Ever witnessed a bee being born? Here’s your chance.

The video below shows a timelapse of bees hatching. It’s a weird, cool watch.

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The post Baby Bees are Pretty Cute [Video] appeared first on EcoSalon.

Anyone who has ever followed  Erykah Badu’s career knows that the artist is talented and very opinionated.

In November 2015, Erykah Badu went on Zane Lowe’s Beats show and released an amazing song list. Recently, that song list, along with “who” the artist dedicated the list to has received some attention.

Now, you may be thinking, “I bet she dedicated those songs to her loved ones, family, or friends…” Not so. Badu decided to make a statement — one we happen to agree with — and dedicated her music mix to the bees. Yes, bees — as in honey and bumble.

“+++BEATS BEES LIKE FOR B-BOYS AND B-GIRLS+++,” the title of Badu’s mix, is filled with amazing tunes from artists such as Sun Ra, DeBarge, and more. Badu published the mix with a pretty hilarious and quite poignant note: “Save the bees, else we aint gone have no where to fight and discriminate… cause they aint have’n that shit on MARS.”

Badu’s mix became even more… appropriate? needed? … this past week.

On February 26, CNN published a post that reports that “bees, birds, butterflies and beetles are among a growing list of pollinator species in jeopardy of global extinction, a United Nations study warns, a trend that could threaten the world’s food supply.”

According to the two-year study, titled “Thematic Assessment of Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production,” these creatures as well as other pollinators could face extinction thanks to “diverse pressures, many of them human-made.”

“Pollinators are important contributors to world food production and nutritional security,” Vera Lucia Imperatriz-Fonseca, Ph.D., co-chair of the assessment and Senior Professor at the University of São Paulo, says. “Their health is directly linked to our own well-being.”

You can read more about how pollinators are at risk here. And while you’re reading that sobering research, you may as well stream Badu’s killer mix on MixCloud.

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Image of Erykah Badu via Shutterstock

The post Erykah Badu Loves Bees as Much as You appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnIn the face of colony collapse disorder, can urban beekeeping projects help us save bees, and our food system?

Did you know that 70 out of the top 100 food crops that humans consume — which are responsible for supplying about 90 percent of the world’s nutrition — are pollinated by bees? As Greenpeace puts it, “You have a bee to thank for every one in three bites of food you eat.” This is one of the main reasons that people are so concerned about the dwindling numbers of honeybees.

Bee populations are decreasing at an alarmingly high rate. Because of pesticides and habitat loss, in the United States alone, since 1962, the number of bees per hectare has gone down by 90 percent for these important crops.

The question is: what do we do? Banning dangerous pesticides is an essential part of the solution, but beyond signing petitions, for the most of us, that’s something that’s out of our control. What is in our control? Many people have taken to beekeeping.

Nowadays, there are urban beekeeping projects popping up from Hong Kong to Stockholm to Tokyo. And it’s not just bees that they are promoting; often these projects incorporate unique methods of doing business that bring both a social and environmental good. For example, in Seattle, the Urban Bee Co. is the nation’s first bicycle-centered honey producer, and all its honey deliveries are pedal-powered. Not to mention that honey is an incredibly local crop, and for people looking to reduce their food miles, honey is a way to do just that.

It has been argued that urban beekeeping is actually detrimental to bee populations, as in many areas, there has been a loss of flowers and habitat. This is often on account of urbanization, which removes both potential nesting sites for bees, as well as their food sources, making pairing beekeeping projects with planting projects essential. And that means greening cities, providing bees with what they lack: food. A great example is Pollinator Passasjen, a Norwegian initiative to encourage people to plant bee-friendly plants, like flowers, as well as insect hotels.

