaks.  In the second year we can expect honey.  And a second hive.  Good thing I’m taking this  class.

All about bees.  Nothing about birds.  Marla Spivak is the charismatic professor of entomology at the University of Minnesota who has a lot of knowledge about colony collapse disorder.  She runs this weekend program for beginning beekeepers, a tradition at the University of Minnesota since 1922, as well the Bee Lab and the whole Bee program at the U.

You might not think much more about this, but when you realize that, as I learned today, the Upper Midwest is the primary honey producing area in the United States, flanked by California and Florida, and that there is no bee program in any of our surrounding states, Nebraska is the closest, then you understand the significance of her role and the U’s bee program.

Last year there were 160 people in the beginning bee-keepers class.  This year there were 250 with a waiting list of 150.  Interest in bee-keeping has taken on the characteristic of a small groundswell.  This is great news for bees, not so much for the 250 of us who sat in a theatre today that had little air circulation and 250 human furnaces pumping out BTU’s.  It got hot.