Fermenting a New Culture – Has Begun!
October 3, 2011
The news from Occupy Wall Street is BIG – the country is in ferment, 
and yes – we are fermenting a new culture in many ways! Slow Food is one way we can all participate even if we can’t drive to Washington, New York…SF…
WE CAN ALL Stop shopping at Corporate stores, stop eating corporate food, it is all owned by the same guys & their brothers, the ones that brought us loss of jobs, loss of our homes, loss of our monetary independence. It makes dollars & sense, it puts money back in the local community, it is sustainable.
It-is-all-connected… & the destination for any continuing abuse of the body politic & your body, temple of our spirit – is sickness in community & in health.
What I am saying is we start spending our precious dollars in our own community, buy locally grown food, go to the Farmer’s Market, make a statement with our pocketbooks – we will feel good about it & will feel better physically too!
I spent the last few days creating and presenting a workshop on Fermentation, the live food chemistry kind. 
It fits in with my political rant here as you have let me say – Fermentation of simple, garden grown, local food gives many health benefits & helps stretch inexpensive food dollars, as well as using produce from field & garden. It keeps us out of the stores & helps us gather some “stores” of REAL FOOD.
We all loved the experience of making sauerkraut together, finding tastes that are new yet delightful & generally getting more deeply informed around the topics of yogurt, cheese, sauerkraut, vinegar, kombucha & sourdough. 
You can buy all these things or you can make them at a fraction of the cost, finding many ingredients in your locally owned farm stand or market. I encourage you to find such a class in your area or make one happen, it is about LIVE Food, Bio-available nutrients, Happy enzymes & intestines…all good stuff. I give thanks to my students who trusted me to guide them into the shallow waters of Live Fermentation…simple cottage ferments, political ferments… may we all find our way to the middle of the river, where deeper information resides, and a lifetime of experimentation brings new thoughts to the mix!
Certainly discovering the vast stores of knowledge at Sandor Katz’s website will be a beginning no Fermenter will regret.
And, oh yes – it is very political to grow & eat your own food, or get raw milk from a farmer down the road, let’s take that to the streets too!
SUMMER COTTAGE CHICKEN BROTH & SOUP
August 22, 2011
Rainy Day – the day after an August Family Gathering with lots of leftovers in the fridge…what to do with it all? I am still trying to eat my way through this food before it is time to close the cottage & go back to California…it will be so sad to leave this beautiful place – Michigan has the kind of puffy white clouds that romantic dreams are made of!!! I could lie on a float & look up at them for hours… That is – except that there are so many good books to read while laying in a deck chair & drinking sun tea made from our waterside mint patch.
It is a bit of heaven here…so much wildlife…there are even two swans that cruise the lake at all times looking Fairy Tale-ish. They come around our shore & into our water lilies at about 9am to feed…so beautiful! Sometimes I hear a loon in the early morning & we saw it yesterday too; lots of Canadian Geese honking & flying past. 
As to edible fowl, I am rooted in the modern agricultural 21st Century & will leave the wild birds to themselves as we eat chickens raised for the purpose.
I have eaten really well this trip. A far cry from the days when I brought a lot of my own food from California – raw sunflower seeds, brown rice & such as it was very difficult to make a trip into Kalamazoo where there was a great Coop. The local market seemed to have only browning heads of iceburg lettuce, some soft red delicious apples, and bananas. Nowadays , it seems that every small town market has rice crackers, organic butter, fruit & lettuce.
Truth is – Great fresh & seasonal local foods have always been available during a Michigan summer – my childhood memories include heaps of corn on the cob & fresh tomatoes in August, peas by the bowlful & lots of squash. August was always a healthy food month for us. 
We tired ourselves out with canning many quarts of peaches, tomatoes, grape juice, and made jams and pickles. I learned to make sauerkraut with my neighbor too. The root cellar was packed by the time I started school, and could take a break from being my mom’s “peeler & cutter-upper”
So – back to the barbeque leftovers of yesterday… let’s make some bone broth & soup!
Got your leftover chicken bits?
Making soup stock from those old bones & skin…so good for you too! The vinegar breaks down the bones into Calcium, releases the nutrient in the marrow. And, all of that “gristle” is also melted & becomes liquid in the hot broth. Bone Broth is medicine food – a healthy builder of bones & ligament for all of us.