Unfortunately, the reality is that if bees keep dying at the current rate, urban hives come far under being a replacement for the commercial variety. But that doesn’t mean we should forget about urban beekeeping projects. On the contrary, while they may make a small impact on the larger agricultural scale, on the smaller, more local scale there’s a lot of potential, because while it may seem like bees would prefer a more rural, bucolic setting for their pollinating action, research has actually shown not only higher survival rates in urban bees versus rural bees, but also high yields of honey.

The success of bees in urban areas does point to the fact that in these areas, in conjunction with more green roofs and urban gardens, beekeeping projects might just be an essential part of the solution for addressing food security, by helping to increase local food production.

But when we are thinking about solutions to a more sustainable world of food production, it also comes down to one essential thing: dealing with toxic pesticides that are causing these problems in the first place. This has been highlighted yet again by a recent Harvard Study which concluded that, “The results from this study not only replicate findings from the previous study, but also reinforce the conclusion that the sublethal exposure to neonicotinoids is likely the main culprit for the occurrence of CCD.”

The most heavily used class of insecticides in the U.S., those neonicotinoids aren’t just impacting bee health, many scientists say that they post a threat to human health as well. Designed to target an insect’s nervous system, these pesticides have now been shown that they may have an affect on the human nervous system as well, affecting brain development. That’s alarming given the trace amounts of the pesticides that have been shown to appear in food. In one study done on neonicotinoids in food, 90 percent of honey samples tested detected positive for at least one neonicotinoid, as well as 72 percent of fruits and 45 percent of vegetables.

More research is needed, but paired with the destruction of bee populations, the argument against these pesticides is strong.

So what do we do?

We continue to advocate for more sustainable farming practices. We buy organic. We buy local. We boycott Big Ag. We don’t use pesticides in our own gardens. We support more urban beekeeping projects as well as initiatives that build more habitat and food for bees. We plant more native species. Urban hives may not solve the problem of colony collapse disorder, but it does get more people talking about it, and part of the solution — whatever the problem — comes with creating awareness. And if we want to build a more sustainable food system, we have to do exactly that.

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This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Image: Mosaic Family

The post Can Urban Beekeeping Projects Save Our Food System? Foodie Underground appeared first on EcoSalon.

The Center for Food Safety has launched an incredible video series called “Hollywood Food Voices.” First up in the series is Moby, the prolific songwriter, DJ, outspoken vegan…and now, you can add BBF, as in Bees’ Best Friend. Just watch Moby explain about the bees on his property and why protecting them is so important. It’s really heartwarming.  

Check out the Center for Food Safety’s website here.

Find Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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The post His Name is Moby and He Speaks for the Bees [Video] appeared first on EcoSalon.

The once-common monarch butterfly is MIA, and it doesn’t bode well for the health of our species.

Unable to survive the cold temperatures that blanket the U.S. during winter months, the monarch butterfly population heads to Mexico and Southern California every year to bask in the warmth. Following instructions built into their DNA, subsequent generations of monarch butterfly seek out the very same trees and bushes in which their parents were born, even though they’ve never been there before. And the happy cycle begins all over again. That is, until this year.

“This year, for the first time in memory, the monarch butterflies didn’t come, at least not on the Day of the Dead,” reported Jim Robbins for the New York Times. “They began to straggle in a week later than usual, in record-low numbers. Last year’s low of 60 million now seems great compared with the fewer than three million that have shown up so far this year. Some experts fear that the spectacular migration could be near collapse.”

A world without the monarch butterfly. Think about that. Our children could grow up without ever knowing what it’s like to feel this orange-and-black fairy land on their arm, or seeing one hatch from their cocoon (my favorite science project as a child).

So what’s causing the monarch butterfly to break from thousands of years of tradition? Some say pesticides, specifically the neonicotinoids often blamed for the decline of the honey bee. But even if all pesticides had never been used on a single U.S. crop, experts say the monarch butterfly would still be in peril.

“There’s no question that the loss of habitat is huge,” Douglas Tallamy, a professor of entomology at the University of Delaware, told the New York Times. “We notice the monarch and bees because they are iconic insects,” he said. “But what do you think is happening to everything else?”

