Apes. Tools. Honey-Getting.

Forest-dwelling chimps use tools to gather honey.

"No Rest for the Wicked"

Errant bee menaces winged poppy-hopper. The artist is Wm. Barribal. The year is 1935.

Looks like Barribal also did birds.

Fun With Bugs!

Sweet friends imported this bee from Baltimore. It now resides in Brooklyn.

Bee-Friendly Reporting

A reporter sent this my way, and I though ya'll might enjoy it.

Cricket Crawl!

On September 11, bug-minded folks throughout the NYC metropolitan area will be participating in the first ever Cricket Crawl—"An aural expedition and a celebration of life in the leafy jungles of urban and suburban NYC." (Rain date = Sept. 12.)

Learn more about this cool event on the Cricket Crawl website, where you'll find instructions for participating, links to great websites where you can learn more about the sounds and appearance of various singing insects, and info on the interesting line-up of collaborating organizations, including the American Museum of Natural History, the NY Entomological Society, Discover Life, the Appalachian Mountain Club of NY/NJ, and our own local and exceedingly fabulous Proteus Gowanus.

I'm helping to run the Cricket Crawl's Facebook page. Why not join up and get your cricket on? You don't have to live in the NYC area to get in on the fun.

Beekeeping Cartoon in The New Yorker

To see the toon in question, simply turn to page 70 of the August 3, 2009 issue or go here.

"Bees and busy people."

Been reading the great & strange Philip Whalen lately, & encountered this gem on nature's simultaneities, which can best be enjoyed for its crackling sound effects & pools of meaning by reading aloud:

FOR ALBERT SAIJO

Fireweed now—
Burnt mountain day
Sunny crackle silence bracken
Huckleberry silver logs bears
Bees and busy people.

Rainy mountain years
Trees again—
Green gloom fern here
Moss duff sorrel
Deer sleep.

Tree fire people weed:
Bright and dark this mountain ground.


by Philip Whalen
(Zen poet &—can you tell?—college roommate of Gary Snyder)

Bonus Track: Whalen (center) with friends Ginsberg & Burroughs, way back when.

Shutterbug Salutes High Line

New York City's latest bee-friendly spot gets the royal treatment from New York Times fashion photographer Bill Cunningham.

Cunningham's focus is people, not bugs, but if you visit the High Line on a sunny summery day, you'll see plenty of happy pollinators doing their thing.

Cunningham's unbridled enthusiasm reflects the true wonder of this thrilling addition to the city's psyche.
Photo: Jesse Chehak (See more pictures of the High Line.)

NYC Wildlife: Woodcut Prints by Lisa Studier

A friend has been making these delightful woodcut prints of wildlife found in New York City: bats, birds, butterflies, turtles, and others. Here's hoping she decides to try her hand at our urbane honeybees.

Light My Fire

Illuminating item on firefly flirtation in The New York Times.

All Bees, All the Time

Been meaning for awhile to make sure ya'll know about a wide-ranging informational "news digest" called APIS-Apicultural Information and Issues.

Posted monthly, APIS provides a wealth of information on CCD, bee health, and other info of interest to beekeepers and bee-lovers.

Honey Press

If you keep bees using a top bar hive like I do, you wind up with plenty of beautiful honey comb. I've come to greatly appreciate the pleasures of eating honey in the comb, but sometimes I also want to extract the honey from the comb and I continue to experiment with different low-tech methods for doing so.

The funky little Sesame Street segment I posted recently showed a nice honey press, but I haven't found anything similar in my web searches for "honey press." However, I did find this page by beekeeper James Satterfield on Making and Using a Honey Press. I think I might try something similar. I wish his photos were a bit larger, but I think you can get the gist from his web page and take it from there.

Let me know if you have other low-tech, low-cost ideas for pressing honey from the comb, or if you have leads about where to find a honey press like the one in the Sesame Street video.

Old Timey Sesame Street Beekeeping Spot

NYC Abuzz With Pollinator Week Activities

Pollinator Week 2009 is almost upon us, and this year for the first time New York City will have an abundance of events and activities to mark this nationwide celebration of the vital role pollinators play in our lives. (The official dates are June 22-28, but around here, pollinator week is every week—or bust.)

A wonderful, energetic organization called Just Food is sponsoring myriad events for Pollinator Week, including "New York Nectar"(signature dishes and drinks featuring local honey at NYC’s favorite bars & restaurants), a "hidden hive" tour, a honey festival at the Union Square Greenmarket, a rally in support of legalizing beekeeping in NYC, and a Beekeepers Ball. Read all about these Pollinator Week events here.

Learn about Pollinator Week events throughout the United States here.

Ant Rant

I've said before that my fascination with bees has opened the door to many new interests, including botany—a topic that once elicited in me an inescapable sensation of drowsiness.

Beekeeping has also rekindled childhood obsessions that, with the passage of time and the ravages of adulthood, were relegated to the sidelines.

Last summer, I wrote about how how beekeeping had "recharged" my interest in ants, those smart, social, industrious insects that mirror the lifestyle of honeybees in so many ways. Just the other day, I enjoyed a lovely meditation on a hillside meadow that included serious communion with some big black ants and their magnificent anthill. I had ants in my pants and I was happy.

Ants never seem to get the respect they deserve. They're just too small and fast and ubiquitous, and they don't make honey, or buzz around our flowers, or earn us money by their labor. But they are fascinating and important creatures without whose presence the world would be a very different, and much messier, place. Ants play a vital role in soil health and functioning, have important symbiotic relationships with many plants, and are considered "ecosystem engineers."

Bert Hölldobler, who has studied and drawn ants throughout his scientific career, was interviewed in the New York Times this week. In the interview, he talks about his longstanding collaboration with E.O. Wilson, the art of collaboration, the role ants play in our world, and what to do if ants invade your kitchen.

Read the interview with Bert Hölldobler here.