Take the edible meat off of that ole chicken whether baked or BBQ’ed,
Add all the bones, skin & gristle into a pot of water & boil for several hours with any herbs you have – thyme, bay leaf, sage, rosemary. If you have a bit of wine or vinegar or even some Italian Dressing, add a big spoonful of that too.
Strain out the bones & bits, then add cut up vegetables to the broth…
We still had sliced onion & ripe red tomatoes from the hamburger fixin’s, so they went in.
I also had 4 ears of boiled fresh corn on the cob waiting to be used up, as well as a heap of baked potatoes, sliced summer squash, cut up yellow peppers, and some other crudités that didn’t make it into anyone’s salad or sandwich. Add a handful of celery, carrots, garlic, if you have it. Cook it all until tender & add your meat back in. Salt & pepper to taste. This soup is so fresh & good! Mine came out very much like a stew from so many veggies added. Yours will be a unique reminder of the party you just had. Toasted Hamburger or Hot Dog Buns are almost as good as French bread with this Summer Cottage soup of the day.
LOCAL FOOD AT RISK! Raw Milk shut down
July 5, 2011
…right here in teeny Willits, it has happened >> the eye of Sauron has turned in our direction & the yummiest raw goat milk filled with goodness, love & really potent nutrition has been made illegal. Now, who is going to tell those goats that they cannot produce anymore?
You have a right to know what is in your food, and further – you have a right to eat what you think is healthy & good for you. it is a matter of Freedom to choose. Why cry over spilt milk?
Here are the facts…
Green Uprising Farm has received notice of violation from the California Department of Food and Agriculture demanding that they “cease and desist” the sale or giving away of milk produced at their small dairy. Green Uprising has been providing wholesome, fresh milk to shareholders who have purchased an ownership interest in their herd for some time.
They are going to be supported by the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund.
The long story is posted on my friend Dave Smith’s blog, and here’s the short version…
As Sara Grusky, who manages the dairy herd, says:
“According to the Calif Dept. of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) this is a threat to the public health. Our children, our grandchildren, friends, family, neighbors and shareholders all drink raw milk directly from the teats of goats boarded at our farm (my goodness!) and we are all alive and well, happy and healthy. In fact, if you go back three or four generations most everyone who consumed milk drank it raw from a family farm in their community. But, according to CDFA, our shareholders don’t have the right to drink raw milk from a goat herd they have purchased an ownership interest in. According to CDFA, they know better than you what’s good for you. And, they think that pasteurized milk from a feedlot dairy where large amounts of antibiotics are used (due to the unhealthy conditions) and Bovine Growth Hormone (a genetically engineered artificial growth hormone) may be given to stimulate milk production, is healthier than the milk I hand milk into glass jars from my ten precious goats. You have got to be kidding…”
Friends…this is a frontal assault on our right to choose our food.
Action Alert- GET INVOLVED! This is not a test!.. or a meeting to plan
for an idealized future – this is action needed …on the ground… right
now - a need for all of us who love local food to show up & create our future of food, keep our ancient human food rights!
What can you do???
1- Come to the movie showing & community discussion on July 15th at the Willits Grange -7pm
FARMAGEDDON – The Film
Link to Trailer >>see it & click here…
Americans’ right to access fresh, healthy foods of their choice is under
attack. Farmageddon highlights the urgency of food freedom, encouraging
farmers and consumers alike to take action to preserve individuals’ rights
to access food of their choice and farmers’ rights to produce these foods
safely and free from unreasonably burdensome regulations. The film serves
to put policymakers and regulators on notice that there is a growing
movement of people aware that their freedom to choose the foods they want
is in danger, a movement that is taking action with its dollars and its
voting power to protect and preserve the dwindling number of family farms that are struggling to survive.
2- Come on the 15th & hear what Sara, her husband, and their shareholders plan to do in the face of CDFA’s demands and how you can help.