Every time we tear raze a meadow, cluster of trees, or wetland to put up a parking lot, we’re destroying a monarch butterfly’s home. Every time we uproot native plants like the milkweed to install a sterile lawn and genetically-engineered flowers, we take food out of a monarch butterfly’s mouth. Which eventually means less food for our own families.

Like the bee, the monarch butterfly is a pollinator. Many forms of life are sustained by the seeds, fruits, nuts, berries, and foliage that result from pollination–including humans. This is what the produce section of your grocery store would look like if pollinators like the butterfly go the way of the Dodo. Scary.

So what can we do to save the monarch butterfly? Well for one thing, eat organic when you can, and never use chemical pesticides on your property. Encourage the growth of native plants, especially the milkweed, as well as nectar-producing flowers that attract butterflies. Purchase only FSC-Certified wood products, since illegal logging in Mexico is devastating monarch butterfly habitats there. Lastly, support programs working to protect the monarch butterfly. Visit MonarchWatch.org to learn more.

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Image: usfwsnortheast

The post The Monarch Butterfly is Disappearing and that’s Bad News for Humans appeared first on EcoSalon.

A new non-profit called The Bee Cause Project is teaching school children about the importance of honeybees and beekeeping.

Honeybees are dying in alarming numbers, and unless we find a way to replenish local hives, a lack of suitable pollinators will devastate our food system. For years, beekeepers and scientists have watched Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) wipe-out entire hives, and despite proof that commercial pesticides are a huge part of the problem, the EPA has refused to take definitive action.

While politicians and chemical companies hash it out at the legislative level, concerned citizens around the country have taken action. Keeping backyard honeybees has now become a staple of urban homesteading, and across the nation, people are pressuring their representatives to make protecting the bees a top priority.

Long before CCD hit national news, however, Ted Dennard made it his personal mission to protect and care for our most precious pollinators. As owner of Savannah Bee Company, Dennard has spent a lifetime supporting local beekeepers through the sale of real honey body care products. Now, the lifelong beekeeper is taking his message to an even more important crowd: our kids.

In late July, Dennard (pictured below) launched The Bee Cause Project: a not-for-profit that teaches children the ABCs of honeybees, beekeeping, and the importance of both. The goal? To put observation hives in 1,000 schools, so that kids can watch bees at work, participate in their care, and fully understand what an integral role this tiny insect plays in our every day lives.

“I want to raise a generation of kids that know how important the honeybee is,” Dennard said in a press release. “A generation that when someone says ‘bee,’ they don’t think ‘sting’ but they think of the wonderful little pollinator and its role in the ecosystem and our lives.”

The Bee Cause Project will place glass-sided observation hives in schools for absolutely no charge: 100 percent of the costs required to install the observation hive case and managing the initial hive case and honeybees is covered by the organization. This generous gift is made with the understanding that each school will pay it forward so that other students can enjoy the same experience.

“Schools that receive a honeybee observation hive agree to run an annual fundraiser selling Bee Cause Honey to help pay for the ongoing care of the bee family they have adopted and for the installation of honeybee observation hives at other schools,” explains the project website.

“The honey that is sold as part of the annual fundraiser is provided “at-cost” by The Savannah Bee Company and 100% of the profits are used to support The Bee Cause’s mission to install honeybee observation hives in 1,000 schools and “to save the honeybees one school at a time.”

Find out how your child’s school can become part of this amazing project by visiting www.thebeecause.org.

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Image: Public Domain & Bee Cause Project

The post Bee Cause Project Saves Honeybees, One School Kid At A Time appeared first on EcoSalon.

How much do you actually know about bees?

