Chiapas Diaries: Day 8, Part 1 - Visit to a Family's Home

by: Jill Richardson

Fri Dec 31, 2010 at 00:09:17 AM PST

This is the nineteenth diary in a series about my recent trip to Chiapas, Mexico's southernmost state, to meet with and learn about the Zapatistas, an indigenous insurgent movement made up of several ethnic groups, and their food and agriculture. On our eighth day - our last day with the Zapatistas - we visited a family's home to see their beehive. Except, I immediately spotted a few chocolate trees and went off wandering to check out what else they had...

Previous diaries in this series:
Day 1, Part 1: My Yuppified Introduction to Chiapas
Day 1, Part 2: An Introduction to Zapatistas
Day 2, Part 1: Something's Weird in Zapatista Territory
Day 2, Part 2: Our First Day with the Zapatistas
Day 3, Part 1: A Full Day with the Zapatistas in the Highlands
Day 3, Part 2: A Trilingual, Multicultural Corn Experiment
Day 4, Part 1: Zapatista Agriculture and a Shower
Day 4, Part 2: This Corn Ain't Roundup Ready
Day 5, Part 1: Moi's Rant
Day 5, Part 2: The Students' Orchard
Day 5, Part 3: The Students' Ceremony
Day 5, Part 4: From the Highlands to the Jungle
Day 6, Part 1: The Market in Palenque
Day 6, Part 2: Zapatistas in the Jungle
Day 6, Part 3: The Poster
Day 6, Part 4: The Poster, Continued
Day 7, Part 1: The Stingless Bee Workshop
Day 7, Part 2: The Stingless Bee Workshop Continued

(I went with the group Schools for Chiapas, an organization that works with and provides aid to the Zapatistas. Check out their website if you are interested in either traveling with them to Chiapas yourself, or simply buying some artisanal goods or coffee produced by Zapatistas. Aside from the obvious politics involved in supporting Zapatistas, you are supporting human beings who live in extreme poverty and work their asses off to educate themselves and their children and provide for basic needs like water and health care.)

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Chiapas Diaries: Day 7, Part 2 - The Stingless Bee Workshop, Continued

by: Jill Richardson

Fri Dec 17, 2010 at 12:32:24 PM PST

This is the eighteenth diary in a series about my recent trip to Chiapas, Mexico's southernmost state, to meet with and learn about the Zapatistas, an indigenous insurgent movement made up of several ethnic groups, and their food and agriculture. On our seventh day, a few members of our group led a beekeeping workshop focused on a few species of tropical stingless bees that are native to this part of Mexico. The bees, Meliponas and Trigonas, are declining in numbers, but their honey is highly medicinal. Mayans traditionally kept these bees and used their honey, but those traditions are being lost.

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Chiapas Diaries: Day 7, Part 1 - The Stingless Bee Workshop

by: Jill Richardson

Thu Dec 16, 2010 at 12:55:33 PM PST

This is the seventeenth diary in a series about my recent trip to Chiapas, Mexico's southernmost state, to meet with and learn about the Zapatistas, an indigenous insurgent movement made up of several ethnic groups, and their food and agriculture. On our seventh day, a few members of our group led a beekeeping workshop focused on a few species of tropical stingless bees that are native to this part of Mexico. The bees, Meliponas and Trigonas, are declining in numbers, but their honey is highly medicinal. Mayans traditionally kept these bees and used their honey, but those traditions are being lost.

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Bees 'R' Us (Bee hives at Hayes Valley farm taken out by pesticide)

by: citisven

Fri Jul 23, 2010 at 14:03:24 PM PDT

( - promoted by JayinPortland)

Who would do such a thing???

From the Hayes Valley Farm (SF) blog:

Sometime between the late afternoons of Monday July 19 and Tuesday July 20, an unknown person(s) intentionally sprayed pesticide into the entrances and ventilation holes of the two San Francisco Bee-Cause (SFBC) honey bee colonies at HVF. The same person(s) tried to do the same to a third, smaller colony on site, belonging to Chris Burley.

it goes on:

The killing of the two mature SFBC colonies was complete. The thousands of bees that died immediately or rushed to the entrance for fresh air fell onto the screened bottom board and clogged up the entrance to the hive, making escape impossible for any of the other bees and turning each hive into a gas chamber. Chris Burley's colony sustained a loss of approximately 60-70% of its individuals.

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All About Beekeeping

by: Jill Richardson

Wed May 06, 2009 at 01:58:35 AM PDT

Sometimes I wonder what my former self would have said if it could see what my current self was doing. And you know, I am very sure that you could ask Former Jill during just about any time of my life if I ever saw myself attending a beekeeping workshop during my lifetime and the answer would be a resounding NO. What the hell am I doing engaging in an activity that involves purposely putting myself in the vicinity of thousands of stinging insects?

This week, the NY Times blog Bitten posted a piece on how to build a beehive, so I suppose I'm not the only crazy American putting my love of honey and pollination above my fear of getting stung. Therefore I think it's time to share what I learned in the beekeeping workshop, since clearly the activity is rising in popularity these days.

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Sweet

by: by foot

Fri Jul 18, 2008 at 22:14:01 PM PDT

[Updated 7/21/2008 21:58 -- not sure the work I did relieved any crowding. New pics at the bottom ...]

I'm certainly not what you'd call an experienced beekeeper -- although I'd been around them a bit 20 years ago, we just acquired our first hive this Spring. I'd been looking forward to it for months.

After separating the honey from the big chunks of wax with a collander, we ran the honey through a screen sieve before decanting to jars.

Linden honey is considered to be a very fine type of honey. It's light in color, and has a wonderful, almost minty flavor that I'd never tasted before.

Penny gave me a top bar hive last Christmas, and through the same local beekeeper who sold her the hive, boxed up a swarm of bees in May. The beekeeper had been contacted by another beekeeper in nearby Arvada, who had a vigorous hive that had swarmed, resulting in a big ball of bees on a nearby shrub.