The Buzz III
Putting bees out in the spring. Photo by Brad Kimberlin.
By Brad Kimberlin
Hurray! Summer is here and shaping up to be a good year for honey bees. The nuts and bolts of beekeeping are pretty straightforward: keep them warm, keep them fed.
I was talking with an oyster farmer in Cordova a couple days ago, he knows quite a lot about bees and beekeeping. I made the comparison to fishing.
On the one end, you can put some bait on a hook with a bobber and chuck it out into the water. On the other end of the scale, go work the bass master tournament circuit. Oyster Jim said he's more of a 50 thousand hook kinda guy.
I have not given much thought to what it entails to raise oysters in Alaska. Apparently the difference between 52 degree water and 55 degree water is huge. It's pretty similar to beekeeping. Honey bees are not indigenous to North America, yet they seem to survive well in the Lower 48. Not so up here. I might be wrong about this but with the experienced people I've talked with, I've never heard an account of a colony that has gone feral and managed to survive.
I suspect it's the same with raising oysters. On their own, they wouldn't survive.
Yet Jim keeps them over the winter in a type of hanging net pen. I've been out to his place on the Sound. It's pretty impressive what he's doing. There is no doubt farmers and other people who are engaged in nurturing livestock and growers of all sorts of things. The people who grow peonies for instance - now that's a tough gig.
Giving the bees a spring oxalic acid varroa mite treatment. Photo by Brad Kimberlin.
Anyway, I've strayed from beekeeping to other areas of agriculture and animal husbandry and farming. I believe that we all as humans have an internal relationship with the earth and creation that seeks an outlet.
Whether it's the little plant sitting on a desk in the middle of a concrete building in the center of a city five miles from the nearest chunk of dirt, there is a peace that comes from tending to living things. Maybe peace isn't the right word - not to spiritualize it - but a sense of, let's say, completeness, or belonging. I think that's just the way we were made.
Bee Good!
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