Who do we have to thank for smoothie week, fruit-picking, and apple-related folklore? The European honeybee, of course. These fierce pollinators who came to this continent via the Columbian Exchange make it possible for us to enjoy a lot of our favorite foods. As colony collapse disorder continues to threaten our tiny winged friends, we should celebrate and preserve them and promote awareness however we can. Not just for the sake of agriculture, but also because these are some fascinating insects. National Honey Bee Appreciation Day was August 18th. Did you brush up on your bee facts?

Bee Quiz

This post originally appeared in Sierra magazine.

The post Quiz: Test Your Knowledge on Bees appeared first on EcoSalon.

 We love bees.

Two years ago we told you how vandals had attacked bee hives at Hayes Valley Farm, San Francisco, resulting in the loss of over 60% of the resident bees. We’ve just heard it’s happened again, as part of a sustained campaign of vandalism over the last 2 weeks. If you want to show them a little support, you can reach them at the Facebook page for their nonprofit organization, SF Bee-Cause.

(Let’s hope they get a camera soon and catch these wretches before they do even more damage).

Bees, it barely needs to be said, are vital elements of the food cycle that keep us alive. Was Albert Einstein exaggerating when he said the end of bees would mean humanity had 4 years left before its own extinction? Let’s hope we never find out. In celebration of this incredible, species-saving creature, here are our best bee-related posts of the last 2 years, from beautifying honey therapy to the Chim Chimney backyard bee-keeping movement sweeping through London…

Check your local ordinances and if backyard beekeeping is legal in your area, determine where you’d put your hives. A sunny spot that’s not directly situated next to a recreational area like a picnic table or playground is ideal. It’s best to plant a hedge or put up some kind of barrier around your bee colonies to prevent vandalism, protect the hive from wind and induce the bees to fly upward when leaving the hive (rather than through your neighbor’s yard.) Speaking of neighbors, you’ll need to talk to them about your plans. As long as none of them are allergic to bees, a little bribery with some honey should put them at ease.

The Buzz On Backyard Beekeeping For Beginners

In the last two years, California’s crops were affected by a mysterious disappearance of bee hives. Known as Colony Collapse Disorder, the worker bees simply fly away and never return. Since October 2006, over 35% of the honey bee population in the United States has vanished. In some states, as many as 90% of bees have disappeared. Scientists don’t know what causes CCD, but theories range from stress due to travel (bees are trucked across thousands of miles, in some cases, to pollinate), or pesticide exposure. A case for local, organic food?

Mysterious Mass Deaths Redux

Recent history: Bees are dying all over the place, “colony collapse disorder” enters the national consciousness, a leaked EPA memo points to a particular pesticide, Army researchers enter the fray. In the midst of all of this news, just as it seems scientists might be closer to identifying the cause of Colony Collapse Disorder, a new mysterious bee die-off is happening – right now – in San Francisco.

I discovered this entirely by chance when I met a fellow cookbook author named Penni Wisner at a professional gathering. The day we met, she had just learned that the beehive in her Lower Castro San Francisco backyard had collapsed, practically overnight.  As she told the story of how the process unfolded, everyone in the room was swept away by the heartbreaking mystery of the hive’s demise.

Exclusive: EPA Ignores Its Own Science And Approves Bee-Killing Pesticide: Mysterious New Die-Off Unfolds

Brightly colored clothing might be fun for summer, but certain hues can bring bees buzzing. If you’re worried about yellow jackets don’t wear bright yellow, orange, florescent red or light blue.

How To ‘B’ At One With Backyard Bees

Conventional beekeepers place sheets made of plastic or wax in their hives for their honeybees to build upon, but the problem is, bees aren’t too fond of plastic and the wax is contaminated by chemicals and pesticides. The hexagonal cell pattern on the sheets is often too large, encouraging the growth of oversized bees that may gather more pollen and make more honey, but are also more susceptible to mites and thus require chemical treatment.

The Backwards Beekeepers – made up of Kirk Anderson, Charles Martin Simon and Michael Bush – believe that this just plain unnatural system is adding unnecessary stress to bee populations. Their own system relies on wood strips painted with chemical-free beeswax taken from their own previous harvests.