3- ALSO READ MORE ABOUT RAW MILK & YOUR RIGHTS:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/06/15/ron-paul-vs-the-fda-milk-police.aspx
4- To take action on National Milk issues, send a Fax to Your Legislators – Ask Them to Co-Sponsor & Pass HR 1830
112th U.S. Congress – House Bill HR 1830
(Go to http://www.farmtoconsumer.org/petitions/pnum1079.php)
Congressman Ron Paul has once again introduced a bill that would allow the
interstate shipment of raw milk and raw milk products for human
consumption, HR 1830.
* We believe that there is a fundamental right to produce and consume the
foods of our choice including raw milk, contrary to FDA’s claim that there
is no such right in its response to a lawsuit over this same matter.
* We believe the federal ban against transporting raw milk for human
consumption across state lines is a violation of our rights, despite FDA’s
assertion that any transaction that involves crossing state lines with
such milk is illegal.
http://www.farmtoconsumer.org/petitions/pnum1079.php
ALSO READ MORE ABOUT RAW MILK & YOUR RIGHTS:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/06/15/ron-paul-vs-the-fda-milk-police.aspx
Annie Brigit Waters
Thus does the public evil come home to each of us:
Straining, the courtyard gates no longer hold fast,
The evil leaps o’er the high walls; it finds everyone,
Even him fleeing to the inmost chamber.
– Solon
“The survival of the fittest is the ageless law of nature, but the fittest
are rarely the strong. The fittest are those endowed with the
qualifications for adaptation, the ability to accept the inevitable and
conform to the unavoidable, to harmonize with existing or changing
conditions.”
Fresh and Local – it was ‘just how things were’
May 31, 2011
An early relationship with food is something we can all rely on. Certainly memories are selective, and in my case a telling reminder that ‘we are what we remember we ate’…
Fresh and local milk & meat were on the table almost every day – even though fresh vegetables were not really available most of the year in Michigan in the 1950’s. But, in summer we were happily eating a lot of it!
Summer meant fresh food and sometimes it was grown in our backyard or from a garden just outside of town. We had a raspberry patch, a few tomato plants & plenty of rhubarb behind the garage. A black walnut tree by the driveway never failed to give us its strangely green fruit.
My grandparents were farm folk and appreciated fresh eggs. Grandma got them from Aunt Esther whenever she could. 
Grandpa fished almost daily for pan fish – bluegills, perch, sunfish, bass in Wall Lake where I remember the food being particularly great after a day of swimming & outdoor play. Once we crossed the lake on a boat to Aunt Nonie’s cottage where we picked blackberries & huckleberries too. The roads were full of summer farm stands with corn and squash. It was almost daily that dinners were centered on corn on the cob with plenty of butter and salt. Everything else on the menu from those meals has faded from memory, but the taste of fresh corn lingers in my primal brain.
We loved the blueberries, corn & tomatoes from the farm stands, and ate our way through August and on into September when at some point we noticed that the table was now set with canned beans or peas with a side of iceberg lettuce. Phooey!
I remember long hours helping my mother to can peaches, pears, and tomatoes on hot August afternoons. I sat on the picnic bench & cut, peeled, lifted skins & pits out so that she could make the wonderful jeweled rows of canned fruit that we relied on during those Michigan winters. One year we made grape juice & the deep purple contrasted beautifully with the golden pears & red spaghetti sauce on the shelf in the root cellar. We drank that juice many a Sunday night with our popcorn as we watched the Ed Sullivan show or Disney. No coke or chips were ever in the house and this was a treat indeed!
Now that I think about it- almost all of our sweets were homemade except for ice cream Sunday drives or penny candy bought on trips to Grandma Bogner’s house. Some special Sundays we made fudge with black walnuts that my sister & I cracked using a hammer on the basement floor. They were ready once the fleshy green hulls had blackened and fallen off while being driven over & pushed into the dirt driveway.
One year mom won a prize at the Diamond’s Hatchery where she bought her eggs & chicken. One hundred baby chicks… They were so cute, and noisy! She enterprisingly traded them to a friendly farmer for the prize of a dozen full grown hens. I remember dropping off the chicks into their heated house lined with straw & fitted with water cans & feed cans. The next thing I remember is a line of chickens hanging upside down from the clothesline dripping blood onto the backyard grass. It was a pretty scary sight, so near to my swing set, and I have conveniently forgotten when or how we ate those birds. They entered the food chain and that was it. Most of us have forgotten the relationship between our food and its death or sacrifice. Whether a carrot or a chicken, something ended its life cycle for our health & life. Better that I should experience this chicken harvest again soon, than to forget about this.
