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bees

More bees

Nancy sent me this excellent article about the danger bees are in in this world of industrial farming, dependent on pesticides and monocultures. Several of the points were already made in Michael Pollan’s December article in the New York Times, and it was discussed in some detail on 60 Minutes last October as well, but I liked the links on this one, like the “10 things you can do to help honeybees” piece. I also came across this excellent site which has some interesting photos of varroa mites and what they can do to a hive.

Our bee-keeping class met one last time at the farm of our instructors. It was a good chance for the novice bee-keepers to ask some questions, and we got to see and do a number of things before sitting down to tea and cookies.

There was another lesson in marking queens. This picture shows why marking a queen is a good idea; this is a close-up of one side of a frame. Imagine hunting through both sides of 18-20 frames to find your queen. She can prove elusive, particularly if she is busy laying when you look, so she might be waist-deep in a cell and not all that conspicuous. Here you can probably spot her: she is in the centre of the picture with a longer darker abdomen than the others. It takes some practice to find her, particularly when drones are around as they are darker and longer, but have blunt back ends. This queen is surrounded by workers who are shorter and resemble her less.

Pick up your bee (these are drones, used for practice, and sent back to a life of humiliation and teasing by the other bees)…

Transfer it to your other hand, holding its legs, and mark with a marker (different colours for different years: yellow queens, here, are ones that were born last year; this year we’re using red).

Eeeee, lemme go!

A clever device to trap and mark a queen without having to pick her up.

The marked queen – see the dot of yellow – is a little easier to spot in a crowd.

A couple of variations of queen cages: in both cases the cages allow transport or safe introduction of a queen to a new hive.

Larry thumps some bees. “They drop like jellybeans” he says.

Some very keen bees felt this half frame was too short, and built an extension on the bottom.

When Larry speaks, we all listen.

Bee art.

Eggs in situ: tiny but visible, like short bits of thread.

…and then they become larvae. More like shrimp at this stage.

News in the news, and devilish fun with translation

In the self-serving-don’t-mess-with-my-lifestyle department, a recent Pew poll says that over half of Americans surveyed don’t feel humans are responsible for global warming.

In the interesting angle department, Raj Patel draws some interesting conclusions from a recent Lancet article and the ensuing media headlining.

And in the bee-keeping department, here’s a cool manual on bee-keeping produced by the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity.

Such fun with words we’re having. We started off doing translation exercises, similar to this “Homophonic Translation” routine, which we did using a latin text. Last night it occurred to me that I might be able to find a way into revision work by using an online translation tool, so I’ve been blasting a few pieces apart by translating them into Japanese, Greek, Portuguese, Korean, Russian, French, Italian and Spanish — and back again, sometimes more than once. It’s been a fun way to take apart a dull line or sentence and see what might enliven it. Or perhaps start me off in a new poem or image.

Here are the opening lines of an old poem of mine I chose at random:

The path of disaster is so often
just beyond the window we’ve turned
away from for that critical
moment

and the translated version (via Japanese and Greek)(with a few tweaks to make the syntax work, more or less):

Such a certain street of destruction
a precise and often window
that exceeds our regard
with empty importance
turns because this

So, a different world and a different meaning, and a lot of nonsense, but maybe something in there presents an opening for new directions and energy.

Bugged

Tuesday it was bees: we had a most thrilling hive inspection as our last field trip.

We got to see some varroa mites, how to check for the tell-tale odour of foulbrood,

what a hive about to swarm looks like, how you graft a queen cell, how you mark a queen,

how you split a hive, and how you recapture a swarm that hasn’t left yet. It was not the best time of day (evening) or the best weather (a bit damp) but the bees bore it as best they could, and brave Larry showed us how an experienced bee-man can handle even cranky bees without nets or gloves…

..on account of he had very kindly lent me his jacket and veil. And has spent his entire life around bees. I feel hardly qualified to have my own hives just yet, but will spend a little more time hanging out with bee-folk and see how I feel next year.

Then, on to Saskatchewan where I’m participating in the Sage Hill spring poetry colloquium at St Michael’s Retreat Centre in the Qu’Appelle Valley,

where the ticks are active if not biting (phew). They’ve been crawling over us night and day, even those of us who haven’t gone outside let alone into long grass. This evening I found one hiding on my person. Here she is practicing her backstroke in a drop of water, before sinking into the last hot bath of her life.

Our colloquium leader Erin has researched the subject thoroughly, and apparently it’s unwise to try to crush them (even if you can) in case they’re carrying a disease which you can then spread on yourself by accident. So I think scalding is quick and merciful.

Anyway, there are eight of us here from all across Canada, all with manuscripts in progress. We’ve been having a good time doing poetry exercises and plunging into some hard editorial graft. Between meals, walks (in the short grass, thanks) and strolls into town. Where there is surprising variety in fire hydrant, I happened to notice.

Liking London

A week or so ago I attended a reading by Ekstasis authors, in celebration of the Pacific Rim Review of Books. Richard Olafson introduces…

Among others, our excellent Saskatchewanian Glen Sorestad read, and so did the wondrous Yvonne Blomer.

I’m enjoying the bee-keeping course a lot. Here’s how you wrap up your hives and throw them in the back of your truck to take them for a drive. If you listen closely you can hear them hum…

And now, here I am on the other side of the pond once more. I arrived yesterday and after a reviving nap and shower bustled off to the Olivier to catch Much Ado About Nothing, which was nothing short of awesome. Zoe Wanamaker, Simon Russell Beale and everyone — all wonderful. Sets, staging, music, dancing — all wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. I laughed, I cried, and I particularly enjoyed the reaction of the many school kids in the audience, who hooted and hollered and clapped upside down and backwards at the end.

I settled in that evening to a gorgeous box of booty from Ottolenghi – roasted aubergines with braised shallots, coriander, chili and green tahini; roasted beets with sunflower seeds, chard, chervil and maple sherry dressing; some soft, tasty new potatoes in mustard sauce; and a couple of slices of char-grilled fillet of beef with dijon mustard, coriander and honey sauce. With a glass of Barbera to wash it down. Looks like I will just miss the publication of Ottolenghi’s new cookbook, but we can still catch some great recipes in the Guardian.

Carrie has sent forth the challenge to participate in NaPoWriMo over April (National Poetry Month) which sounds like an excellent idea. We poets can show those novelists what’s what, eh?