Backwards Beekeeping: Natural Care Of Feral Bees

It really started at age five when my grandmother slathered honey on my morning waffle. I distinctly remember my senses awakening. The scent of the honey mixed with the melting butter on the crisp waffle and then the flavor exploding in my mouth. I was hooked at that moment and somehow knew that bees would play an important role in my life. However, it wasn’t until about five years ago when a colony of bees built their home in my garden wall. When I learned that my landlord was set to exterminate them because he was told they were “killer bees,” I called a local beekeeper to help me move them from the garden wall to my newly purchased house. Many exterminators use the term “killer bees” as a scare tactic.

Q & A with Los Angeles beekeeper, Staci Valentine

According to the British Beekeepers Association, the number of registered Chim Chimney Beekeepers in central London has more than doubled within the past couple of years. There are over 2,500 hives and more than 700 beekeepers. The posh are in on it (the queen’s bees are kept at Buckingham Palace) as well as the middle class, who keep bees in allotments and on rooftops. The enthusiasm for London beekeeping and the resulting honey (considered to be among the best in the world) has prompted annual festivals, international beehive design competitions,eco products, and amendments to the school curriculum.

The Chim Chimney swarm has become so avid that last year the North London Beekeepers Association had to start turning away members. The Guardian calls it the latest environmental movement; we’re calling it the new chicken coop.

Chim Chimney Beekeeping: The New Homesteading

Want a centuries-old beauty trick? Tie on your sunbonnets and lean in. (Yes, now I am whispering.) Honey is the secret to everything. Okay, maybe not everything, but it comes pretty darn close. It’s the multi-tasker of natural beauty. Cleopatra made milk and honey baths infamous. Poppea, wife of Rome’s Emperor Nero, used milk and honey to maintain a youthful appearance. And best of all? It is everywhere and it is relatively cheap.

5 Reasons Why Honey Is The Ultimate Beauty Must-Have

Among its clearly outlined beliefs and commitments, Burt’s Bees believes that natural products should be 100 percent natural. Together with the Natural Products Association and other leading Natural Personal Care Companies, Burt’s pioneered The Natural Standard for Personal Care Products, a set of guidelines that helps to define what a “natural” personal care product is and what it is not. Products that fill the bill are branded with a Natural Seal, which indicates that the product has met guidelines related to natural ingredients, safety, animal testing, and packaging. While only half of Burt’s Bees’ existing products qualify as 100 percent natural, the company is open about working toward complicity across the entire product line, and each product’s “percent natural” is clearly indicated on its packaging.

Burt’s Bees also works to ensure safe working conditions in the sourcing of its ingredients, maintain a strong stand against animal testing, and use packaging made with high levels of post consumer recycled materials. The company also pledges at least 10 percent of all burtsbees.com sales revenue to partners through The Burt’s Bees Greater Good Foundation.

Behind The Label: Burt’s Bees

Images: Don Hankins, aussiegal, gregav, hr.icio, Mike Baird, Staci Valentine, vickyb, and alsjhc.

The post From The Vault: Let It Bee appeared first on EcoSalon.

On competitive swimming, chickens and honeybees.

Swimmer Natalie Coughlin, 29, was the most decorated female athlete at both the 2004 Athens and the 2008 Beijing Olympics. In Beijing, she became the first U.S. woman to medal six times during a single Games, giving her a lifetime total of 11. She hopes to add to that number this summer at the 30th Olympiad in London.

Besides swimming, Coughlin’s passions include food, gardening, and the five chickens she keeps in her backyard in Lafayette, California.

Avital Andrews from Sierra magazine interviewed Natalie to find out more about her gold-medal habits.

SIERRA: What do you mean when you call yourself an “urban farmer”?