More on my early food memories: The milkman delivered quarts of whole milk in glass bottles into the insulated box on our front porch on an almost daily basis. He mysteriously arrived before I was up even on the coldest of winter nights. In our cold Michigan winters, the milk would often freeze in a relatively short time and push the little cardboard tops up. Some mornings, you would find a small tower of frozen milk protruding from the bottle. That little top hat of cream rising out of the top of the bottle was so fun to see. My dad always claimed that for his coffee, and would drink it black once the cream was gone. My mom was proud of her absolutely clean empties that she would put back in the box. Those bottles were re-used so many times, I wonder how many, and where are they now? 
The milk was processed in a small plant just a few blocks from home, and there were lines of big steel cans sitting on a metal conveyor for years after it closed down, until housewives started collecting them to paint on, I guess.
Yes, I see now that we ate local food all the time, but it wasn’t a bragging point – it was just how things were. More memories coming soon!Things like riding in the wheat harvesting wagon & making bread & sauerkraut…
Jamie Oliver’s sugar bus…
April 18, 2011
Jamie is doing it again – stay with this series, we can change the school lunch program; it takes some will & volunteers in each district -
what if every parent spent an hour a week helping with the cafeteria cooks to build their child’s lunch from fresh local REAL food?
Revolution!
I hope you see this show soon...
-Annie
PS My daughter was totally influenced by school food...wasn't yours?
GMO – just say NO!
April 10, 2011
Addicted to GMO?…the word is now out – GMO foods are bad for us medically as well as making things tough for organic farmers, destroying our bee population, our seed diversity & a host of other sins. The years of banging drums in the dark are over…it can be stated in public that GMO corn & soy are slowly killing us. Of course, the warnings have been loud & clear for awhile – the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, Union of Concerned Scientists, Huffington Post, Institute for Responsible Technology, and others have been trying to get our attention. But, the seeming need in our recession for more & cheaper food has outweighed the information & the public airwaves ignore this subject.
Recent testing in Europe ..by feeding normal diet of these ”foods” – caused liver & kidney damage in lab rats – and as we know from years of this type of testing, the effects on humans are almost parallel! By reviewing data from 19 animal studies, Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini and others reveal that 9% of the measured parameters, including blood and urine biochemistry, organ weights, and microscopic analyses (histopathology), were significantly disrupted in the GM-fed animals. The kidneys of males fared the worst, with 43.5% of all the changes. The liver of females followed, with 30.8%. The report, published in Environmental Sciences Europe on March 1, 2011, confirms that “several convergent data appear to indicate liver and kidney problems as end points of GMO diet effects.” The authors point out that livers and kidneys “are the major reactive organs” in cases of chronic food toxicity. The Institute of Responsible Technology has lots more to say…take a peek!
So note your food source…Kids – this means Fritos, McDonald burgers & fries, sodas, 
and almost all sweetened corporate foods. So – how much do we need to know in order to quit this addiction?
We could list the newer GM foods & the ones coming on line soon, just to get more worried…GM Salmon, GM Alfalfa, and even GM Wheat! But – let’s stay focused on the big boys…Monsanto’s own seeds into eternity…our field corn & soy…and I know we can find alternatives to chips & sodas!
Just say NO to GMO! It’s fun & easy – get your self some organic cornmeal, make tortillas with your kids have a fun & clean meal your garden & the local Farmer’s market can provide. It won’t cost much today & You will save money at the hospital later.
1000 Suns – a Hopeful Heartfull Movie
October 29, 2010
A Thousand Suns
- If you lose hope over our modern ability to live in relationship with nature with our agriculture, please do see this movie…it will resolve your fears, your worries, lift your heart…we may be a thousand miles and 10,000 years in time away from the Gamo Highlands, but the sense of sacred trust – the interconnectedness with all living things – clouds, trees, grasses, rocks – this we can regain in a moment if we choose!
