Bill Moyers, Wendell Berry and the honey bees October 6, 2013

Bob has finished harvesting the honey and is in the process of putting the hives up snug for the winter. We harvested about 57 pounds this year — compared to almost 100 pounds last year. The reason — one hive swarmed — so the queen took off with half of the hive — overcrowded. You can read about that in a former post.

We do not mind, though, since we gave the swarm to another beekeeper and that meant more bees on the planet. We like the honey harvest, but it is really not why we do this. So far we have had great success with our two hives, which indicates a healthy environment here in “rural” Lake Elmo. We have not seen any colony collapse, although other beekeepers around the area did have die offs last winter.

Bill Moyers hosted Wendell Berry today who talked about “leadership from the bottom — people who see what needs to be done and just do it.” Bob and I were both reminded of our work with many others to save the library in Lake Elmo. Berry’s words and thoughts in his poems and essays are comforting and inspiring. If you haven’t seen the program you can catch it online Wendell Berry on his hopes for humanity

I do love Wendell Berry.

We also loved a little documentary about the bees that was included: Dance of the Honey Bee 

If the link doesn’t work you can right click and choose open in a new window.

We have enough honey to distribute to our friends and family this Christmas — look for it in your stocking.

Bob says, “it looks like I know what I am doing.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 6th, 2013 at 6:02 pm and is filed under Judy's Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.