Natalie: I grow a lot of my own food and have replaced a lot of our landscaping with edibles. We have 10 citrus trees, seven seasonal vegetable beds, and five chickens for eggs. We’re considering honeybees next. For a while we were thinking about goats but realized that would have been ridiculous and too much to handle between our two dogs and five chickens and my travel schedule.

SIERRA: When will you decide about the bees?

Natalie: I’ll probably wait until after the Olympics and then dive into that project. Right now we have several mason bee houses, to give them a refuge and encourage them to come pollinate all our fruits and vegetables. I definitely notice a difference this summer, versus the previous summer — a lot more of our flowers are turning into fruit.

SIERRA: How did you pick up gardening as a hobby?  

Natalie: When I was a kid, I had a 90-year-old neighbor — she could stick anything in the ground and it would grow and flourish. We’d always play in her garden. I still have the colander that she used to make potpourri from her roses. A lot of people in my life have had backyard gardens so when I was looking to buy a home, that was one of the requirements. I think it was just a desire to learn more about the seasons and about where food comes from.

The post Natalie Coughlin: An Olympic Swimmer and Urban Farmer appeared first on EcoSalon.

Homeowners and apartment dwellers on both sides of the Atlantic are dipping into the yummy hives of bees.

While Homesteaders on our own turf continue to battle it out over naming rights, urban nature dwellers in Britain are taking “local” and “self-sufficiency” to new heights: their rooftops. It’s a trend that’s migrating stateside, but remember you heard it here first. We’re calling it Chim Chimney Beekeeping®.

As a thank you for reading us each day, you’re free to dump the ®.

Here’s how it all started.

In 2008, the British Beekeepers Association reported that the UK bee population had plummeted by as much as a third, citing causes like parasites, insecticides, loss of flowering plants and pollution. In the United States, meanwhile, we’ve been scratching our heads at the mysterious disappearance of bees as well, a condition that we’ve dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder.

It’s a very serious problem worldwide as bees are responsible for pollinating about a third of the world’s food supply. Unless we want to subsist on wind-pollinated foods like wheat, rice, oats and acorns, we need them in our backyards.

The English, renowned for their stiff upper lips, best foot forward, and superlative gardens, have responded by cultivating thriving Chim Chimney Beekeeping communities. UK-wide, there’s an estimated 274,000 bee colonies that produce more than 6000 tons of honey each year with some 44,000 beekeepers managing them; the biggest buzz, though, is happening in London.

According to the British Beekeepers Association, the number of registered Chim Chimney Beekeepers in central London has more than doubled within the past couple of years. There are over 2,500 hives and more than 700 beekeepers. The posh are in on it (the queen’s bees are kept at Buckingham Palace) as well as the middle class, who keep bees in allotments and on rooftops. The enthusiasm for London beekeeping and the resulting honey (considered to be among the best in the world) has prompted annual festivals, international beehive design competitions, eco products, and amendments to the school curriculum.

The Chim Chimney swarm has become so avid that last year the North London Beekeepers Association had to start turning away members. The Guardian calls it the latest environmental movement; we’re calling it the new chicken coop.

Stateside, a city ordinance banning Chim Chimney Beekeeping in New York was overturned last year. Now more than 100 people are keeping hives of their own. Queens, in particular, has become the city’s honey haven having hosted the first ever inter-borough honey festival in the Rockaways last month.

Hoteliers in Boston have also taken it up. The InterContinental Boston houses about 120,000 honeybees on their rooftop apiary. And in Chicago, there are about 4,000 registered beekeepers.

From our vantage, the Chim Chimney trend is one to watch. It’s beneficial to urban dwellers as it’s a kind of Zen and the Art of Beekeeping pursuit. More importantly, it’s good for the bees. City pollinators fare better than rural ones because of the increased range of forage and relative lack of pesticides. It just might be the solution to our global bee conundrum.

Images: The Telegraph; Capital Growth

The post Chim Chimney Beekeeping: The New Homesteading appeared first on EcoSalon.