Let us join the increasing numbers who recognize that all sustainable living comes from this deep inner love for all things – beyond our “Green” chanting of statistics about dying species or amounts of plastics or global energy oil crisis – beyond the mind’s ability to measure & pour words onto the piles of facts – there lie the deep waters of soul sense – the inner voice of love & connection…that is where our real work lies…
A Thousand Suns tells the story of the Gamo Highlands of the African Rift Valley and the unique worldview held by the people of the region. This isolated area has remained remarkably intact both biologically and culturally. It is one of the most densely populated rural regions of Africa yet its people have been farming sustainably for 10,000 years. Shot in Ethiopia, New York and Kenya, the film explores the modern world’s untenable sense of separation from and superiority over nature and how the interconnected worldview of the Gamo people is fundamental in achieving long-term sustainability, both in the region and beyond.
Or you can watch a short trailer on the film’s site….
Happy Celtic New Year,
Annie
DIG IN ! a LOCAL DINNER at LITTLE LAKE GRANGE
September 24, 2010
HARVEST DINNER MENU
LOCAL SOURCES 2010
The 5th Annual Little Lake Grange Harvest Dinner is one of over 400 many Slow Food & Gardening Events happening around the country this weekend!
This year we feature a gourmet multi-course meal created from locally grown food products. Our reason for producing a “LOCAL” dinner is to showcase the best of farm products available in our valley and within 100 miles of Willits.
We want to offer a fine dining experience celebrating local sustainable food and farming. The finest and freshest of foods prepared with loving care by our extraordinary local chefs – Patty Rede & Linda Relin, and their joyful crew of talented kitchen sou-chefs & assistants.
This is a Grange sponsored all-volunteer community collaboration that brings us all closer together in the supply of food for our health & our future
* ALL DONATIONS listed below are marked with a * (ASTERICK)
* Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts! *
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Local Organic Wines: (Organic wines from Mendocino County)
– *Frey Winery, *Barra Winery, *Parducci Winery, Fetzer, *Vin De Tevis, *Husch Vineyard
– Decorative Wine Grapes – *Marsha Pratt
Appetizers:
Almonds, Fresh Fruit & Grapes, (the Santa Rosa farm of Don Rosenburg)
Walnuts, *Baldo Farms ~ Pepper Jelly, *Fairall ~ Fig Chutney, *Stella Bonnet
Artisan Cheeses – Triple Creme Brie (*Marin French Cheese), Classic Cheddar (*Clover)
Local Goat Chevre’ (*Redwood Hill Farm), Dry Jack (*Springhill farm)
Crackers – Wheat harvested in Mendocino, Handmade Italian crackers by our own local cooks
- Olive Oil, Local Sea Salt
Dinner & Buffet Table:
Moroccan Tagines - Ford Ranch beef and local vegetables from Brookside Farm, *Golden Rule Garden, *Senior Center Garden, *Wendy Wilmes & Chris Baldo, Covelo Organics, *Mariposa Market, *Inland Ranch Organics, *Salt Hollow farm
- Fava beans from *John Wagenet, October beans from *Golden Rule Garden
- Walnuts from *Chris Baldo & Baldo Farms
- Paprika from Richard Jeske
Moroccan Chermoula Sauce
– Parsley from *The Drell Farm, Mint from *Karina McAbee
Rice Pilaf – Rice from our own Granary stores (origin- Sacramento Valley)
Olive Oil and Spices
Tomato Platters & Seasonal Local Vegetables with Moroccan spices – Many local farmers:
*Hue de Laroque, *Wendy Wilmes & Chris Baldo, Brookside Farm, *Annie Waters – thanks to you all!
Pickles – from Brookside Farm & Amy Rouse
Local & Seasonal Mixed Greens – *Green Uprising Farm
Lemon vinaigrette dressing – Lemon juice from *Golden Rule Garden, Local Olive Oil – *Chris Baldo
Dessert Table:
Fruit Gallettes & Crisps – *Sweetie Pies (fruit from Green Uprising Farm) Thanks Allegra Foley!
Local Pears by *Green Uprising Farm with *Mendocino Queen Honey
Whipped Cream from *Clover Dairy
Pan Forte’ by Mary Senerchia
Beverages:
Local Filtered Water
Herbal Tea (Mint & Lemon Balm) – *Sara O’Brian, *Annie Waters
with Honey from Karina McAbee’s hives
Pressed Apple Cider from *Golden Rule Garden
PS to all – LOCAL NOTES:
~Locally grown grain is still in limited supply- Golden Rule is experimenting with teff, quinoa, amaranth. Doug Mosel is growing some wheat, rye, oats & barley, but the supply is still limited.
~There are few beans or other vegan proteins easily available from local sources except Fava beans. This limits the ability of our dinner to supply vegan food and we apologize for that.
~ Locally madeVinegar cannot be found! It is easy to make & should be available from local apples or grapes – seems like a business opportunity for someone…
~Salt is also available from the ocean 24 miles away, but is expensive in the quantities now available. We have used just a pinch of local salt, with our apologies since it seems unaffordable for this large dinner.
~Spices have been traded from the Far East for thousands of years & we hope will always be available and will probably always be an “imported item” on our LOCAL menu ingredients.
What Spices can we grow here that will give us our beloved cinnamon & spice & all things nice?
updated 9-24-2010 – Ann Waters, Producer coordinator
fixed it myself~!
August 26, 2010
HEY – A Quiet moment can produce wondrous results…
I was a lucky shopper at a recent Healdsburg Estate sale & carried out a genuine 1955 Kitchen Aid – Model 3C. It is a beauty & an almost solid metal appliance – made to whip cream, beat eggs, mix cake batter, even make mayonnaise – back in the day when things were built to last forever.
After cleaning it up & admiring it on my vintage kitchen counter, we got around to using it for some whipped cream. The first few moments of service seemed as I remembered just before I put my money down in that original kitchen in Healdsburg …a nice starter speed, then speeding up as I took the dial to a higher setting. We turned it off, added some honey & vanilla – & then it just didn’t act right! The speed seemed variable & unrelated to the setting…oh, darn! Had I just bought yet another thing destined for the landfill? Hmm, maybe I could start a restaurant & put this in the window? Maybe Laurel will do the bakery & SHE can put it in the window?…Thoughts running rampant – until the next day – I took a quiet moment & instead of cleaning, gardening, reading email – I did a thing unusual for me – I decided to try & fix the darn thing!
Turns out it has a nice & tidy simple screw that allows you to open the beater mechanism – which was simply a simple hollow area surrounded by a cog & filled with wadding, some really OLD black grease & a heck of a lot of old cake batter!
A few moments later after dropping the important & irreplaceable screw thingie only once before containing it into a jar lid – I proceeded to clean the area out, apply sewing machine oil to all moving parts & then – deciding for expert advice – I called RJ for some thick grease. Turns out most guys have a grease gun around just for such uses…imagine that! The next day it was brought over & together we determined how much grease to put into the fairly clean wadding, (no, I didn’t change the wadding although it looked vaguely familiar but was not really on my list of things to shop for right now) into the hollow areas plus a little onto the cogs in both parts of the machine works. A few minutes later I was back in business with the Kitchen Aid humming properly at every speed. Now, that is a story that needs to be repeated…
1- I did it almost by myself – using woman’s intuition & a lifetime of some experience with small machines (sewing machine, bike)
2- This older model appliance is made of parts intended to be serviced! That is the real lesson of this tale – we need to find ways to make things again that aren’t meant to be dumped in a year & a day…
3- And…always good to have a grease gun around with some nice fresh light colored real good grease.
4- Must take quiet moments to make life happier & relieve upsets over small things…
5- Got to bake more, or get right person to bake using old yet happily working mixer appliance.
6- Keep RJ around for grease & other great reasons…
See ya in the kitchen,
Annie
The Vanishing Bees
August 15, 2010
THE VANISHING BEES
From the dawn of human society, the nature and origin of the honeybee has awakened the curiosity and interest of man. For the past five million years, this furry insect has been a creature of special sanctity, representing many things such as the human soul, industry, cooperation and the sacred feminine. Our relationship with bees also denotes the most ancient form of agriculture. Pre-historic petroglyphs depict women on honey hunts and Ancient Egyptian farmers floated beehives on rafts down the Nile to pollinate their crops.
And yet today, we live in a state of disconnect. The average consumer has no idea where things originally come from, not even something as vital as our food. They think edibles come naturally shrink-wrapped on a shelf and that the bees are merely stinging insects that make honey, when in fact these prime pollinators are responsible for one third of the food we eat, including most of the fruits, vegetables, nuts and even alfalfa used to feed livestock. In America, this amounts to about $18 billion in annual sales.
Imagine half a million adults skipping town and leaving their children behind. Picture an opened suitcase filled with bundles of cash at a bus stop and yet no robber wants to snatch it. The apiary science mystery known as “Colony Collapse Disorder” displays these very symptoms. Not only do the bees abandon their hive, but the queen and the brood as well. Unnatural. Unheard of. Even the predators that usually raid the hive for honey stay far away. At first, this occurrence sounds like an urban legend or an exaggerated tale. Except it’s not. The situation is both dire and all too real. Bees are disappearing all over the planet and no one knows why.
CCD – Colony Collapse Disorder…what is it? It is disappearing hives, not just dead bees…but, what causes it? Is it from the habits of commercial beekeepers & the overuse of agricultural chemicals? If so – why does a thriving hive in a backyard in our area – with no ag & no hive stress suddenly experience this…
Beekeepers and scientists are still unsure what is causing the loss of so many bees, but the fact is that bees are disappearing at alarming rates all over the world. In the UK, around one fifth of honeybee hives were lost in the winter of 2008/09.
In the USA, approximately one third of hives have been lost over the last two years – around 800,000 colonies in 2007 and 1,000,000 in 2008. If bees continue disappearing at this rate, it is estimated that by 2035 there could be no honeybees left in the USA.
US hive losses have been blamed on Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a collection of symptoms including large-scale disappearance of bees from the hive, to which a singular cause cannot be attributed.
No-one knows for certain what is causing the hive losses; however there are many theories including:
- pests (such as varroa mites), viruses, bacteria and fungi
- pesticides such as neonicotinoids
- importing of non native bees unsuited to climate
- lack of nutrition and loss of habitats – related to urban sprawl and farming methods
- bad weather, including spells of particularly wet weather or sudden cold spells
- poor husbandry – for example in the USA beekeeping is a large industry, with bees trucked vast distances across the country to pollinate different crops.
A new movie is addressing this pressing subject – in a very engaging way too!
Scroll down for trailer of “The Vanishing Bees”
Here is one story…from my Bee Journal…
June 13th 2010 – Seasonal Hive Checks
I was making the rounds that day of our hives…and, eerily got a call…
David Partch’s hive is dead – gone – disappeared! A thriving colony reduced to several frames of comb with bits if pollen & some uncapped nectar. How weird. Was it the cold, rainy spring – they ate everything & then starved to death? If so – wouldn’t there be bodies in the hive? Is that hive the “swarm” that was caught in my neighbor’s yard, not so unlikely – only a couple of blocks away. The hive was a stack of ready frames, about 20 frames showing comb development, many with pollen stores, some uncapped nectar, the bottom deep box & first shallow box had been brood chamber for awhile – well developed black comb with lots of old cocoons, pollen & yet – now – with a spotty brood pattern of only a few dozen capped cells, & no queen cells.
By the time I saw it today – the wax moths are already at work in one section. 
Partch puts the exodus at after May 31st, last time they can remember seeing bees making regular forage entrances. David says he saw lots of fighting around the entrance before then, and it appeared that they were using the top as an entrance also. Some aggressive behavior toward him as well. .. I have taken the boxes home to expose them or freeze to rid the wax moths, and will create a storage until they are needed or David wants to try again. Too sad. I have taken pictures of the odd white stuff I found on several frames, in most boxes. I thought it was the cappings from the upper boxes, as they were robbed empty. Will I ever know?
See the movie, I am going to as soon as it is out!
And – here is a word on CCD – a short film from Burt’s Bees…
They are a corporation also wanting to help save the bees! I think we are all in this together..the bees are collapsing our culture & economy is collapsing…grow borage for the bees & a garden to feed yourself..NOW!
And – if you need more reasons to support the bees & use honey – here is another video (NPR) about honey – as medicine…
Honey is all right with me! In fact, I am going to open a hive this afternoon…hope I see some extra honey… I might just have a taste…
Bee well,
Annie
Recent Comments